Briarcourt.
Gareth.
My breath caught in the back of my throat. I imagined the warmth of his touch, his smooth skin, the silky waves of his messy golden hair. I remembered how it felt to be held by him: like the snug circle of his arms around my body marked the edge of all things, and within that sacred place there was only goodness. When I recalled the brush of his lips against my thighs, the sturdy anchor of his forehead pressed to mine, my heart clenched, and for the first time in what felt like an age, the lines of my body began coming back into focus.
“Do not cry,” said the small voice from before. “You will heal, and your power will return. You used so much of it. A little more, and there would have been nothing left.”
Something about the odd, halting way the voice spoke struck a chord in my chest. I looked around, elated that I could now move my head, and found a tiny creature made of light perched at the foot of my bed. Its brilliant corona masked its form, but my keen sentinel eyesnevertheless found recognizable shapes within its glow: a trembling wing, a bare leg.
All at once I vividly remembered our exchange in the woodland. She hadn’t known the name then, but maybe something in her mind had shifted since then.
“Yvaine?” I asked carefully. My mind felt sharper, calmer; it was easier to speak.
The small voice hummed. “Again, this name I know and yet do not.”
A pinch of worry twisted inside me. Either this wasn’t Ankaret but a creature pretending to be her, or thiswasAnkaret and she remembered nothing of her previous life as Queen Yvaine Ballantere of Edyn.
“Tell me who you are, then,” I said.
“Yvaine,” the creature murmured, as if she hadn’t heard me. “Yvaine, Yvaine. I do know this name. Every time she says it, the shape of it becomes stronger.”
Then she looked up at me. Two pinpricks of bright blue light marked her eyes.
“Yvaine,” she said again, a note of astonishment in her voice. “That was once my name. She was queen. She lived here. She was I, and I was she. There were gardens, and so many lost days. One eye of violet and one of gold. Sheremembers.”
As the creature spoke, her light grew stronger, her shape larger and better defined. A face crystallized amidst the shimmering white gold, and two legs with feet of flame brought her quickly to my side.
“Farrin,” she said, her voice now thick with longing. “Where is Farrin?”
I blinked back tears, trying to hold myself together. “You are Ankaret. You died.”
“She died, and now she lives,” she said with an irritated flick of her fiery wings. “She understands now. Pieces come back, and then they fly away, but I am catching more and more of them. My hands are strong.”
“How is this possible?” I whispered. “Your last words to Farrin werecome and find me. But we didn’t. We tried, and we couldn’t. Farrin has been searching for weeks and weeks.”
“When you ran, your power raced across the world in search of salvation and awakened me. I found you at the brink of death and pulled you back into the world of the living.” She said all of this quickly, as if it was nothing, as if I should have known it already, then placed her two small hot hands on my arm. “Where is Farrin? Please tell me.”
Trying to wrap my mind around everything she’d said was like chasing the memory of a dream. “I awakened you with my power? But how? I didn’t know such a thing was possible.”
“Possible, yes. Difficult, yes. Your power was desperate. It touched the living world with one hand and death with the other. The power of a man and the power of a goddess. Red and gold. Human and not.”
Inside her crown of flames, her face softened—and what a face it was. White hair lined with fire, a delicate chin, eyes like blue lightning.
When she next spoke, her voice was gentler, more human. “There is still so much inside you that remains untouched. So much that you do not understand. But you will. And she will grow stronger, and her words more upright, easier to hold. She promises.”
I felt myself slipping back into unconsciousness. My joints ached, and a dull pain was blooming behind my eyes, but before I let myself fade, I managed to say, “Farrin is in Vauzanne with the others. I ran ahead to keep Neave safe. They’ll be here as soon as they can. Neave…” Her name plucked a taut string in my mind. I tried to sit up and failed. “Where is Neave?”
Sleep pulled me under before Ankaret could answer.
***
When I woke a third time, I could hardly think for the pain.
I understood that I was on my stomach, that something cool andsmooth was being administered to my back. But my skin was on fire, and the cool thing was doing very little to diminish the burn.Balm, my mind offered.Medicine.
I tried to say Ankaret’s name but couldn’t form the word, and when I searched for her, all I could see was a red cloud of pain. I could barely lift my head. Someone with a kind voice told me I would be all right, that it wouldn’t hurt for much longer.You heal quickly, my lady.
That was true. I did. I could endure this. I’d endured worse, I told myself.
