I hope Jeremee didn’t wander too far and that we may find each other again.
I hope Glenn takes good care of Benji. I hope Benji is safe, always, and loved.
I hope Lila recovers fully.
I hope Briar frees herself and her descendants with the coin.
I hope Kassandra defeats Dominik. I hope she finds happiness and replacing me is not as difficult as she said it has been.
I hope to see my mother. I hope to hold her once more without the illness between us. I hope and hope and hope as the inferno consumes me.
—
A dark weightlessness.Far off, a spot of bright light that grows into a gliding white bird. It perches on my chest, though I do not feel it. Smaller than a swan, lither than a dove, brighter than a phoenix. I know this creature. I have seen it before, recently, in another life, or was it a dream? The bird cocks its head, glowing.
Faerie,it seems to say.
I do not know your name,I answer.Yet I know you.
I was sent here by a friend,the bird says, and there is a memory we share of building nests in branches in another life, on a hill somewhere.
Why?I ask.
To return the favor.
Where are we going?
Home.The bird shakes out its wings.Now hold still.
The long white bird walks to the base of my throat. I tense.
You are not alone, little moth.
But I’ve made mistakes. I keep making mistakes.
And yet they still wait for you.
The bird bends its slender neck and touches its white beak tothe center of my forehead. At first, nothing. Then the fiery pain retreats from my legs, leaving behind a cool trail. The bird on my chest glows brighter. The anguish pulls back from my pelvis, my abdomen, a weight peeling off my chest. My skin calms, my breathing evens out as the sickness withdraws, pooling in my head. The pain concentrates to a singular point, then is drawn out of me altogether.
The bird is luminous still as it folds my sickness into itself. I gasp with renewed vigor.
“But you will grow ill,” I exclaim.
I will heal. And now you will, too.
The bird spreads its glorious wings and takes flight. As it soars higher and higher into the darkness, its glow disseminates, and the plane around me gleams and glitters as the light envelops me, lifts me, delivers me.
Chapter Thirty-eight
I wake in a soft bedenclosed in drapes. My mouth feels dry as the desert, my limbs aching and sore. Yet I’m no longer struggling in the tempest of pain. In its aftermath, I assess the damage.
I lift the covers to find a patchwork of bruises along my legs, and I fear what is beneath the cotton gown someone dressed me in, especially with the deep ache in my stomach.
When I drop the covers, a new sight shocks me. Kassandra, slumped in a chair by my bedside, her head resting on the mattress beneath her arm, the other resting against my knee on top of the blankets. Fast asleep and still, her face crinkles in worry, shadows under her eyes.
Lila. She’s in the House of Healing now, but how does she fare? What is the extent of her injuries?
“She’s okay,” Kassandra mutters, pushing herself up, scrubbing her face. “Lila is okay. I get reports from Eli.”
