Chapter 5 #2
Though I don’t care to oblige her, the question nags at my brain.
I attempt once more to cast back through the cloud and fog and discomfort, only to land once more on the night of my betrothal announcement and that dance with the Shadow King.
Other than that . . . there’s nothing more than flashes.
I seem to see myself taking off a delicate, beaded veil, pressing it into Faraine’s hand, followed by another image of me kneeling before a bloody altar in a dark chamber, my younger sister, Aurae, kneeling in prayer beside me.
There are eruptions of fire, screams, high and blood-curdling. Then blackness.
I shake my head. A terrible pain lances through my abdomen, and, when I look down, I half-expect to find a gaping wound.
“Easy,” Lyria murmurs, bowing over me again and smoothing hair back from my forehead. “Easy, easy, don’t distress yourself. Just try to call to mind your last clear memory. Nothing more.”
“The betrothal,” I growl through a clenched jaw.
Lyria nods. Her teeth worry at her bottom lip for a moment as her eyes skitter away from mine.
Then, in a soothing voice I don’t like in the least, she says, “Ilsevel, I have some difficult things to tell you. You’ve had some adventures since that night, and you were gravely hurt.
You’ve been recovering, and part of that recovery involved dulling your memory.
That’s why it hurts to think back. But I’m going to tell you what I safely can now. ”
A stir of dread moves in my veins. I try to sit up again, ignoring the pain, even when it makes me dizzy. “Where is Faraine?” I demand. My voice sounds childish, even in my own ears. “I want Faraine!”
“Faraine is gone,” Lyria says.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“She has . . . she has married the Shadow King. In your place.”
“What?”
I listen, aghast, as my bastard half-sister fills me in on recent events.
On how I was betrothed to the Shadow King, underwent the traditional heartfasting ceremony, and was subsequently sent on my Maiden’s Journey, with Aurae as my attendant.
But when we stopped to make offerings at the Temple of Lamruil, there was an attack—fae raiders, seeking to destroy the alliance between Larongar and the troll king, or so it is believed.
“We thought you were dead,” Lyria says. “So Father . . . he couldn’t let the alliance be compromised. He sent Faraine instead.”
There’s more to that story than she’s letting on, I can tell.
But for the moment I don’t press. “Poor Faraine,” I murmur, even as a part of me wonders if Faraine is to be pitied after all.
I saw the way the Shadow King looked at my older sister, how they danced together on that first night of his arrival when he came courting me.
There had been something in that look—something which didn’t make me jealous, exactly, but did fill me with a strange discomfort.
As though I did not quite belong in whatever was taking place between them.
It did not soften my opinion of the Shadow King himself, only served to increase my repulsion.
“So I was given up for dead,” I say, still trying to make sense of these revelations, trying to fit them within the pockets of memory I still possess. “But . . . but I’m not dead.”
“No,” Lyria acknowledges. “You were wounded, however. You took a bad blow, and, by the time you were brought here, we feared we would lose you. It took powerful spellwork to keep you alive, which is why your body is so numb. That spellwork is still sustaining you.”
I look down at myself again, briefly glimpsing that shadowy darkness encasing my limbs.
There and gone again in a flash, but the crawling sensation against my skin doesn’t fade.
I don’t actively feel a wound, though there is a sense of pressure around my abdomen.
Part of me wants to press further, to know the extent of my injuries, but I’m not certain that is information I can bear just now.
Maybe in a day or two, when I am more recovered.
I press my fingertips to my temples. “It’s all very confusing,” I whisper. “I . . . don’t remember anything after that betrothal night.”
“It’s just as well,” Lyria assures me, her voice soothing. “Once you’re fully healed, perhaps you can bear to remember more. But the terror of that night . . . it’s better you leave it alone. Some things are not worth remembering.”
I frown then, a thought occurring to me. “Aurae,” I say, then turn my gaze sharply to Lyria, catching her eye. “You said Aurae was with me. On my Maiden’s Journey. Was she there when the fae raiders attacked the temple too?”
Lyria’s gaze skitters away from mine. Fear grips my heart. I reach out, clutching her hand tight, not with any sisterly feeling, but like I’m scruffing a bad dog. “What happened to her?” I growl. “What happened to Aurae? Tell me.”
“You shouldn’t let yourself be overwrought—”
“Tell me.”
Lyria draws a long breath. “Aurae was lost.”
“Lost?” I repeat the word. It feels heavy on my tongue. “You mean . . . you mean . . . killed?”
But Lyria shakes her head. “We don’t know that. She was taken by the fae—that’s all I can say for certain. She was taken, and—”
“The fae?” I breathe out the word. Ice trickles through my veins.
“Oh gods. Oh, sweet Aurae.” My fingers grip the blankets on either side of me, a sudden desperate urge to get out of bed, to find a horse, to ride for the burned temple pulsing in my head.
I know it’s foolish; the fae are long gone, taking my sister with them.
But how can I simply lie here while she is out there, suffering gods only know what horrors?
“What is Father doing?” I ask. “Surely he’s sent out people, surely he means to get her back.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Lyria assures me, though there’s something in her tone which tells me she’s not speaking the whole truth.
“We’re all doing everything we can. But, Ilsevel, your own return is something of a miracle.
We thought you dead for sure, and here you are!
It would be a shame to undo that miracle now by reopening wounds and letting infection set in.
Please, rest. Let the spellwork ease you, let your body heal. ”
But how am I supposed to bear it? How am I supposed to rest while this urgency burns in my soul and simultaneously saps all vitality from my trembling limbs?
I fall back on my pillows, breathing out a curse.
Damn my own mortal frailty! I hate it and hate myself for the futile little creature I am.
Aurae is out there, somewhere. Aurae needs me.
I’ve got to find Diira, and . . . and . . .
Who is Diira?
My eyes close hard, like leaden weights. “I think . . . I think I will sleep now,” I whisper, exhausted.
“That would be best,” Lyria says. “I’ll be close by if you need me for anything. I promise.”
I nod, then turn away from her onto my side, curling up around that place of pressure and numbness in my middle.
But sleep will not come. I lie with my eyelids squeezed tightly shut and watch strange images play in shadowy obscurity across the inner darkness of my mind.
Flashes of things, there and gone again.
Flowers with burning centers, singing as they bloom.
Black lightning, ripping across a pale blue sky.
A fiery form, dark with broken song, rearing up on its hind legs, tearing the air with cloven hooves . . .