“My name is Locke,” he said. “And I’m very pleased to meet you.”
Her lips quirked, revealing a few more wrinkles. “Oh, I know. The spirits have been quite keen to tell me about you. You look as distraught as they said.” He stiffened. “Jinx did not tell you I was a spirit witch?”
“I told him,” Jinx said. “You’ve spooked him is all.”
Avira surveyed him, her eyes frighteningly intense. When they weren’t piercing through him, they flicked around his head, as if glancing at something he couldn’t see. He had the sensation of something crawling along the back of his neck, and he had to fight not to swat at the imagined things around him.
“You must learn to find your feet even among things that unsettle you, young hunter. For far more unsettling things await you.”
Cold swept through his chest. If that was prediction, he did not like it. But Avira said nothing else. She only turned toward Jinx and said, “Sit. Tell me your purpose.”
Jinx sat at the table before the spirit witch, and Locke stood behind her. On the table was a sample of each of the elements—the flame from the candle, bowls of water and sand, and what he recognized as the magic of a windstorm. The latter was in a bottle that had been uncorked, but somehow the magic remained inside instead of spilling out.
He crossed his hands over his chest and listened as Jinx told Avira about Roar’s peculiarities and the way she had taken down the skyfire storm. Locke watched the witch’s face, searching for any sign of recognition or emotion, but the woman was unreadable. Except for the moments when her eyes flicked away from Jinx to stare at the open air, as if someone else were there, filling in gaps of the story.
When Jinx finished recounting the story in its entirety, she said, “It would take us several weeks to reach Locke to confirm the minister’s story. Instead, we thought you could see for us. And if you’re willing, we hoped you could take a look at Roar. She still has not woken and—”
“I do not need to see the girl. She will wake when she’s ready.”
Locke lurched forward. “She will wake, though?” There was desperation in his voice that he knew he should hide. He knew better than to show his emotions to someone he wasn’t sure he could trust, someone who could easily manipulate him.
“My abilities do not work that way, hunter. I see actions, cause and effect. My ability to see and understand spirit does not extend to the living. She will wake. That’s all I can say. And when she does, it will be to a different life than all the ones she led before.”
Jinx asked, “Have you heard any news of Locke? Or seen anything in your visions?”
“Aye, the minister spoke the truth. The city by the sea is no more.”
Locke waited to feel something. Remorse or nostalgia or anything. He knew there had likely been tremendous loss of life. But he could not make himself feel sorrow for that place. The city had been beautiful, of that there was no doubt. But like too many beautiful things, it had rotted on the inside.
A Locke prince had been in Pavan to marry their princess, so at least part of the royal line survived. He wished they’d all been destroyed. Perhaps he should have felt guilty for that, but he could not bring himself to do that either. That kingdom was tainted, and the world was better off with it gone.
“What about this Stormlord?” he asked. “Tell me it’s superstitious nonsense.”
“I cannot tell you that.”
“But you cannot tell me if he is real?”
“I can only tell you that every spirit I send to search for him never returns. Your inferences here are as good as mine.”
He met the witch’s gaze again. Her eyes were a blue so light that they almost looked illuminated, and he felt that tickle on the back of his neck. This time he could not stop himself from reaching back with a hand and rubbing at the spot that felt colder than the rest of his skin.
“You should go,” the woman said, settling back into the worn, cushioned chair on which she sat.
Jinx stood, crossing toward her. “Avira, please. Grant us a little more time. There’s so much we don’t know. About Roar’s abilities, whether or not she truly did call that storm.”
“She can tell you herself.”
Locke lost his patience then. He had let his guard down, and his anger slipped past the tight leash he had kept it on for days. “No, she can’t. Something is wrong with her. She’s sleeping, but I can tell she’s in pain. I know it. That thing in her chest lights up, and she whimpers, and—and—” He fisted his hands in his hair and squeezed his eyes shut tight. “I don’t know how to help her. Tell me how to help her.”
The old woman stood, unfazed by his loss of control. She drifted toward the curtains and pulled them open in a not so subtle suggestion.
“My final advice to you is this: listen. Listen when she speaks and when she doesn’t. Listen when you understand and when you don’t. Listen with an open heart, for a closed heart becomes a cold one if left for too long. That is how you can help her, Kiran Thorne.”
He jerked back, stumbling over his feet as his heart roared within his chest. “What did you call me?”
She waved a hand in front of his eyes, as if she were clearing cobwebs from between them.
“Your head may have forgotten, but your heart has not. Remember that in the future. Now go. She will wake soon.”
*
Roar sat on the bank of a small tributary in the Rani Delta. She looked over the unfamiliar land around her—swaying palm trees, tall grasses, and in the distance, sand as far as the eye could see. It was easier to focus on what was around her rather than within her. She was supposed to be washing up, like she had begged to do only a while ago. But her body ached, and her mind was muddled, and inside …
Inside she felt … untethered. As if the strings tying her soul to her body had been cut, and if she did not concentrate, the two might separate completely. As soon as she had woken, there had been so many faces and voices around her, but none was the one she wanted.
Carefully, she removed the only article of clothing she wore—a large tunic that went to her knees and smelled like Locke. Duke had given her a linen towel and a smaller cloth with which to wash. She pulled the larger towel around her shoulders to ward off the chilly winds that came in from the sea and edged forward to the river. She dunked the cloth into the water and scrubbed her skin clean as best she could while sitting on the bank.