“I don’t know what either of you are getting at, but I was helping the Chosen with their futures. I was here. I don’t have anywhere else to go. I don’t have anywhere else I can go.” I had tightened my jaw as I looked at her, waiting for her to say something, when a sudden pulse of powerful magic alerted me to the arrival of someone I really didn’t want to see. Luckily, I had already stepped into an easy escape.
“Now, if you will excuse me,” I growled like a lion, stepping around Risha and my invalid daughter, determined to put as much space between me and them before Ilyan’s arrival. “You should see that she makes it to someone who can help her.”
It was harsh, but right then, I didn’t care.
I needed those seeds to grow, and I would do anything to make sure it happened.
Tension had wound through the room in an anxiety so thick it was hard to breathe. In fact, I wasn’t certain if anyone was breathing. I wasn’t.
I sat still, my old body sagging against the headboard of my bed. Stagnant air pressed against my skin while the dim, red light faded to a deep black as the sun set.
Everyone stood around the tiny room Thom and I shared, refusing to make eye contact. Each of us was lost in the new development Ilyan had thrown at us. Not that it should be surprising; it was one more thing to add to the list of many.
I wished I could solve this new, more complicated problem. I wished I could see where it was leading us. Nevertheless, all of that had been gone for months. I knew as well as everyone here that it wasn’t going to come back, just like the tension and fear and war weren’t going to leave any time soon.
“So, when you say this … person … stuttered…” Ryland began as he leaned against the wall, the muscles in his arms tensing from where he had folded them over his chest.
“We saw him, Ry,” Joclyn retorted, her voice strong from where she sat at the foot of my bed. “Just as Ilyan said, I couldn’t find his magic after that, so either he moved through the wall, or he found some secret world within a stutter that neither Ilyan nor I know about.”
“That’s what you said before—”
“Then why are you asking again?” Joclyn snapped, the old metal frame of my bed groaning as she shifted her weight.
She was getting agitated, something not missed by Risha who looked between Ryland and Joclyn in obvious worry.
Ilyan took a step closer to her, his hand wrapping around hers in a deep connection that warmed the room. As if it wasn’t warm enough.
Joclyn had come to my room hours before, half carried by Risha as she dropped her on the foot of my bed. I would have been more concerned for her well-being if she hadn’t been fuming about “stupid sights” and “stupid fathers.” Even though she had been weak, she had recovered quickly enough. That was probably more thanks to her stubborn temper than actual well-being. We should probably be glad she was merely agitated now.
Then again, without that stubborn temper, I wouldn’t be alive to witness this conversation, something I was still torn over. After all, we had seen my death in the very first sight she received, and yet, there I sat. Despite everything Tatínek had taught me about the infallibility of our gift, despite everything I had thought I knew about our magic, I was here.
“Can we just say this mysterious, cloaked person got caught in some other dimension?” Wyn mused acidly before Ryland had a chance to retort, leaning her head against Thom’s headboard with a thud. “If only to get Ryland to stop asking the same thing again and again?”
“I’m not asking the same question again and again,” Ryland snapped, his voice hard as his focus jolted to Wyn, who raised her eyebrows in some kind of challenge I didn’t understand.
The two glared daggers at each other, fueled by the tension in the room, and I seized, my muscles clenching painfully throughout my back.
“He’s asking questions as a good leader should,” Risha interrupted.
“As we all should.” Ilyan’s loud, commanding voice took over the conversation with a snap, causing Ryland to collapse back against the wall with one look from Ilyan, his focus drifting back down to his shoes.
It was as if the whole room took one, big sigh with the end of the standoff, the tension releasing ever so slightly. Thankfully, my body didn’t feel so much like it was smothered by a pile of rocks.
Ilyan’s shoes snapped against stone in the suddenly silent space, the ribbons of light dimming as he moved back to the center of the room, the place he always occupied during these meetings. I only wished this meeting had been like all the others, not an emergency council held in secret, or rather, held without Sain.
We were holed up in this tiny room, one of our usual numbers conspicuously missing. Even without sight, I already had an idea where this was going.
“So this man,” I began, my hands wrapping tightly around the old, earthen mug I held, “you are sure he works for your father?”