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"He is holding, I hear,” Eravic says. "He is angry and grieving and holding." A pause. "He is not stopping."

Something in my chest eases. Not because the news is good. Because it sounds exactly like him.

"And my children?"

"Safe. Hidden. Exactly where they should be."

I nod.

We stand in the quiet of the shoreline and the dark water breathes beneath us and I think about how strange it is that of all the places I could have ended up Eravic Vaelor is standing at the edge of it.

"You should not be here," I say. "This place is dangerous."

"There is nowhere a Vaelor cannot sail." He says it without pride. "This is as far as I can reach. But I can reach it."

"That is enough," I say. I begin to cough again and am relieved he is turned away when I spit the black mucus into the sand.

He looks at me.

Fuck. Maybe he did see after all.

"That is enough," I say again. "You being here. That is enough."

He does not say anything. He does not need to. He turns back to the water and I stand beside him and we look at the dark together and for the first time since I woke up in this place I do not feel entirely alone.

He reaches into his pocket and hands me a vial. “From the healers. It will not cure you, but it may slow it.”

I nod and drink it in one gulp. It tastes terrible. Then I reach in my cloak and hand him a parcel. He looks down at it, then takes it.

He does not ask what it is, but I tell him anyway.

“Her memories,” I said. “My mother’s.”

He did not ask me to explain why I only trusted him to keep them.

He simply nodded. “I will keep them safe.”

CHAPTER 21

The Walk Back

Eravic offered to have someone walk me back.

I told him guards were waiting at the path entrance.

He looked at me suspiciously but chose not to press it.

There were no guards.

The path back through the outer grounds of the Darkway was darker than I remembered. It had the active dark of a place that generated its own absence of light, thick and directional, pressing against me from every side. I kept my hand against the wall where there was one and moved quickly where there was not.

I nearly jumped when I heard it.

A sound like a voice that had forgotten how voices worked. The words were right but the rhythm wrong, repeating without breath between them the way water repeated against rock.

"You cannot have him. You cannot have him. You cannot have him."

Something dropped from above and landed in front of me. I could not see what it was. I could see that it was large and that it was not moving toward me but was not moving away either, crouched in the path with its head tilted at an angle that suggested the neck had more joints than it should.