Chapter Twenty-Eight
Quinn packs my days and nights with festival events and parties, carefully avoiding anywhere Ronan is meant to be.
We take in galleries of vibrant paintings and impressive sculptures inspired by the gods, concerts by grand orchestras and small folk bands and everything in between, plays and street acts and dancing troupes, and, my favorite of all, sky-high performances by acrobats in the arena, where wind-born use their powers to send the ropes and ribbons flying in death-defying feats that make me long to be back on the griffin, soaring through the air.
That make me long to be back with Ronan.
I see him only once in days after the griffin ride, when he approaches me in the dining hall to let me know that the city guard has searched the Alchemists’ Guild and nearby areas in search of our missing alchemist (and the missing shadow-born, although he doesn’t mention that due to prying ears) without success. The disappearance of Hermes goes largely unnoticed by the rest of the court, just as the disappearance of the shadow-born has gone unnoticed in Faros.
We make it through the conversation without any unwanted reverberations of feeling, but I don’t make it through the rest of the day that follows without thinking about him endlessly. Without wondering what he’s doing, what he’s seeing, what he’s thinking of.
And then, that night, I dream of him. We’re back on the griffin, this time flying over Nithyria. We sail on a cold breeze over Pyka, over the home I once knew. The beaches of black sand. The waves crashing on moss-covered stone, icy spray nipping at our heels as we dive low. It’s freezing, but Ronan is warm behind me.
The griffin soars into dusky skies as the sliver of a moon rises over the mountains. Ronan kisses my neck. The heat of his lips on my frozen skin ignites me. I turn to give him my lips, to taste him, but I see movement far below on the castle walls.
By the time I hear the shot, it’s too late. An enormous arrow strikes the griffin in its side. In her panic, she nearly throws us from her back, my shadows the only thing keeping us anchored there. I scream as another arrow hits its target. The griffin dives for the tree line, but one of her wings is too injured to open. She tumbles from the sky, crashing through the branches, sending Ronan and me falling as I try desperately to stop us, to grab at something with my shadow, to keep us from splattering against the frozen ground—
I wake from the jolt of impact. My head is spinning, and my body feels as tense as if I had really just fallen to my death. My eyes snap open, scanning around the room, trying to find something to anchor me back to reality.
There’s a soft tapping at the door.
I glance over at Adria. She’s passed out, mouth hanging open. I envy her ability to sleep anywhere through anything.
Another knock, this one a little louder. I rise from the bed, wrapping my nightgown around my shaking body, the memory of the dream clinging to my muscles as I cross the room.
I feel him on the other side. Ronan. He felt my dream. I feel his concern, deep and heavy, with a longing to hold me, to comfort me, to take my pain away. I hear his body shift, hear the fabric of his robe brush the wood. He’s pressed himself to the door, listening inside.
I know he feels me here. I lean a bit closer, reaching for the knob.
But I stop. It would be so easy to open it and to fall back into his arms. So easy to let him whisper soothing words into my ears, to kiss the fear from my aching neck. To hold me until the tension fades and I drift back into a warm, dreamless sleep.
I lean back against the door instead. It’s cold and hard through the thin fabric of my nightgown, but I stand against it anyway, unmoving, for a long time. I stand there until my breathing returns to normal, until the nightmare releases me, and I forget the spinning of the world, the sensation of falling, eternally, through the darkened air.
From the other side of the door, there’s a long, weary sigh, and then the retreating sound of footsteps through the empty hall.
I stay by the door for a minute longer, and then I climb back into bed, feeling its emptiness more acutely than ever before.
The moment I realize what I must do comes unexpectedly.
It’s been almost two weeks since the griffin ride. Larus has been delayed, and although I sent him a letter telling him I needed help and for him to return as soon as possible, I wasn’table to mention more than that out of fear of the letter being intercepted. I visit the docks each day to see if there’s any news or correspondence, but no luck so far. After my daily check with the postmaster, I meet Quinn in the throne room, where she’s watching the competition she mentioned, the one she thought I should enter with my flute. Unlike most of the events, this one is open to all, no audition required.
Which means it’s been highly entertaining. We’ve listened to more botched renditions of “Selara, Vayla’s Favored Land” than I can count, which makes the woman on the stage all the more surprising.
“Holy shit,” says Quinn. “She’s actually good.”
She’s Orsan, though her tattoos are different from Taran’s, so I imagine she isn’t water-born. Her voice is deep and soulful, and although I can’t understand the words of the song, I can read some of its feeling.
Loss, probably because of something my people did to her or whoever wrote it.
I swallow, my throat feeling tight.
“I forgot you hate the Orsa,” says Quinn, reading my expression.
“I don’t hate them. Not anymore. I just…”
“I get it. It’s how I felt about you.”
The woman is from Pyka, the place I grew up. I wonder if she has ever been inside the castle there. I wonder if she performs at the inn where Father took us from time to time.
