twenty-eight #2
“It didn’t happen, now did it? Graella married the Qahranian lordling. She never knew that we were almost betrothed.”
“Let me guess… the Cerilynian attack had something to do with that.”
“Derailed a few things, certainly. My family backed off while the Gardiahs recovered. We are not a heartless clan.”
Things added up into impossible calculations and outcomes.
The more Sulim sat with this information, the more likely she was to either lash out at the man before her…
or vomit. Just the mere thought of this smug middle-aged playboy with Graella…
Oh, he wasn’t interested in her sexually?
Then why did he speak as if children were a natural outcome between them?
“Well… I should leave you. Your… companion… will be coming by, it seems. I do not wish to cross her as if I have you. Just…” He looked over his shoulder on his way out. “Does Sonall know about you and Lady Mira?”
Sulim did not answer.
“I thought as much. Would be a shame if he found out from a trusted friend.”
“Would be a shame if Jacelah found out about your fantasies for her daughter!”
“This tête-à-tête shall get us nowhere, Sulim. I won’t meddle with your affairs. Especially since that boy was an idiot for marrying you, as lovely and hardworking as you are. Well, suppose Vern was the idiot for letting him be the biggest fool.”
“If you’re attempting to insult me, it’s not working.”
“Do you think I attempt to insult you? Hardly. You did well securing a future for yourself. Many of us are trying to do the same.”
What does he mean by that? “I’d kindly appreciate you leaving me alone now.”
Marco stared at her for one extra moment before tipping his hat and leaving the barn with the slightest smirk on his face. Sulim finally allowed her shoulders to relax once he was mounted on his horse and getting the hell out of her space.
Shit. Only now could she face the fact that Marco had revealed he knew about her and Mira. This isn’t good. Even if he kept his word about not telling Sonall or his parents, he could still use this as leverage against her. For some reason…
She didn’t like any of the reasons she entertained in her head.
Something agitated Sulim, but she would not reveal what was on her mind when Mira dropped by the loft for their late morning liaison.
Perhaps it’s none of my business. Mira had her own matters to think about, including how she would abscond with Sulim once the lot of julah were finally finished with their business on Arrah.
“Whatever you two decide will surely cause a rift in this house,” her mother advised that night, while she went through research notes on the Gardiahs’ dining table.
It was long after dinner, the dishes cleared away, and the table wiped down until all that was left was a silk and lace runner and a subtle floral centerpiece.
Mira and Joiya sat at the far end, speaking in Julah so none of the maids skulking about would understand what they said.
“Even in your worst-case scenario, where she refuses to go with you, your presence will linger here long enough to break them apart. That’s the nature of unfulfilled soulmates who deny each other.”
“You have experience with that, huh?”
“I’ve seen its work.”
“Yeah, well…” Mira scratched the back of her head before crossing her arms again.
She sat at that table with nothing to do but help her mother organize her notes, and they had long stopped making sense to her.
“Maybe it’s not worth it in the end. Maybe it was always meant to be a fling. She’s going to die before I can do anything about it.”
Joiya peered at her from the other side of the table, but said nothing.
“It’s true, right? She’s going to die in the next hundred years. Probably sooner. And even if she lives a full, natural life, she’ll be an old woman while I still look like this.”
Joiya put down her pen. “I’m sorry, my heart. We don’t pick our soulmates.”
Mira shrugged. “I know.”
The thought followed her upstairs, where she collapsed in their bed and stared at the ceiling until she fell asleep.
It’s not fair… Her parents had thousands of years with each other.
Human soulmates wouldn’t know the difference.
Even a human and a hybrid would spend most of their lives together, assuming they found each other in time.
A julah and a human? It was the worst, especially at Mira’s age.
Her soulmate, the only one she got, would be old and dead before Mira had the proper chance to establish a life worthy of a julah for her.
No wonder she wasn’t fazed by the idea of living in familial exile with me somewhere else in the Federation.
It would last most of Sulim’s life! The Dunsmans would simply wait for the “passion” to pass before Mira was accepted back into the fold!
And these are people who don’t know I was in prison…
“Ah, Mira Dunsman. So silly. So strange. Such a product of her parents, of her mother.”
That was what they would say.
When Mira drifted off to sleep, she didn’t expect to receive a visitor again.
She was back in that dark place that occasionally haunted her dream space.
The one her mother once described as “a sliver of the Void that desperately wants to visit us.”
Yet Mira wasn’t used to being in her most contemplative, deep sleep state and seeing a pair of glowing blue eyes staring back at her from the darkness.
“Good Void,” Mira said when she recognized the Dreamwalker, Rahara. “It’s you again.”
A slight nod greeted Mira, who knew better than to act surprised. Either I really am dreaming, or my mother was right… This had something to do with her. Or, at least, with being Joiya’s daughter.
“Do you remember me?”
“Kinda hard to forget the creature from the First Epoch who slithered into my subconscious while I was asleep. Goodness gracious. Now, what do you want?”
Did this ancient sorceress appreciate Mira’s candor and penchant for getting straight to the point? “I come a long way from my own time to give you the message that was left to me. Your aura. It is marked.”
“I was already aware, thank you.”
This time, Rahara slightly shook her head. “There are worlds where you are not marked. Other lines of time that are more stable than this one. This world is a splinter from another. The one where your mother made the wrong choice. For, as usual, selfish reasons.”
“Excuse me?”
“She cannot help herself. She is an inherently selfish creature.”
“Who are you?” Mira was aware of her mortal coil here in this dream space between reality and the Void, but this other woman, Rahara, somehow felt hundreds of thousands of years away.
The First Epoch… It was a legendary time.
A speculative time, because there was very little still left from that era.
The story of the first julah was etched in the architecture of Garlahza, in the runes they wrote with, and in the prophecies left behind, but there was no telling what was true and what was a fable written by their descendants of the early Second Epoch.
Even with the finest minds alive researching everything they could, sometimes for thousands of years, there was still so little known about the Void, the history of the julah, and even Yahzen itself.
“I am who I said I am.” Delicate hands smoothed the gossamer blue of Rahara’s gown.
“I am a priestess from the end of the First Epoch, as I hope it’s still called. A time of great upheaval and miracles. One of the things She tasked me with was finding you far into the future. You are the child She could never bear.”
“She?”
“The avatar of the unknown creator.”
Mira held her up hands. “What are you talking about? This is crazy.” The unknown creator was that… unknown. It was right in the name! How could She have an avatar? Did Rahara imply that this avatar was a mortal julah sorceress?
“She was a petulant child. She stole from me, time and time again.”
The glow in Rahara’s blue eyes faltered, and for a fraction of a second, Mira saw the humanity, the soul lurking behind the blue.
It frightened her more than the vivid glow, for it implied that this was real.
“I deeply loved her, and would do anything she asked of me.”
The glow was bright and determined once again.
“Such as finding you after all this time.”
“Are you coming to me from your time? From over a million years ago?”
“You might see it that way. I search for you in my own dreams and in my meditations. Now that I have located you, I can come more often and maintain the connection for longer.”
“What are you here to tell me?”
Rahara considered that with a clasp of her hands before her skirt. She looks like a Lady. Joiya had said that Rahara was a founder of the First Sixteen. Did they dress like the modern Ladies of Yahzen? With colorful layers of skirts, beads and lace, and effortless style and grace?