He doesn’t look too willing, but repeats the words.
“Her light magic works,” Ferer says. “It kept the ghouls at bay in the Shadow Lands.”
I keep seeing Azur enveloped in that healing, protective light, imagining his hands brilliant, free of any foreign magic, and yet I don’t think my light is that strong right now.
I click my tongue, a little annoyed, and perhaps upset at myself for not having considered this solution earlier. “I think it will work better once Zorwal’s magic is out of my system, butkeep repeating it in your mind, and imagine a light removing that magical poisoning.”
Azur puts back his wet glove. “I will.” He doesn’t sound hopeful, but rather resigned. Better than nothing, I suppose.
Another reason it’s hard to connect with my light is my lingering worry about Marlak. I’m not sensing any danger coming from him, and yet my heart won’t quiet down while he hasn’t returned.
“Keep thinking about it,” I say, then I turn to Lidiane. “It was worth trying to use Zorwal’s magic.”
Azur glares at her. “But dangerous.”
She waves her arms. “Now we know he can’t heal you. We just eliminated a pointless solution.”
He looks down, unconvinced, perhaps even despondent.
That attitude won’t help. “Focus on the light,” I say. “Imagine it protecting you.”
Azur nods, his eyes distant and pained. To be fair, I can’t blame him. My light has never healed anyone, and even I am not certain that it will work.
I understand that hanging onto false hope can feel like delaying the pain of finally admitting defeat. It’s like keeping it under the surface, where it still hurts, rather than accepting one’s fate. But at the same time, lingering hope, even if pointless, will keep you fighting until the end.
I’d rather fight. I’d rather trust that we can win, that we can find a cure for Azur.
And I want to hope that Marlak is safe, that he’ll be home soon, even if my heart is shredding like paper.Marlak, where are you?
9
MIRELLA
They’re far from the castle, safe, except that Marlak didn’t make it. Why am I seeing them? Why am I getting glimpses of that island if my brother’s not there?
“Come with me,” Zorwal says, his voice too calm, too controlled.
He didn’t even order any guards to try to find them, certain that they transcended away. And most of them did, in what is likely the most powerful display of transcending magic I have ever seen. Azur. Who could have guessed?
Zorwal leads me to the council room, which looks eerie and empty without anyone here, without even guards to open the doors. Even if the castle’s intact, I feel like we’re walking into ruins of something that’s no longer true. Ruins of my childhood, perhaps, those glimpses of happiness so far away that time has already dissolved them.
I face him and realize I’m standing at the edge of an abysm. Perhaps I should have escaped while I could, but then I wouldn’t be here. I wish I could fly again, feel only sky above me and land below. That soothing, numbing nothingness. A silly, childishthought. Peace will never find me while I don’t have my revenge. Maybe it will never find me regardless—but I can’t falter.
He takes the highest chair in the room, which I suppose is his now, then stares at me with his beady, dark eyes. “So you’ve been keeping secrets from me, Mirella?”
I can still muster the voice of the child I was not too long ago, the sweet, youthful tone from before all those years with no talking. “What do you mean by secrets?”
He chuckles, then roars, “You found Marlak! Not once, twice. You saw him at the Jewel City, went there and found him. And now you intercepted him in this very castle. What is it?”
I sigh. “Sometimes… I have hunches.”
“Hunches. Where is Marlak now?”
“I do not know.” And indeed I cannot see him. All I see is an island, and he’s not there.
He leans forward. “You have absolutely no idea? Tell me one place where he could be. One hunch.”
I swallow. “In this castle. But I don’t have ahunchabout that. It’s a possibility.”
