Page 103

Memories returned, rolling over me like an avalanche. The bag. The grief. The voice pulling me from the pits of that unbearable understanding when I had no longer been able to do so. Most disconcerting of all, lingering like a lead ingot in my chest, the realisation of what I’d felt and would never be able to un-feel: the fragile, flawed humanity of every single soul I’d wanted dead.

I stared at Zera, who blithely lowered her own cup of tea and said, ‘I was starting to fear you wouldn’t wake up until nightfall.’

‘I …’ I made another attempt to sit up, a little more successfully this time, as the last pieces fell into place. ‘I woke you up.’

‘I was woken by a rather sudden moment of blissful quiet,’ she corrected me, and although her lips curled into a smile, her eyes didn’t join in her amusement. ‘For which you should be grateful. If I hadn't pulled you out when I did, you might have been dead a few moments later.’

I blinked at her.

‘As I said,’ she added, with not the slightest hint of triumphantI told you so, ‘it’s a rather heavy weight.’

‘Dead,’ I repeated, thoughts still catching up. As if I may have misunderstood her. The sound of the word didn’t make any more sense on my own lips.

‘Yes, dear.’ Again that cheerless smile. ‘A monumentally stupid idea, if I may put it like that. Although, I should of course have warned you. If I’d had the slightest suspicion you may actually be able to lift the cursed thing …’

Her voice drifted off. This time not even the most minimal of smiles followed.

‘I … I just wanted to test myself,’ I said hoarsely, words tumbling over my lips. ‘I wasn’t trying to make a point – wasn’t trying to prove you wrong – I just wanted to know if I should give up. I didn’t mean—’

‘I know, Emelin. I know.’ She sighed and nodded at the cup of tea on the nightstand. ‘Drink something. Take a few deep breaths. You’ve had enough excitement for one morning.’

I hauled myself up, shoulders against the headboard of her bed, and cautiously lifted the heavy earthen mug into my lap. The tea was scorching hot; I didn’t dare to let more than some tiny sips over my lips.

‘Stupidity aside,’ Zera finally said, staring at the window with unseeing eyes, ‘I’m glad you didn’t give up.’

I nearly spilled the mug of tea over myself. ‘What?’

‘Well.’ There was something forced about the unwavering lightness of her voice. ‘If you had, I may have spent five more centuries seeing everything and everyone through the lens of my fears, and that would have been a shame, wouldn’t it?’

I stared at her.

‘And I know you weren’t trying to prove me wrong. You wouldn’t have been able to lift the bag in that case.’ She bent over to set her tea on the floor, then rose from her chair and strolled to the window with short, restrained steps. ‘But youdidprove me wrong, dear. There’s such a thing as being too cautious, and I’d crossed that line. I’m glad you were stubborn enough to make me see that.’

Glad?

Glad?

I no longer felt my worn-out limbs, too busy trying to follow Zera’s words and barely managing. This was going too fast. I’d committed the stupidity of the century. I could have been dead, and yet …

‘What?’ I said again.

‘Lifting that bag requires unusual empathic abilities,’ Zera said, turning to settle herself on the sun-streaked windowsill and resting her head against the glass. ‘And a good dose of self-sacrificing tendencies. Neither of which Achlys and Melinoë ever showed in great amounts, in case that wasn’t yet abundantly clear.’

Was she … was she making an offer here? Was she saying I’dconvincedher? I tried to come up with something sensible to say in the silence that fell, failed miserably, and settled for the ever-versatile, ‘Oh’.

Zera closed her eyes, and for a single moment, she looked her unfathomable age – her body thin and fragile below the loose linen of her nightgown, her shoulders sagging with a weight I’d never understood so well. But when she looked up, there was a sharpness to her gaze I hadn't seen before, something that lay fixed on its goal like a well-aimed arrow.

‘So.’ That single word seemed to hang suspended in mid-air, like a world about to crash and smash into smithereens. ‘Do you still want to know about the bindings?’

It shouldn’t have been a question, and yet it was, posed with too much gravity to be taken as innocent teasing or an invitation to excitement. Did I want to know? Of course I damn well wanted to know – I hadn't survived dragons and forest tempers for nothing at all …

But Zera knew that, too. And she was still asking me.

I retreated, hesitating with lips already parted to blurt out my answer. A few hours ago, that same unthinking disregard of a goddess’s warnings had brought me to the brink of death. If Zera thought it necessary to ask the question now, despite all reasons to take the answer for granted, perhaps I would be wise to think for a moment.

‘Why would I have changed my mind?’ I said carefully.

She merely raised an eyebrow, gaze flicking to the spot behind the door where the bag doubtlessly waited.