The Sylvan shoves his hand through his hair and pushes the waterfall of braids away from his face. “It all started the night King Prasan exiled the High Inquisitor from Pallanhold.”
Kaelen shakes his head. “No, that was a long time ago, at least—”
Andras cuts him off. “More than ninety years. Yes. I should know. I was there.”
“But that can’t be true,” I protest. “You can’t have been there.”
“Agreed,” Elianna says with a voice like ice cracking. “Tell us how you spirited the amulet away from Artemisen’s tomb and then carried it all the way across Altarra without catching fire and burning to death when you touched it.”
“Yes,” Kaelen says, his voice steady and face expressionless. “Tell us how you didn’t catch fire.”
“That’s just it,” Andras says, shrugging. “I did.”
Short weeks after the apocalyptic battle between the goddesses, rumors spread of a Sylvan high lord, wounded nearly unto death, who staggered into the Pyrrhan throne room with a secret. King Prasan ordered everyone out but for one trusted member of his king’s guard, and the three remained locked in the room, alone and unwatched, for more than two hours. When the king opened the doors, the Sylvan and the guard were gone. From that day on, Prasan refused to speak of it. When questioned on his deathbed, however, he finally replied, but with only two words: “He burned.”
—Recorded scrolls, Office of the High Inquisitor, Pyrrh
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“How?” I demand, one hand on the locket holding the amulet. “We saw what the amulet did. How could you survive that?” “Her people.” He points to Chitai. “Her ancestors, I should say, since they’re no more. The Dawn. They took me in and cared for me. Their healers kept me alive, even when I wished for death.”
Chitai folds her arms across her chest but says nothing.
I shudder. “Burns are the worst. They hurt more than cuts or even beatings with a whip. A lot more.”
Kaelen makes a strange growling sound. When I look at him in surprise, I see his fists are clenched. “It’s so fucking wrong that you know that.”
Oh.
“Wrong, I agree. But not the point right now,” Elianna points out. “Andras, please continue.”
He strides to the fire and crouches next to it, busying himself by adding a couple of branches to the flames before speaking. It’s like he’s buying time. Considering how much to tell us, or whether to tell us the truth at all.
This adventure might be making me cynical.
“I was close to death. The amulet didn’t cause as intense a conflagration as it did in the throne room, but it was close. Without my natural healing powers as a Sylvan, blessed of the goddess, and the considerable skill and knowledge of the desert healers, I would have died in that tent in the desert. As it was, it took me nearly half a year to walk again.”
“So, you’re more than a hundred years old? More important: If you caught fire and nearly died, what happened to the amulet?” I need to move. I’m so antsy I’m almost shaking. Even though it happened a century ago, I can see Andras burning as if I witnessed it myself. Feel how it must have hurt. The amulet is suddenly heavier around my neck.
I decide to make tea to have something to occupy my hands and thoughts other than visions of Andras burning. Or Lil.
I carefully retrieve the kettle from where it hangs over the fire, pour hot water into a mug, and add a heaping scoop of tea leaves. When I look up, everyone is watching me. “Well, keep going! The amulet?”
Andras’s lips quirk into an almost smile. “If my people could see how you boss me around, I would be laughed out of the Whispering Glade. Also, yes, I am nearly one hundred and sixty years old—not so old among our kind.”
The Whispering Glade. I had daydreams about the Sylvan court lands for a long time after reading about the Glade. I’d love to see it someday. And it’s true he’s not that old, if he’s immortal like the books say, but it’s not something I plan to ask him about.
Every time I learn something new about the world, I realize just how small my existence in the library had become.
Never again, I promise myself.
“One of the warriors possessed a silver box he claimed was enchanted. When the amulet fell out of my burned hand, they used a blacksmith’s tongs to lift it into the box, and the elders took it into their safekeeping.” Andras’s face is stone as he excavates memories that must be nearly as painful as the wounds he endured.
“Why would they take such precautions?” Elianna looks puzzled. “How would they know it was dangerous? It looks like an ordinary emerald.”
I force myself not to roll my eyes. I guess emeralds are ordinary in her world. Must be nice.
“Probably because it was still shooting flames,” Andras says dryly. “Not so ordinary.”
