Page 209 of A Vow of Embers

This would be like talking to Suri. I just had to come up with some questions. But what did you ask a lizard?

“Do you like Rokh bringing you treats?”

A slow blink.

“Do you like me?”

Another blink.

I had to come up with something that I knew she would say no to.

“What about Io’s cat, Phoebe? Do you like her?”

Two definite blinks.

Luna could communicate! I looked around the room, as if Xander would suddenly appear and I could share this with him.

I frowned. What did it mean that he was the first person I wanted to tell?

Parthenia came into the room then and I felt guilty, given how she seemed to be struggling to breathe. “Are you all right?”

She waved her hand. “I’m fine. The baby is just sitting high against my lungs. What do you need?”

I told her that I had to pack for this trip and wanted her to take care of Luna while I was gone. I put Luna back in her enclosure and realized that it was starting to look too small for her.

Luna might have to make do. There was no chance that I would ask Xander to build her another one.

Parthenia promised she would tend to my lizard and found a knapsack to pack up my things.

“What should I do to help?” I asked.

“You can help by staying out of my way. And maybe go tell Io that you’ll be gone because you know how she worries.”

I had forgotten all about my adelphia. It was like I only had room in my brain to think about one thing at a time and I had forgotten that my sisters might not be well.

Shame flooded into me. I ran over and was relieved to see that both Io and Zalira were awake.

“You’re all right,” I said with a sigh of relief.

“I’ve never felt better,” Io said. “It’s like I’ve slept for a week. I feel so revitalized and refreshed.”

“What happened last night?” I asked.

“I passed out. The same thing happens to life mages after they do magic.”

Io had done magic. Suri realized at the same time that I did that their door was wide open and she rushed to shut it. It was a good thing to do because if anyone overheard us ...

“I can’t believe you did magic,” Ahyana said excitedly. “What did it feel like?”

“It’s hard to describe. I said the words and then I felt connected to everything around me. And there was a rightness to it. As if this was what I was meant to do. Then there was a surge of power that overwhelmed me, and the next thing I knew I woke up here.”

Zalira shook her head and said with a rueful smile, “I missed out on everything.”

“It was so amazing,” Ahyana told her.

“I think I might be able to direct it,” Io said. “Like I could think about what I wanted to do with the plants and cause it to happen.”

“Do you mean beyond making flowers bloom?”