Chapter 5
Five
Kaelan
When I found Hanna and Thorne, she looked at me over her shoulder, and her face brightened seeing me in a way that pulled at my heart.
Her hand was in Thorne’s, her shoulder pressed to his arm.
As if she were afraid.
He had called for me, but all his attention now was on her.
“The goddess’s original statue was shattered, but we’ve recreated it,” Branok was explaining. “We’ll begin by trying to transfer the goddess back to her statue.”
“She doesn’t think it will work.” Hanna’s voice was warning.
Did the goddess truly think it wouldn’t work? Or was she just determined to resist? I wasn’t sure how much to trust anything Hanna said at the moment, but I wouldn’t say so in front of her brothers.
Branok and Lynx’s laboratory occupied several chaotic rooms in the east wing of the summer palace. Shelves lined every wall, crammed with vials of potions, enchanted objects that hummed with magic, and books that looked old enough to crumble at a touch.
I hated it on sight.
“We need to start somewhere.” Branok looked up from whatever potion he’d been preparing, his expression guarded as his gaze met mine.
Lynx, his identical twin save for the beard, shot me a look that was even less welcoming. They’d made their feelings about me abundantly clear. I’d hurt their sister-in-law when we were young and foolish, and they’d never forgiven me.
I couldn’t blame them.
But when Branok looked at Hanna, his expression softened. “We’re going to do everything we can to help you understand the goddess.”
“Thank you.” Hanna’s voice was steady, but her palm slid against mine, and the two of us clasped fingers.
“We’ll work alone with Hanna. Having too many people in the room can interfere with our work.” Lynx was brisk and determined.
“That will not be happening,” I said.
Both twins looked at me. Branok’s jaw tightened. “We’re trying to help her, Kaelan. Your presence—”
“Is required, if that’s what she wants.” I interrupted. “If she desires support.”
“We are her support.” Lynx rose to his feet. “She’s our sister.”
This wasn’t about me any more than it was about him. I turned to Hanna, glancing past her to Thorne, who still held her hand. This question hurt, more than I wanted to consider. “Who do you want here?”
She didn’t hesitate. “I need you both.”
Something in my chest loosened. It usually seemed I provoked Hanna more than I soothed her. I was glad Thorne was here as Hanna turned to him, and he gave her a small, confident smile.. He was always the one who gave her stability, who made her feel safe.
The door burst open.
Lynx sighed. “What now?”
Jaik strode in, his expression stormy, and my shoulders tense automatically. We’d hated each other since I was stupid enough to break Hanna’s heart. He’d been a very active participant in throwing me off the Isle, promising violence if I ever returned.
And yet here we were.
“I need to speak with Hanna,” he said.
“We’re busy,” Branok began.
“And she doesn’t need to be upset before we even begin.” Lynx strode across the room toward his friend, putting himself between Jaik and Hanna, and suddenly I didn’t dislike him so much.
“I know.” Jaik took a step to one side, so that his eyes found Hanna’s. “This won’t take long.”
Hanna pulled her hand free from mine and crossed to him, touching Lynx’s shoulder lightly as she passed and giving him a smile as if to tell him it was all right.
“I’m sorry,” Jaik blurted out. “For earlier. You’re the sister I never had, and it makes me crazy to see you like this.”
“I know.” Hanna’s voice was warm. “I love you too. Even when you’re being overprotective and overbearing.”
He pulled her into a brief, fierce hug. “I’m trying. Honor is convinced that in a few more decades, I might be bearable.”
Hanna laughed in his arms, though it sounded as if her voice cracked.
Jaik’s fear for Hanna, his need to protect her even when she didn’t want protecting, his stubborn insistence on controlling them all…. We had more in common than I wanted to admit.
The thought was unsettling.
Jaik stepped back but didn’t leave. He leaned against the wall near the door, making it clear he wasn’t going anywhere.
Branok looked like he wanted to order him out, but Lynx just sighed and gestured for Hanna to sit in the chair.
The chair fell in the long shadow of the new statute of the Shadow Weaver. The statue was bright white marble, a freshly prepared cage for the goddess rather than the cracked and ancient one from which she’d been freed.
I didn’t think there was a chance in all the worlds the goddess was going back into that cold body.
Hanna crossed into that shadow, and her bright eyes seemed to dull as she settled into the chair.
“We need to bind you,” Branok said gently. “Just as a precaution. If the goddess tries to take control, we need to be able to contain you without hurting you.”
Hanna nodded. “I understand.”
Perhaps she did, but I hated it. Hated seeing the magical restraints materialize around her wrists and ankles, even if they were necessary. Even though she’d consented. Every instinct I had screamed against seeing them tie her down.
I forced myself to stay still. To trust that she knew what she needed. They were her family, after all.
“Can you feel the goddess now?” Branok asked.
“Always,” Hanna said. “She never really leaves.”
“Is she speaking to you?”
“Yes.”
“What is she saying?”
Hanna hesitated. “That no matter how good your intentions, you are going to hurt me.”
Lynx and Branok exchanged glances.
“Is she willing to go?” Lynx asked her.
“Not into the statue,” she whispered. “She wants to have a body. She says there can’t be a statue without a temple.”
“Then we’ll build a temple,” I said.
“The temple doesn’t matter unless there are worshipers.” Hanna shot me a wry look. “Real ones.”
“I’ll see her worshipped,” I promised. “Does she hear me?”
Her lips twisted in a smile that seemed unfamiliar. My heart raced. But perhaps that was just my imagination.
Memories of being controlled by Edric, then by Seraphine, shot through me.
“She can hear you,” Hanna promised me. “But she already told me that those promises mean nothing unless we survive our coming war, and she intends to help us survive.”
Fury gripped me. “We don’t need her help. We can leave her here if she won’t dispossess you.”
“Yes.” Jaik agreed. “Tell her that she has to get out, or she’ll be trapped here.”
“Enough,” Branok interrupted.
Lynx pulled a vial from the shelf, something that glowed faint silver. “This will help us see the goddess’s control over you. It shouldn’t hurt.”
He uncorked it and held it near Hanna’s face. She breathed in the vapor, and for a moment, nothing happened.
Then she gasped.
Her whole body went rigid, and shadows exploded from her skin. Not the controlled shadows she’d wielded, but wild, chaotic things that lashed at the walls and ceiling. The shadows seemed to pull back from the statue of the goddess, lashing around it and then away.
“Hanna.” I was at her side, but I didn’t know how to fight the shadows.
Jaik had started forward too. I only realized it when Branok gave us both an exasperated shove backward. I glanced at him, irritated by his presence. By the fact we were both being treated the same.
“Stay back and don’t interfere,” Branok told us both. “I assure you that I am well-versed in just how strong Hanna is. She doesn’t need to be rescued.”
Hanna
Jaik and Kaelan reluctantly settled back, standing surprisingly close to each other for two men who despised each other. Thorne stayed beside me, his hand on my shoulder, and Branok didn’t shoo him away.
Branok’s gaze sought mine. “You’re all right.”
I wasn’t sure if it was a promise or a lie.
But I nodded anyway. He said I was strong, and I didn’t want to disappoint any of them.
There’s no shame in being weaker than a goddess, girl. She sounded distinctly testy.
“Let’s try smoking out the goddess before we try to push her into the statue.” Lynx set a bowl on the table before me and poured part of a vial inside.
Purple smoke filled the room, but when I breathed in, it smelled like incense.
Like a memory of the goddess’s that was so strong, it swallowed us both.
“I need your help.” The woman’s face was tear-streaked through the smoke as she lit yet another stalk of incense, as if the number mattered. As if I wouldn’t have helped her in the brief light of a kitchen match.
I gasped, realizing I’d been lost in her memory.
The smoke was gone. The bowl was empty. The vial was corked again.
Lynx was saying my name like he’d already said it several times.
Shadows along the wall stretched and wavered. Where had I been?
I cast a desperate glance over my shoulder at Thorne, sure he would be gone, but then I came back into my body fully. Into the weight of his hand and the comfort of his presence. He squeezed my shoulder as he looked down at me, his gaze worried.
“Don’t do that again,” Kaelan warned Lynx.
“I don’t intend to.” Lynx was frowning. He crouched in front of me, and a memory of my own came back to me: taking a bad hit in the training yard and waking up on my back with him leaning over me, careful and gentle.
I blinked, my gaze filled with tears that surprised us both.
“Hanna,” Lynx said, his voice troubled. He rested his hand lightly on mine, his thumb tracing over the skin near where I was bound by the magic. He looked up, worried, and to my surprise, his questioning gaze sought Thorne’s, then Kaelan’s.
“I’m fine,” I said, the words too late and too shaky to convince anyone. “Go on. Get her out of me.”
I was afraid of what would happen if I lost time like that again, if the shadows kept moving so strangely, disconnected from the objects by which they’d been cast.
“Are you sure?” Bran asked. “This might hurt.”
“I’m not afraid,” I promised.
Bran’s lips curled at the edges, and he rifled my hair as if I were still a little girl. “Never are.”
It was a lie, but it was an affectionate lie, and it was one I always tried to live up to.
So they kept trying, and it felt as if the goddess and I were both swallowed up.
Kaelan
Hanna’s shadows writhed wildly, and her face was tight, her lips pressed together as if she were suffering. It had gone on too long.
Branok reached for another vial. “This should help us understand the depth of the possession—”
“No.” My voice came out harder than I intended.
He looked at me. “Kaelan, we need—”
“Look at her.” Thorne ground out.
Hanna had stopped meeting anyone’s eyes. She was bracing herself like someone expecting a blow.
“She’s trying to be strong for us,” I said. “We’re failing her.”
Branok’s hand froze halfway to the vial. “Hanna? Is that true?”
She didn’t answer immediately. Couldn’t, maybe. Her jaw was clenched so tight I was surprised her teeth didn’t crack.
“That’s enough,” I turned back to the twins. “Release the bindings. Now.”
For a moment, I thought they’d refuse. Then I’d have to make them, and that would destroy any fragile peace we’d managed to build when we were all trying to serve Hanna.
But Branok’s hands moved, and the restraints dissolved.
Hanna slumped forward, and I caught her. Her skin was cold, her whole body trembling.
“I’m sorry,” Branok said, and he actually sounded like he meant it. “I didn’t realize—”
“It’s fine,” Hanna managed, though her voice was barely a whisper.
It wasn’t fine. Nothing about this was fine.
But before I could say anything else, Hanna’s head snapped up. Her eyes had changed. They were still ocean blue, but with something else looking out through them. Something ancient and furious.
“Enough.” The voice that came from Hanna’s mouth wasn’t entirely hers. Her diction was altered, her voice stripped of its usual warmth. “I have tolerated your prodding, but my patience has limits.”
The Shadow Weaver.
“Hanna?” I kept my voice level.
“Hanna is here,” the goddess said through her lips. “Watching. Listening. But you weakened her, and I am all that remains now.”
It was a lie. It had to be a lie.
“Then we remove you.” Jaik’s voice was hard, final. “By whatever means necessary.”
“Yes. I agree.” My heart hammered.
The goddess laughed, and it was Hanna’s laugh twisted into something cruel. “Of course you do. The ice prince and the fire dragon, united in their need to control. To fix. To protect her from everything, including herself.”
The words jolted through me. Was that the goddess’s observation?
Or was the Shadow Weaver repeating how Hanna felt?
Jaik took a step forward. “We’re protecting her from you.”
“Are you?” The goddess tilted Hanna’s head, studying us. “You are harming her with your arrogance.”
“You’re trying to manipulate us,” I accused. There was no reason to think that the goddess’s possession couldn’t be reversed without killing Hanna.
“I’m trying to survive.” The goddess’s voice softened, became more like Hanna’s. “You are the ones who will destroy her trust. Her bonds. Then she will be mine.”
The room was silent.
Jaik’s expression shifted from anger to something more complex. “Why would you tell us your plans?”
“Because there are two paths forward, and I only have a slight preference. You can cage her against her will, and she’ll give herself to me to escape.”
I let out a hard laugh. “You don’t understand how stubborn Hanna is. She’ll drive the gods themselves to madness.”
Jaik nodded as if he agreed. It was slightly alarming.
“Or you can let us fight by your side,” she said.
“That’s not happening.” Jaik’s jaw was tight as he looked at me. “You won’t use her to fight your war, will you? You’ll leave her here where she’s safe?”
He didn’t voice the third question, but it hung between us, or perhaps that was just my own fear.
How selfish are you?
My hands curled into fists. Because that was the heart of it, wasn’t it? The impossible decision I’d been avoiding since we’d arrived.
I could keep her safe here, or I could keep her whole and bring her with me.
But I couldn’t do both.
The goddess was watching me, waiting. They all were. Branok, Lynx, Jaik, Thorne. All of them were looking to me to make the decision.
If I spoke now, they would listen.
How terrifying that must be for Hanna. To be voiceless while others determined her fate.
And then Hanna raised her hand toward my face, reaching for me with trembling fingers. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to cradle my cheek or slap me for my arrogance, but either way, she was Hanna again.
“We’re done for now.” I shifted her weight against my chest, drawing her closer to me. “She needs to rest. To recover. So she can decide what she does next.”
I carried her away from them all.