NANU CLAWED AT HER throat as she writhed on the cottage floor. She coughed and wheezed, her tiny gnarled fist pounding against her chest, a film of sweat on her forehead.
“Mia!” Junay cried. She took Mia’s arm and pulled her to her grandmother’s side. “I don’t know what happened, she just stopped breathing. . . .”
“Where’s your mother?”
“She’s at the merqad with Sach’a.” Junay was terrified. “Please help her, Mia. I can’t help her. I don’t have magic.”
Mia sank to her knees. Nanu’s puffy twists had broken free of their knot and were thrashing like silver snakes around her head.
“We have to get her out of here,” Mia said. “Away from the uzoolion.”
Quin sprang into action. He grabbed hold of Nanu’s frail ankles while Mia took her beneath the arms, her head lolling on her neck as they lifted her off the ground.
“The door,” Mia said.
Junay charged toward the back door and kicked it open. Mia and Quin hefted Nanu onto a soft patch of earth by the vegetable garden.
“Can you do something?” Jun whimpered. “Can you help her?”
“I’ll try,” Mia said.
Healing an arrow wound was a world apart from healing a chronic condition. She’d never tried to mend someone’s lungs, to coax the air through them, calming the inflamed tissue and smoothing the breath.
Remember the wind . . . Let the memory pool in your fingertips. Your lungs will soften, and your breathing will slow.
Tears pricked her eyes. Her mother had given her exactly the lesson she needed at exactly the right time. As if she’d known.
Mia slid one hand over Nanu’s heart and the other over her belly. She closed her eyes and conjured up the wind in Ilwysion, the steady, rhythmic whisper of the trees.
She did something else, too. Instead of shoving the feelings away, she let love wash over her—love for the mountains, love for her childhood among tall trees, love for her mother. She summoned the crisp fall day her mother wrapped a toddling Angelyne to her chest with a thick wool shawl and asked five-year-old Mia if she wanted to climb a mountain. They had climbed together, step-by-step, until they stood on the peak, looking down at the leaves in all their autumnal glory, a billowing canopy of rusts and golds and siennas. “Let’s take off our gloves,” her mother had said, and when Mia hesitated, she’d said, “You’re safe here, little bird.”
Mia could still remember how it felt to stand on the summit holding her mother’s bare hand: the fizzy hum that rushed up her arm and swept down her spine, comforting and warm, like sitting by a crackling fire with a cup of cocoa.
Had that been magic? Was her mother giving her a small, secret gift?
“Mia,” Quin whispered. “You’ve done it.”
She opened her eyes.
Beneath her, Nanu’s breathing was even, her chest rising and falling with no strain. The old woman stared up at her and blinked. Quin took her arm and helped her up until she was sitting on the softly caked earth. Nanu’s hand was steady as she collected her long silver coils into a bundle at the nape of her neck.
“Nanu!” Junay threw herself into her grandmother’s arms, nearly knocking her down again. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, no trace of the proud, impudent girl from the day before. “You’re all right. You’re all right!”
As Nanu hugged her granddaughter, a smile spread across her weathered brown face, crinkling the soft skin around her eyes.
“Yes, Junie. I’m all right.”
Over the quivering crown of Junay’s curls, Nanu fixed Mia with a calm, knowing look, her eyes as clear as Mia had seen them.
She didn’t say veraktu.
She said, “Sister.”
Quin had made them a magnificent feast. The table was lined with all kinds of Glasddiran delicacies, modified to accommodate the available ingredients: thin-sliced potatoes with cheese curds, corn fritters and goose gravy, buttermilk pudding, cinnamon bread dumplings dusted with nutmeg, and warm drinking chocolate dotted with shmarda cubes.
But the food was all but forgotten once Lauriel and Sach’a returned from the merqad and Junay told them what had happened.
Lauriel kissed Mia on the forehead and both cheeks. “Angel,” she said. “Today you are my angel.” Sach’a rolled her chair to her grandmother’s side, stroking and squeezing her hand, as if she needed reassurance that Nanu was still there.
Mia was numb but grateful. Breath magic, Lauriel had told her. “Not an easy kind of magic to do, darling. I think you have your mother’s gift for healing.” Mia felt contentment swirling through her. Her mother felt so close.
A memory stirred. Dom had told her his father died when the Gwyrach froze the air in his lungs.
“When you lost your husband . . .” Mia trailed off. She didn’t want to bring up any painful memories.
But Lauriel smiled. “It’s good to talk about him. It helps keep him alive. It was your father’s men who killed him—he was trying to protect us from the Hunters. We knew our days in Glas Ddir were numbered, that we had to flee before we were exposed. The Hunters lied and said the Gwyrach had turned his breath to ice, and I told Dom to lie, too. Anything to keep the girls safe. And then your mother died days later . . . two unconscionable losses, one right after the other.”
She pressed her hands to her chest. “They stabbed him in the heart. They didn’t even let us keep his body; they took it to the Kaer.”
A cough from the kitchen made Mia turn around.
Quin was lingering uncomfortably behind the table, apart from the others. He hovered over the food, trying to cover the dishes with iron lids to keep them hot, but steam leaked out anyway. It broke Mia’s heart how hard he was trying. But she couldn’t shake the feeling he didn’t belong here. This was not his world.
“I shouldn’t have left,” Sach’a said to her mother. “I told you, Mam?e. It’s too dangerous to leave Jun alone with her. If Nanu has another attack . . .”
“But it won’t be dangerous,” Junay insisted, “once I bloom.”
Her mother sighed. “Yes, Jun. But we don’t know when that will be. And until then . . .”
“I don’t understand why she bloomed before I did.” Junay turned on her sister. “You don’t feel anything. You just sit in that chair, all prim and proper, passing judgment on everyone else.”
Sach’a spoke very slowly. “You have no idea what I am feeling.”
“I know you hardly even have emotions. What could have possibly triggered your magic? You don’t even—”
“How dare you.” Sach’a slammed her fist on the table so hard the room went silent. “You think it doesn’t hurt me to see the way you run and skip and play? How I sit in this chair while you take everything for granted? You are selfish and reckless—you don’t care about anyone but yourself. If you haven’t bloomed, it’s because you don’t deserve the gift. You don’t deserve anything. Someday you may be a Dujia, but you are no sister of mine.”
The words were trembling cold.
Tears shimmered in Junay’s brown eyes. Even Lauriel seemed surprised by the outburst. Sach’a was normally so mature and composed. But perhaps the composure was carefully constructed. Mia felt as if she’d seen the crack in the veneer.
“Mia?” Quin lilted her name into a question. “Would you care to accompany me to the Blue Phoenix?”
She stared at the untouched plates of food. “What about breakfast?”
“I’m not feeling particularly hungry at the moment.”
She wasn’t, either. She squinted out the window. A screen of volqanic ash clung to the air, diffusing the harsh morning light. The clouds were divided into rosy furrows, long rows of blushing pink crops, as if the sun had tilled the sky.
“Isn’t it a little early for the Phoenix?” she said.
“It’s never too early for a drink.”
Chapter 47
Hollows