CHAPTER 46 #2
Her mother had come eventually. Gotten away from Alaric to be with her. Alys and Sienna retreated quietly into the Keep as her mother knelt by her side.
“Kara.” She took Kara’s freezing hand in hers. “Darling, I’m so sorry–”
“Don’t.”
Her hands bloomed violet. “Please, just let me help–”
“There’s nothing you can do.” She met her mother’s eyes. “Nothing anyone can do.”
Her mother looked anguished.
“Just go inside,” Kara said.
“I’m not leaving you–”
“You’re making it worse,” Kara cried. “Looking at me like that.” She pulled her hand away. “I can’t–”
“I’m not trying–”
“Leave me alone. I just want to be with him.”
“Kara, he’s–”
“I KNOW,” she shouted. “I KNOW HE’S DEAD.” The sobs came then. Desperate and unrelenting. “I feel it all the time–”
“Sebastian wouldn’t want this–”
“DON’T SAY HIS NAME. You don’t get to, you didn’t even know him–”
“I know he loved you–”
Kara actually put her hands over her ears. “Stop it, stop it, please–”
Eliyana sat there quietly. Didn’t reach for her again. Just waited until Kara dropped her hands.
“I’ll be in the Keep,” her mother said finally. “When you’re ready. I’m not going anywhere.”
She left without another word.
Kara turned back to his grave and pressed her forehead against the cold stone. It wasn’t until after the third night had passed, and sunrise bled over the graveyard, that Tobias came to her. He watched her for a moment, then lowered himself onto the ground beside her.
“You don’t have to sit with me,” Kara murmured.
“I do.” Tobias drew in a shaky breath, eyes fixed on his son’s grave. “I cannot bring him back. Gods, if I could trade places with him, I would. But I cannot. What I can do–” he swallowed once, pushing down his own threatening tears. “–is ensure you do not walk this grief alone.”
Kara said nothing, but she could see now, clearer than ever, that this was the man who’d raised the person she loved.
“When my wife died,” he said slowly, “I thought I would never recover.”
Her head lifted, startled. Surely, he wouldn’t try to tell her she would get better. There was no recovering from this. No hope of it. It was the risk she had taken in Fatàn.
“We were not Soulbonded,” he hurried on. “But I loved her more than my own life.”
Her gaze dropped back to the stone.
More than my own life.
“She died in childbirth with Saffra,” Tobias said. “My youngest never met her. I sent word to Hale, for a healer. They didn’t make it in time. Sebastian was nine.”
Tears fell down Kara’s cheeks.
“If I’d have had a healer in Thorne, stationed here permanently,” Tobias pressed on, “Rhyana would not have died. I’ve lived with that mistake for eighteen years. But I clung to my petty justification. Thorne don’t use healers.”
The words made her flinch. She remembered him saying that to her during the Arcalon when she’d first tried to heal him.
“But the truth is, if I could go back, I would have a healer here. It’s my fault,” Tobias said.
Kara stayed silent. What could she say? Tobias gazed at her; the weight of his regret sat heavy between them, so sharp and raw it felt like her own.
“I see that same regret in you. ‘If only I’d been faster, stronger, closer.’ But Kara–” His voice cracked. “You cannot carry what was never yours to carry. The soldier who separated you, Silas who struck him down – that’s where the blame lies. Not with you.”
Her tears fell harder the second he mentioned Silas’s name. They were silent for a long time, two people bound by their grief.
“In his memory,” Tobias said at last, “I will not make that mistake again. Thorne should never go without a healer.”
Kara’s head jerked towards him, shock breaking through the misery. She’d never expected that.
“I know he’d have wanted your gift used for more than sorrow,” Tobias said, looking to the gravestone. “Perhaps you could be that for us. Thorne’s Healer. This is your home now. For as long as you want it.”
Home.
He was right. Hale still refused her, and she would never leave the place he was buried. Never. But her magic hadn’t so much as stirred since he died. She wasn’t sure it ever would.
“Thank you,” Kara whispered. “But I don’t even know if I can cast anymore... I haven’t since...” The words died in her throat as her gaze fell on his name carved in stone.
“I know,” Tobias said, nodding. “But your magic is part of you. It will come, when you’re ready.” He rose slowly, brushing the dirt from his hands. “Thorne will wait as long as you need,” he said, steadily. “You are not alone.”
He turned and left her. But his words remained. Something he’d said had taken root.
If I could go back.
The words struck like a spark, catching, then burning into her.
She thought of Tobias’s wife. Of his regret.
If only there had been a healer. If only someone had gone back, done something different.
Time magic existed, didn’t it? Not here, not in Vallenna, the knowledge was forbidden.
They’d sworn an oath to Occarlia. But there, it was real.
She’d studied Occarli histories as a child.
A shimmer of gold bloomed faintly over her skin.
Hope. Dangerous, impossible hope. She held the power of the Arcanth, didn’t she?
If anyone could reach for it, she could.
What if I could go back?
Kara knew instantly what she would change.
She’d kill the soldier that separated them.
The one who’d grinned at her panic. She would slit his throat and be glad of it.
The healer who’d cried over killing now craved one with savage certainty.
She dug her hands into the earth, gold humming in earnest now, hot over her palms, and begged.
“Please,” she pleaded to the Arcanth, the Gods, the bond that was gone but maybe not entirely. “Please, let me go back, just once. Let me save him. Please. Please.”
Silence.
Her words vanished into the empty air, leaving nothing but his gravestone in front of her. No answer. No mercy. She bowed her head against the stone, ready to scream again. Force it to answer. The gold flared up her arms, racing over her skin like angry snakes, her magic twisted and anguished.
“Please!” Kara sobbed, pouring everything into it – her grief, her fury, her love, every wretched piece of her broken soul. “I’ll give you anything. Anything. Just let me save him!”
She clawed desperately at the ancient power inside her. The golden light that had destroyed the Dracanth.
Please. PLEASE.
And then–
I want nothing from you.
The voice was not a sound but a presence within her. Ancient and endless. It reverberated through her, through the shattered remains of the bond. The shock of it jolted her backwards.
I warned you, did I not, when you united me? Together... or not at all?
“They separated us!” The memory seared through her. “I tried, I tried!”
And now you would turn back the flow of time itself. Change what has been Written. Do you understand what you ask?
“I don’t care,” Kara breathed. “If it gives him back – if it spares him–”
Time is not commanded lightly. It is sacred, fragile. There will be a cost, Healer of Vallenna. You will be marked. Carry it with you forever.
“I’ll pay it, whatever it is,” she said, without hesitation.
Even if the cost is your magic? Your soul?
“Even then. Especially then. I’m already destroyed without him. Take what’s left – just let me save him.”
Kara knew it was madness. Knew she should be afraid. But whatever the cost, she would pay it a hundred times over to see him again.
Such love. Such beautiful, terrible love.
Silence followed the Arcanth’s words. For one terrible moment she thought it had decided to deny her. Then – warmth.
There is a path you may take that brings the Warrior back to us.
She gasped, gratitude so fierce it stole her breath. “Please let me walk it.”
I will send you back. One chance, Healer. That is all.
Do not waste it.
The gold on her arms turned silver, then darkened into inky black. Smoke rose upward, choking, cold, its shadows binding her limbs. Like the Draken’s magic.
Pain filled every part of her body.
And the world around her was ripped away.