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"Twelve if you were angry."

"Why?"

"Because you are still poisoned. You have had one day of a treatment that is not an antidote, given to you by a man who told you so before he gave it."

I looked down at my hands. “The Arrolyn. What if you awaken it?”

He was quiet at first.

“That is different.”

“Different how?”

“Placing the Arrolyn restores what was missing. It allows you to cross thresholds. It returns something that was taken from you. And if you were not poisoned, it would be more than sufficient for you to go home and live your life and return to your family.”

He paused. “But waking the Arrolyn, that is something else entirely.”

“Meaning?”

He looked at me carefully. “Meaning it does not simply return what was lost. It awakens what was made with it.”

“And that is dangerous?”

“Power always is.” His expression tightened slightly. “Especially power created with Sarenal magic. The Arrolyn was not made lightly, princess. There are reasons things like that are not used casually.”

“But you can awaken it, even though you were not sure where to place it?” My voice was skeptical.

“Yes. Because the ancestors do the work. There is an incantation for it I was taught during childhood for this.” He laughed. “Magic isn’t complicated. People are.”

“You are being so vague and mysterious, Eravic. Perhaps I want to be upgraded to the awakened version of this thing you put inside me?”

A faint, humorless smile crossed his face. “Then it is a discussion for a different day. Today has been enough.” He paused. “Not just for you, but for me too.”

I opened my mouth. Then I thought about what that could mean.

He raised an eyebrow.

I closed it again.

I frowned. “Then where is the antidote?"

"I have men looking. Axar is looking. Colsar has men looking too. Between us we will find it." He said it evenly. "Until then we have something that might work and might not, and it has to be nightly."

"Must I come here for it?"

"Yes."

The thought did not bother me, but I asked anyway. “Why?"

"Because the people that carry it will only bring it to Vaelor ships. Then it must be prepared, and my healer is one of the best in these matters and can prepare the treatments well.”

He clearly is not the best with taste, I wanted to say, though I knew it would sound ungrateful if said aloud.

And because we have just discussed what it does to you." He paused. "It will be worse now. And once the Arrolyn is placed, worse still."

"Why?"

"The energy it costs you to move through a day as something more than human is more than it was before." He looked at me steadily. "You will feel like yourself at night, but you will pay for it in the morning."