Our newfound lightness dimmed only slightly as we crested the final hill, stopping at its peak to view the wreckage of Alvor below.
Ilyas and Lex sucked in twin breaths, but I was quick to assuage their fears.
“Everyone was safe, no one was injured. Talamh had the wherewithal to hide those that refused to flee in the caves; he and I, along with the small contingent of forces left here, followed soon after once we . . . realized what had happened at sea.” The last part was hard to say, my mind straying back toward those shadows that held the answer to Peytor’s disappearance.
“So this is just a temper tantrum from a goddess, then?” Ilyas asked, chasing some of those sneaking tendrils back into the darkness.
My lips quirked into a smile at his assessment. I felt Lex’s eyes on the side of my face, and I turned to regard him with a cocked eyebrow. “What?”
His thumb came up to tentatively paw at the corner of my mouth, his own smirk plastered on his face.
“Nothing. It’s just . . . refreshing to see you like this. I thought we’d lost you for a while.” His voice was soft and sad, his own shadows clogging his vision for amoment as my smile fell slightly. A pang shot through me at the pain I’d caused him and Ilyas during my months of self-imposed silence and grief.
“She was never lost, only hiding. She needed to feel safe and seen before emerging once more.” A voice I knew intimately, perhaps even better than my own, floated from somewhere below, and I gasped as a head of dark, tightly woven braids crested the top of the hill. A clicking noise followed her ascent, and my eyes rounded when I saw what was woven into her hair.
Bones.
“Itanya,” I whispered, not daring to believe that this wasn’t a mirage. My fingers shook, my breath came in pants, as I reached my hands out toward my daughter.
She kept her head down, chin pressed against the crudely made fur-lined leathers that she sported, a sharp contrast to the garments from the far south we usually wore together.
Ilyas and Lex took a step backward, creating space for Itanya and me to reunite.
If my daughter weren’t standing in front of me right now, I’d throw myself at each of them in gratitude.
Comfort and care pulsated from where they stood hand in hand, their gazes sympathetic and relieved all at once.
“Itanya?” I whispered again, tentatively stepping closer to my daughter.
“Hello, Mother,” she said in a voice that was hers but also . . . wasn’t. I couldn’t quite figure out what was different about it until she raised her face, a milky-white, sightless stare meeting my own.
I gasped, heart caught in my throat as my stomach plummeted to my feet.
“What . . . what—” I couldn’t find the words to simultaneously express my relief at her arrival yet horror over the state of her body. It was clear she’d gone blind, yet I saw runes engraved on her eyeballs. My stomach churned at the agony she must have experienced to receive those before my eyes flitted to the rest of her, carefully cataloging the thousands of microscopic runes etched into her skin along her hairline, down her jaw, and over her cheeks. A quick glance showed the same on her exposed fingers and hands—though these were done in some sort of swirling pattern—and I wondered if every inch of her skin now held these runes.
“Itanya,” I said, my voice breaking on a sob. Her own expression collapsed as I fell to my knees, weeping into my hands.
I felt Lex and Ilyas move, their warm bodies a comforting presence at my back.
I broke, then, blaming myself for my daughter’s suffering. The shadows returned, blocking out every inch of sun that I’d pulled forth, forcing me back into that pitch-black pit I’d only just crawled from.
“Mom, it’s okay,” Itanya spoke again, her breath hot on my face as she threwherself at me. I fell backward, head and back hitting Ilyas’s body with a softoomph, but I didn’t care. Itanya scrambled on top of me, pressing her ear against my heartbeat.
My sobbing only intensified, her childish action so at odds with the enigma she’d become.
“I’m okay, Mama. It’s okay. It was all supposed to happen this way, I see it now.” She whispered continued platitudes against my chest as my tears soaked her braids.
“I-I s-should h-have protected y-you,” I gasped, snot running from my nose. I vaguely registered a large hand stroking my forehead while another traced soft patterns into the skin of my arm. Even Itanya’s hands patted my back in comfort.
“No, you did everything you could—everything you were supposed to. We are all slaves to Fate,” she said sagely, without a hint of anger or lingering animosity. “I was always supposed to become the Bone Weaver—it was written in the stars before I was even born. You were always supposed to leave, then find me again. There is nothing to forgive. I love you, mama,” she said, turning to press a light kiss over my heart.
My arms cinched tighter around her waist as my grief continued to pour forth. Eventually, Ilyas and Lex lay down next to us, covering our bodies with their own and surrounding us with comfort.
We lay like that, the four of us, for what felt like hours, and I took small comfort in holding my child once more while two of the men I loved lay beside me in quiet support.
My mind flitted to Peytor once more, his absence a gaping hole in our family dynamic.
“The ocean gives just as the ocean takes, mama. Be patient,” Itanya said cryptically, so quietly I almost didn’t hear.
