“Durvla, would you mind catching them up while Alys and I get started?” Tiernan asks.
I nod, and he gives me a tense smile before he and Alys take their places beside the child. Jacinta is wide-eyed and haggard as she places the tray down on the small, low table, and Ava places the kettle on a thin stone slab beside it. I catch them up with all that was discussed, including Alys and Tiernan’s healing and the rescue attempt.
For a couple hours more, we remain in the house, taking turns refreshing ourselves, munching on stale bread and bland broth. I stand guard with Ava for a while as the others headinside. Cahel waters and grooms our horses before leaving them to get some rest.
I lean against the house, my head pounding and my legs growing weaker. When Chiyo steps back outside, she’s washed the kohl away and pulled her hair back into a simple ponytail. “Your beau is sleeping off the healing sessions. We leave in under an hour. Perhaps you should get some rest too?”
I shake my head and white spots dance in the darkness, a ghost of nausea lightly nudging me. What I need to do is take a tincture before I faint or vomit. Or both.
“Rest,” Chiyo says with a firm gesture. She holds my gaze for so long that I feel like I’ll fall asleep where I stand.
“Fine,” I concede.
When I get inside, Alys and Tiernan are asleep in each of the raggedy armchairs. Jacinta smiles crookedly at me from where she sits on the floor beside Nuala. As she refocuses on the girl, I cautiously squeeze in beside Tiernan. His shoulder makes the perfect pillow for my head, his chest a welcome place to drape my arm. To my surprise, his hand slides over my back, but he doesn’t stir beyond that.
I wish I could get a better idea of what happened to Nuala. Beyond the inferences that were made based on Alys’s healing senses and Osheen’s knowledge, that is.
Then again …can’t I?
Taking a steady breath, I close my eyes and focus on Nuala, lowering my shields tentatively until I feel her presence. There’s an innocence to it—something that feels like a gentle summer breeze. My body seems to drift, a vivid image of a garden materializing in my mind.
A small, fair hand plucks a lily from the garden and tucks it into a bouquet of wildflowers. They droop, but the child seems unbothered. Her blond hair is like spun gold in the sunlight. I remain a small distance from her, observing silently until herhoney brown eyes find me. She hardly startles, a toothy smile lighting up her face.
“Hello there!” she chirps. “Who are you?”
“Hi.” I step closer to her. “My name is Durvla.”
She tilts her head at me, her lower lip bitten in thought. “Your voice sounds familiar. Like I’ve heard you before. A moment ago. But …” Her eyes wander, and the beautiful garden wavers around us, the dreamscape threatening to collapse.
“My friends have been working hard trying to make you feel better.”
Her lips tug down. “I was fine until I found an arrow in the stable. I wanted to bring it home to Cahel because he has a bow, but it cut my hand.” Her gaze wanders to the distance.
My heart contracts. Poison indeed. Perhaps exactly the kind that had struck Alys.
“For you,” she says, her eyes on me again. She extends the flowers to me, but as I reach for them, I tumble back into my body, awake again.
I flinch so hard that Tiernan’s arm tightens around me. I feel the slightest nudge of his magic against my mental barrier, but I don’t let him in. He needs to rest. I reposition myself, my bottom wedged between the arm of the chair and his body, my legs draped over his lap. I lower my head to his chest and his arm relaxes, his breathing deepening again.
I must doze off for a moment, because the next thing I know, I’m being shaken. I startle, sitting up. It takes quite a bit of blinking before my vision clears well enough for me to make out Chiyo’s face. “Cahel says he spotted Forayers riding this way,” she signs. “We have to go!”
She runs off to wake Alys and I jostle Tiernan’s shoulder before stumbling off his lap. “Forayers are coming,” I tell him. His obsidian gaze is bleary, but he’s on his feet, his swords in his hands in no time.
He sheathes the swords on his back and tightens the straps across his chest. We race outside, and as my eyes meet Osheen’s, I’m reminded of the many times we’ve had to hide Taig during an impending raid. I’m even reminded of when we all fled Dubh Carrig during the Festival of Damarlach, leaving the entire village in flames.
Tiernan helps me onto Ghendor as Cahel and Jacinta rush out of the house. They hand us satchels of food for the road, thanking us for the potions and for helping Nuala. Then we’re off, riding into the night … again.
I hope that Nuala will make it. That she can be rescued.
That by some divine intervention, we can stop running all the time.
Chapter 31
We setsail in a stolen tradesman ship without a banner, headed around the southern border toward the east of Erleya. It seems the safest, given that there would only be one territory—Erleya—to deal with rather than Caldeon and Ardall in the north. I rest my forearms on the handrail and lean my weight against them, peering out at the orange and pink waves beneath the rising sun.
There are so many questions I have that will remain forever unanswered. How is Durvla my sister? Who was my mother with before my father? Did my mother know the extent of the turmoil within Erleya, or was she as ignorant as I was? For all the secrets that she apparently kept, it hurts to think it’s possible she was very much aware. That she concealed it to keep herself safe. To keepmesafe.
Morwenna, theGood. Yet based on what she condoned, she might as well have killed all those Mages with her own hands.
