Her stomach was sick with worry. “This is all too…new. How can I make an obligation such as that? I don’t want to be trapped in a tree. I don’t want to fall in love with a man and watch him shrivel like…like…like raisins while I stay young. The very thought is horrible.”
Tyrus nodded sympathetically, but his resolve was iron. “Of course you feel this way. It is only natural that you do. You were raised in a vineyard in Stonehollow. You know what it is to see a family and to work with your hands, to stamp grapes into wine. You only know your world, the one you were raised to know. Imagine, if you will, that you were born to a Dryad and were raised as a child traveling back and forth between here and Mirrowen. What if you grew up expecting to live for hundreds of years? If you expected to love and lose and love again over time.” His look was sad but compelling. “If you had been raised that way and I told you to leave the tree and go to Stonehollow, you would resist me and say it is unnatural.” His voice dropped lower. “I know this is difficult for you. I know this isn’t fair. I am asking you, child, to help save this forsaken world. It cannot save itself.”
The words caused a spasm of emotion to surge through her. Her father had given up his life in pursuit of this dream, this goal, this compulsion to end the Plague. He had sacrificed everything to achieve it. He was not asking her to do something he was unwilling to do himself. He was asking her to do something he could not do himself.
Her breath came in quavering. “I don’t know,” she whispered, burying her face in her hands. “How can you ask this?” It meant she would never have a homestead of her own. She would never have a normal family. She would be parted from Stonehollow forever. A sick feeling of dread washed over her. Tears filled her eyes.
Tyrus shifted in the dirt and sat next to her. His arm came around her and pulled her close. His voice was thick with emotion. “If you knew how much it pains me to ask it of you…”
She drew up her knees, clutching them with her arms, and stared at the lamplight, tears trickling down her cheeks. “This is cruel,” she whispered bitterly.
“It is,” Tyrus agreed firmly. “But I must ask it of you still.”
Phae sought for a way to escape. She resisted the words. Part of her refused to submit. A deep stubborn core inside her swelled. “The problem, though,” she said, gaining a crumb of courage, “is that you sent me to live in Stonehollow. I need evidence that what you said is true. I cannot make my decision with just your word. I don’t truly know you. I don’t know if I should trust you.”
Tyrus nodded sagely. “That is fair. I asked you earlier. What would convince you?”
Phae looked at him with her tear-streaked eyes. “I want to see my mother. Where is her tree?”
Tyrus stared at her, aghast at the demand.
“Where is she, Father?” she insisted.
His expression hardened following the sudden blow of pain and anguish. Emotions played across his face, ranging from anger to deep sadness. His jaw clenched. His eyes flashed. But he mastered himself, how she did not know. “The Paracelsus Towers. Kenatos.”
Phae stared at him coldly. “Take me there. Now.”
“No eulogy is due to him who simply does his duty and nothing more.”
—Possidius Adeodat, Archivist of Kenatos
Tyrus stared at Phae for several moments, unable to speak. The shifting emotions finally settled to a look of determination. His eyes were flecked with spurs of gold. The gray streaks in his beard and temples seemed to spread with the weight of his concerns.
He shook his head no. “Impossible.”
Phae came to her feet, her emotions raw with fury. Her fingertips tingled with prickles of heat. “You would drag me to my death in the Scourgelands, but you will not let me see my mother? As if Kenatos were not the place to fear instead of the Scourgelands? You have some twisted magic that allows you to go from place to place. Surely it can bring us there?”
She caught the Vaettir prince’s look of outrage at her insolence, but she ignored him. Tyrus allowed her to loom over him. He did not meet her anger with his own. “For your own safety, I cannot allow it.”
“My safety?” Phae said, her voice shrill. She was cornered on all sides. These men in her life had all accosted her, threatened to or did abduct her against her will. She was furious. It roared to life inside her like a demon. “Is it safe to enter the Scourgelands? Everyone else you brought there died. What will make this time any different?”
Tyrus bowed his head, staring down at the lamp. “Sit down, Phae.”
She covered her face with her hands, wanting to pound her fists into his chest. She wanted to kick the lantern and scream at all of them. She choked on her emotions. “Tell me why,” she said with a savage voice. “If I must go into the wilderness with you, if I must bond with a tree as you say, then tell me why I cannot see my mother.” Her breathing increased. She started to pace inside the thickly-shadowed cell.