But since when did a man care about anyone other than his goddess?
I shook my head. It may just have been because Mother’s illness worried Elfriede, but Jurij was as worried about her as the rest of us. If the lord truly loved me, he would have been worried sick.
If he loved me. He’d said it was hard to accept my love. For him to accept me.
I stopped my manic pacing halfway down the path and let out a roar of impatience.
The blade glowed even brighter. It seemed to pull at me, like if I let it go it would fly right out of my hands. But that was crazy.
“Olivière …”
That voice again.
I headed through the foliage, where the blade seemed keen to take me.
***
The glowing light.
I stood before the violet pool in the cavern, Elgar’s hilt clutched in both hands. Yes, Elgar. It seemed a fitting name for the blade. Elgar had taken me there, to the pool. And the pool still called to me.
Elgar drooped in my grasp, perhaps because of my faltering arms, weak from holding it aloft so long.
“Olivière,” called the pool. “Olivière!”
It was a chorus of voices, a hundred women and men, both familiar and unknown. What would I find if I finally went all the way down to the violet light?
The pool gave me its reply. “Olivière.”
I stood straight, snapping Elgar back upward in my grip. This is stupid. Ridiculous. I should go home. I need to check on Mother.
Elgar shot downward, yanking my arms more forcefully than anyone ever had before, pulling my body aloft briefly before we punctured the water and dived into the depths below. I hadn’t had a chance to catch my breath. The toes of my boots had scraped against sediment for a moment, and then I felt nothing. It was as if I were floating, only I was flying downward, deeper and deeper into the light.
And then I stopped so suddenly it was as if my body had forgotten all movement. In my panic, the need for air ceased. There was nothing. There was no one. Nothing but me and the blade in my hand, the blade that spun and twirled round and round gently, slowly.
With every blink of my eye, I saw what I’d once seen. What I wanted to be again.
Jurij and Elfriede’s Returning in reverse, coming undone. Little Jurij and me, battling unseen foes before we ventured outside, leaving the cavern behind. The old crone and Darwyn still with us. With every moment that passed, more friends came back to me.
But then friends became Mother, her face alight, bending down to the floor to pick me up and cradle me against her shoulders.
Then what I saw became unfamiliar. Was that Mother as a child? The images passed by faster and faster, and I spun so I could hardly bear to look. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to shield my lids from the light.
I stopped turning with my arms tightly above my head.
No more vertigo. I opened my eyes. Nothing. Only violet light.
Is that what was to become of me, then? Would I float aloft in the light forever?
“Olivière!”
There was life outside the light, if I chose to seek it.
I clenched my jaw and nodded. Anywhere but home. Anywhere but that life. Somewhere I wasn’t that man’s goddess, if just for a little while.
Elgar shot upward, pulling me with it. This time, my arms didn’t ache. This time, as we broke through the light and back into the waters, I felt as if I were swimming. As if I were in control.
I emerged from the cavern pool more skillfully than I had entered it. I had somewhere to go. So I went, following the familiar path through the woods and to the dirt road, trotting toward the village.
And I felt immediately disappointed. Even stupid. I was home. Of course I was. The lilies still dotted the hilltops. And my house was right there beside the—
No, my house wasn’t there.
The hair on the back of my neck stood up. A chill swept the air, and a breeze rustled the tresses I could never tame. I turned.
My gaze fell on the castle, which towered over the land and threatened to make me cower.
You idiot. I squeezed my eyes shut. My knees buckled in anticipation of the fall.
But the ground didn’t shake. I slowly opened one eye and then the next and openly stared at the castle, dumbfounded.
“Who goes there?”
That voice. So familiar, so scornful. But not entirely unwelcome. I could picture the voice now, asking me to wash dishes for Mother. To grab a chair for Mother.
My gaze darted from the castle to the dirt path through the woods behind me. A group of unmasked men covered in crisscrossing chainmail exited the woods behind me. They laid their hands lazily over the sheathed blades at their sides.
“You, boy,” said one. What was that voice again? Fish Face? Had his wife unmasked him with a Returning?