The Activation
Halfway to the shoreline I had to stop. A coughing fit doubled me over. By the time it passed, black spots danced at the edge of my vision. I wiped the blood from my mouth before anyone could see it.
He was at the water's edge when I arrived.
He turned before I reached him. I did not wait for him to speak.
"I need you to activate the Arrolyn," I said. "Now."
He looked at me for a long time. The dark water moved behind him and the cold came off it and I held his eyes and did not look away.
"Are you sure?" he said.
"Yes."
He was quiet. "It will change you. I have told you that before and I need you to hear it again. You may come out of it feeling things you did not expect. Things that have nothing to do with the poison or the bond or any of the reasons you think you are doing this."
"What kind of things?"
He looked at the water. "The Arrolyn was made by my mother.
Whatever she built into it was built for someone who belongs to Sarenal.
You do not belong to Sarenal." He paused.
"But part of what you carry does. And when that part wakes up it will not know the difference between you and what it was made for. "
I looked at him. "You are telling me I may develop a darkness? Or are you saying I will develop an attachment to you?”
He said nothing.
"Eravic."
"Yes," he said. "Or something close enough that I no longer know the difference."
I was quiet. The water moved. The cold pressed in from every side.
"And you?" I said. "What happens to you when it activates?"
He looked at me then. That look he had, the one that lasted just long enough for me to see what was underneath it before he put it away.
"Something similar," he said quietly. “But my Saren abilities have not yet awakened, so it will likely not be anything near as intense as what you experience.”
"The process is intimate," he said. “It could…reveal feelings below the surface that you didn’t know were there, or that I didn’t know were there.” He paused.
“Romantic. Physical. Or as simple as love or hate or harm. There are stories of people losing their minds during the process. Coming in contact with a hate they did not know existed. Or feelings that could work in whatever world the magic was forged in but never in this world, leading to….devastation. Insanity, pain.”
He drew in breath. “The real truth is, I have had feelings for you since the very beginning.” He looked away.
“And that has not changed. And I do not know what will happen when we do this part. Or if any part of you feels the same.” He looked at me carefully.
“The Arrolyn, once activated, does not care about practicality or pain. Are you prepared for that?"
I looked at him. "Will I remember what happens during the three days?"
He was quiet for a long moment. "I do not know," he said finally. "I have never done this before. I am only going based off what elders and historians and healers have told me on my various journeys.”
I looked at the water. I thought about Colsar on the floor next to the ward. About Kiss crawling into Saurin's ankles. About Ari watching everything with those assessing eyes.
"I have a husband," I said. "I have children. I have a life on the other side of a ward that I am going back to." I paused. "Whatever the Arrolyn does to what I feel, none of that changes."
"I know," he said.
"Do you still want to do it?"
He looked at the water. "What I want is not the relevant question."
"It is to me."
He turned and looked at me directly. "Yes," he said. "I still want to do it."
I began coughing again, spitting bright red blood into the cup on the table without intending to.
“If I do not, the poison may kill me. I may stay stuck here forever. And people I care for may die.”
Eravic took a step toward me. “Is that the real reason, Asharin? Or does some part of you want to know what real power feels like?”
“That part too,” I said quietly.
“You will kill him?” He asked.
“Yes. Or die trying,” I said simply.
We stood there in the cold with everything unsaid sitting in the air between us.
"Three days," I said.
"Three days," he said. “I do not know what happens during those three days. I simply know we go in that hut, we lock the door, and I say the incantations to the ancestors.”
“And afterwards?”
“Everything could change. Or nothing at all.”
He drew in a breath. “Or one of us could remember something that the other does not.”
I looked at him. “What are you not telling me? Is there something this could do to you that you are not telling me?”
He looked at me for a long while, then turned toward the hut.
I followed him. Neither of us said anything else about it.
I did not know what would happen inside that hut. Neither of us did.
Perhaps I would remember every moment. Perhaps I would remember only pieces. Perhaps I would wake with nothing but feelings I could not explain and memories I could not place.
Perhaps I would walk out no longer entirely myself at all.
That was the danger of magic created for a purpose other than mine. It did not care what I wanted or even what I needed. Only what I was capable of.
When I walked out of the hut on the morning of the fourth day Eravic was at the water's edge.
He turned when he heard me. He looked at my eyes and went very still.
"Your pupils," he said.
"White?" I said.
"White," he said.
We looked at each other.
"Did things change for you?" I said.
"Yes."
"What changed?"
He crossed to me in two strides and took my face in his hands and I did not step back.
"Everything," he said. His voice was rough in a way I had not heard from him before. He was close enough that I could feel his breath and he did not move away and neither did I.
"I have always been reasonable," he said. "Calm. Fair. Easygoing. That is what people say about me and they are not wrong." He exhaled. "There is nothing easygoing about this anymore."
I looked at him.
"And now I am something far worse than your husband or Teorin or Sevrin, Asharin."
"What do you mean?"
"They are all obsessed," he said. "They would follow you around the world to be near you." He pulled back just enough to look at me properly. "What I have is far different. Something I did not have until this very moment."
"What is that?"
"Resolve," he said.
We stood there looking at each other. The dark water moved behind him. The cold pressed in from every side.
"These past three days—" I started, then stopped myself.
"When you walk away today you may find that days or weeks or years pass and you can no longer—"
I put my finger to his lips.
He stopped.
I looked at him for a long time. Then I took my hand away.
"If that day ever comes," he said quietly, "the truth still stands." He held my eyes. "My ship is always open to you. Whether you are a princess or a pauper or a mother or a grandmother or a nameless woman in the street with a veil or a frightened girl dressed in boys’ clothes at a tavern."
I looked at him one more time.
"Goodbye, Lord Vaelor," I said.
I turned and walked away and did not look back.