My body was aching all over. I hadpyrokiburn between my thighs where I straddled its back. My back was tight and sore. My arms shook from holding onto thepyroki’sthick neck.
The burning in my arm had started, making the muscles seize tight, a hotness that scalded me, though I shivered from cold. Thevovicwas trailing across my neck and soon it would lodge in my chest, in my belly, my womb, my legs. I would feel it in the strands of my hair, in the tips of my toes. It was merciless and unyielding.
“Draki,” I urged thepyroki, repeating words I’d heard Davik speak, and the beast’s trots quickened, weaving around trees that I only saw as they passed us by.
I steered thepyrokiby nudging its neck and I guided it in the direction I knew the heartstone lay. I knew these groves like the back of my hand. Lokkaru had to have spent an ample amount of time here to give me such a map. I wished that I had asked her about her life more, about why she’d lived in the wild lands, alone, for so long. If she’d ever been scared. If that fear was perhaps why she’d chosen to journey toDothik, to steal fruits from theDothikkar’sgarden to sell on the streets…which was how she’d inevitably met Davik.
I wondered if she’d ever been in love but then I pushed that thought away with force when it brought another prickling of pain to my chest.
Mypyrokiand I traveled through the ancient groves for most of the night and I knew that we were drawing near when I heard the familiar trickling of a small stream. A stream that we followed, a stream that my exhaustedpyrokidrank from, a stream that I wanted to drink from but feared I was too weak to climb onto her back again once I finished.
Pain spasmed in my wrist and arm, making me bite my lip, making my eyes water. It was a throbbing kind of pain, but it was manageable. Soon, it would come in waves, each more intense than the last, until those waves would end and then it would be constant…building, building, building until my heart gave out.
The closer we came to the tree, the more the ground seemed to hum underneath us. Mypyrokipaused every now and again until I urged her back into motion, as if uncertain what we were about the stumble upon, as if her instincts warned her away.
But my instincts pushed us forward and soon, I felt relief pierce me when I saw blue light glowing in the distance. Soft at first, just a hint that there was something hidden there. As we drew closer and closer, it grew brighter and brighter, until I could actually see the trees around us, massive trunks so wide I was surprised I could see around them, their skin black with age.
There was only one tree I was seeking, however, and a few moments later, as mypyrokipassed underneath a heavy curtain of vines hanging down from branches…I found it.
A sob tore from my throat, relief so potent and bright that it briefly banished the pain.
It was just like in my dream. Just like in Lokkaru’s memory. It had changed, however. It was wider, taller, its branches fuller and laden with white leaves whose veins glowed blue. That was where the blue light was coming from. Its leaves. Thousands of them, spread across its black, strong branches. The stream ended at its trunk.
Nourishing it. Feeding it until it grew strong.
I patted thepyroki’sneck as we stopped in front of it. With great effort, I managed to swing my leg over its back and slide to the ground, though I fell to my knees on the moss-covered earth. It was soft and cushioned my fall. I had the stray thought that I could just curl up in the moss and sleep forever, that I could die in this place and no one would ever find me.
A sense of loneliness hit me, so hard that I almost gasped as my eyes filled with tears. I didn’t think it was all my own. This clearing, as beautiful and safe as it felt, cut off from the outside world, felt sad.
Had Lokkaru’s emotions lingered in this place? Had her mother’s? Or perhaps they were her father’s?
On shaking legs, I walked forward, sensing that mypyrokilay down on the moss to rest behind me. I craned my neck up but the tree was so large that it blocked the night sky and any hint of the moon I’d come to hate.
The bark looked like skin, papery and thin, but dark and weathered with age. And beneath that skin, the trunk seemed to glow not only blue, butgold. I swore I could see the individual layers of the bark underneath, each as thin as the last.
When I pressed my hand to the trunk, it felt warm. It throbbed like a heartbeat as I snatched my hand away, surprised, disturbed.
The heartstone was inside, or so I assumed. I could see its glow, its beckoning, its taunting. An unseen wind picked up in the clearing, rustling through my hair and chilling me to the bone, though my skin felt clammy and hot. I grappled for the dagger I’d stolen from Davik, peering down at it in the blue light that glowed from the leaves.
Its handle was made of black bone, intricately carved in swirling words of Dakkari that I couldn’t read, but I swore that those same words were tattooed into Davik’s skin. Longing made my heart squeeze tight. I smoothed my fingertips over the words, just as I had over Davik’s flesh, tracing those tattoos though I hadn’t known what they meant.
He would know I was gone by now. Night had fallen long ago. He would come after me if he hadn’t already. And I needed to be long gone from this place by the time he did. If he found me again, he wouldn’t let me go. I wouldn’t have the willpower, or the mental strength, to leave him again if I felt those arms around me.
With that thought in mind, though every part of mewantedto wait for him here, I wedged the dagger into the tree, grunting with the effort. The trunk was sturdy and hard, despite its appearance, and I felt my strike reverberate up my arm and ring in my brittle bones until I thought they might shatter.
My grip wasn’t strong enough, however. My arm was weakened from thevovicand my long ride on thepyroki. The dagger fell to the ground. That small action had winded me and I gasped for breath as I stooped to pick it up.
When I raised my arm to strike again, I paused, my lips parting as I saw liquid began to drip down the wound in the tree.
Blood.
Golden, shimmering blood that ran down its papery thin skin like a caress.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, my mind yelled.
Frozen, I could only stare as more dripped from it, weeping down that old tree in that ancient place.
A thought came to me and slowly I lowered the dagger. My gift hadn’t worked on Nillima, Davik’spyroki, but Ineededto understand this.
