Page 27 of The Shattered King

He stared at me. I wanted him to speak, and I wanted him to say nothing at all. The silence felt too long, so I paced again and explained.

“I died when I was sixteen.” I waved my hands in the air, as though I could somehow illustrate with their dance. “I was in the carriage accident with my parents. In Grot. My sister and I, we were there.”

Renn’s forehead furrowed. “You said Lissel isn’t a healer.”

“She isn’t.” My voice shook. “Ursa was. I said I’m the eldest of eight living. I was the eldest of nine, by only a few minutes. I was born a twin, identical in every way. Ursa, my sister, she had the craft as well. She was a healer.”

I rushed through the rest, knowing if I stopped, I would not be able to let the truth escape its carefully woven cage.

“I don’t even remember getting hit, only that I was on the ground, staring up into the sky, and I couldn’t move.

My limbs wouldn’t move, and my mouth tasted like copper.

Ursa ... The carriage missed her. She dowsed into me, tried to save me, but I . .. I died.

“When a person dies, their lumis is no longer accessible. It turns black and forces out any healer within it. But Ursa was me in every physical sense of the word, and in many other senses, too. Somehow ... somehow she held on to me. She healed me, and I lived.” Tears pooled in my eyes.

“She healed me with pieces of herself, and so she died, and I lived, but I still bear the marks of death, and I have pieces of me that don’t belong there. Pieces of her that hold me together—”

He stood abruptly, and for a terrifying second I thought he would storm out on me, tell the king how truly unnatural I was, and my heart broke for it—

And then suddenly I was embraced against his chest, my nose at his throat, his arms around me, holding me together.

I gasped, and the tears fell down my cheeks, wetting his collar. I hadn’t realized until that moment that I hadn’t been embraced in months ... not since I left Fount, Lissel’s tears wetting my collar. And now I was here, my tears wetting his.

“I’m so sorry,” he murmured into my hair. “I didn’t know. I’m so sorry, Nym.”

The pain of her, the pain of losing the person closest to me, rose up my throat and stung my eyes. I blinked quickly, trying to pull myself together, trying to mask it the way Renn did. My efforts failed to compare, and I hated it.

I relaxed in his embrace. Raised my hands and cupped his elbows.

“It’s always there,” I whispered. “Death. It colors my lumis. I ... feel it, when someone is close to dying. I see death lines in others, little threads that tell me exactly how to kill a person.”

He pulled back, hands lingering on my upper arms. “What?”

I shook my head. “I never have. They show me what to avoid. Everyone has them. I have them. So yes, I’m ... different.” My throat ached. “I did not mean to tell you like this. In truth, I did not intend to tell you at all.” Only Brien and Lissel knew. And Ursa, but who could she possibly tell?

“Yet I am glad you told me.” He shook his head, his mouth somewhere between an O and a smile. “You are truly astounding, Ny—”

The cough cut off my name. It came so abruptly he did not have time to turn away. Blood spattered against my cheek, mixing with my tears.

Renn blanched, pale as quartz.

I grabbed him under the shoulders. “Ard! ARD!”

The door burst open as the prince’s eyes rolled back into his head, and he fell limp in my arms.

“No, no, no, no ,” I cried as Ard helped me lower Renn to the floor. “He was just fine a moment ago! He’s been just fine!”

“What did you do ?” Ard shouted at me.

“I told him about my dead sister, you barbarian!” I screamed back. “Get Sten while I heal him !”

I didn’t check to see if he followed my orders; I grabbed Renn’s face in my hands and dowsed.

It made no sense.

“Why?” I cried into the quivering lumis, picking up fallen baubles and string, rushing to put them back in place. “Why do you do this? Why won’t you let me heal you ?”

I rushed for the pieces of him I’d already aligned—even if they’d broken apart, I knew which went where.

I pulled on every tendril of magic I could, Ursa’s included, sucking in even more than I’d used with the soldier, to fit them back in place.

To thicken the strings holding them to ribbons and demand they clench like iron.

To smooth every bump and crack until they looked just as they had that morning.

And yet the lumis still trembled as though an earthquake passed underfoot. His death lines darkened and smoked. “Stop it!” I bellowed, wading into the endless pile of glass. “Stop it! You’re hurting him !”

I scrambled through pieces, desperately trying to line them up, find matching edges and colors. I scooped up a pile of teal dust and stared helplessly at it as it passed through my hands.

“Those are the glassworks,” my father said, pointing at a shop.

“Is that why they have glass windows?” I asked.

Chuckling, he took my hand and crossed the street, leading me right up to that window. Inside I saw a furnace, and a man turning orange-hot glass on a staff. He blew into it, and the glowing liquid expanded.

“ They make it with their mouths,” he explained as I watched, nose pressed to the window, mesmerized. “They make it with their mouths and their tools, and shape it into all kinds of things. Vases, sculptures, bottles ... and yes, even windows. ”

Biting my lip, I scooped up another handful of teal dust and pulled on the magic again, forcing it through my arms and into my hands, commanding it to heat the powder, to liquify it as gaffer’s glass.

Help me, Ursa. My heart sped as the craft pushed through me, and I formed the powder in my hands, blowing into it, opening it and cupping it into the shape of a bauble.

Setting it aside, I swept away other broken pieces to find the fine grains on the floor beneath.

Gathered them and pulled, melting them between my palms, blowing new life into them.

I hung the baubles, one, two, three ...

I barely had the energy for the fourth. Limbs heavy, I wrapped them with threads, praying them into place with their siblings, and the quaking subsided.

I picked up another handful of dust, but each speck weighed a pound, and they fell through my fingers.

I fell in the parlor, landing on Renn. Still cradling his face in my hands. His fingers gripped my upper arms, almost tightly enough to bruise.

Sten dropped to the floor beside us. “Thank the gods.”

I barely had the strength to push myself up and meet Renn’s eyes, so starkly blue against the blood that had run from his mouth. He smiled a tired, bloody smile at me. “You saved me again, healer,” he whispered.

And in that moment, I realized two things. The first, that while something was wrong with my lumis, something was unnaturally wrong with his, too.

And the second, just how much it would hurt me to lose him.