“You’re lonely.”
Harper swallows, then nods. Whatever animosity I once felt toward her is gone. I feel only sympathy, the faint ache of repressed pain.
“I do not regret distancing myself from Isobel,” she whispers. “Serving the Father as an acolyte has made me feel closer to Him. I feel more certain of my place.”
“I am glad.” A strained smile is all I can offer. “It’s what you always wanted.”
“But I didn’t earn it.” She holds my gaze until I look away.
We have had this conversation before. “You earned it,” I say quietly. “We both entered Under. We both faced terrible things.”
“But you bested the Stallion,” she argues.
“Luck, pure and simple.” It sounds like the truth. It tastes like a lie.
“It was not.” She speaks gently and with newfound compassion, another positive change since her appointment. “You knew what you were doing wielding that blade, just as you knew what you were doing when you ordered me to take the sword to Mother Mabel and claim it was I who had found it.”
My attention slides to the open doorway. Since my return from Under, Mother Mabel has not visited me in the forge. Neither has she approached me in the halls. She has given me space, as if suspecting I need the solitude.
“You are an acolyte.” My gaze returns to Harper. “I thought this was what you wanted.”
“It’s also what you wanted,” she points out.
Wanted—a word stuck firmly in the past.
The truth is this: I no longer know what I want or what drives me. Under broke something in me, and I fear the damage is irreparable. “It did not seem appropriate to move forward when I was questioning my place here.”
Indeed, I questioned much when Harper and I emerged from Under weeks before, bruised and battered beyond belief, my heart in tatters. I had given my life to the Father. How could He lead me astray? How could He have allowed me to trust Zephyrus blindly, only to have him sink a blade into my back? Had I not been a steadfast follower? Or was I punished for involving myself with a man?
“Isn’t it in times of uncertainty that we need Him the most?” Harper counters.
“You know, I think I liked you better when you were unbearable.”
Harper laughs. Surprisingly, I do, too. It is not a true belly laugh, but it is something. When we grow quiet, I say, “Once the tithe is done, I will reconsider my place. Until then, I’d rather not think about the quest at all.”
“About that.” Her mouth flattens into a line. “There’s something I think you should see.” Pulling an object from her pocket, she sets it in her palm, a glass orb in a flood of morning light.
My heart knocks once against my ribs, then stills.
When I last saw the roselight, I threw it as hard as I could into the Stallion’s Grotto. Miraculously, it remains whole. Not even a crack. Harper must have retrieved it prior to our flight from Under.
“You see it, don’t you?” Harper murmurs.
Inside the delicate casing, the soft pink glow I’ve come to expect has muddied to gray murk and bloodshot scarring—a hemorrhaging.
I lean back in my chair, needing distance from the orb. The color worries me. Something is not right. “Why would you take this? It belongs to Under. Nothing good can come of it.”
“Call it an impulse.” Harper taps a fingernail against the glass, the chime momentarily brightening the cloud that has drifted over me. “Things ended messily between you and Zephyrus, but I suspected it would not be the last you saw of each other. You may still have need of this.”
A familiar dread oozes through my gut. “That was not your decision to make.”
“It’s been four weeks, Brielle.”
“And? Why does that matter? I’m never going back.” As for the Bringer of Spring, he may rot.
Harper takes her time responding, perhaps remembering our return trip to Carterhaugh. Under’s strange enchantments offered us safe passage via the grassy path. We returned to Thornbrook unscathed. She did, anyway.
“I’ve watched you,” she says. “You’re listless, unhappy, unmotivated. You sleep and work in your forge. You do nothing else.”
