Tersah grins and kicks one of the piles of dust. “Your magic is incredible.”
ChapterNineteen
Only the moon follows us as we head north. I keep looking over my shoulder, expecting someone to chase us, but no one does. Once we set up camp near a river, I evaluate the thirty men and women we rescued.
Most of them are only tired and hungry. A few require healing for their frail bodies. I use the Kyanite herbs Father gave me on all but one of them. A young Calcite woman who reminds me of Kahlia. She’s too weak for my herbs. So, I call on my Kyanite magic, pulling those beautiful waves to me. The ones that heal and renew, that pluck from the earth and give back. Pain spears through my serpent mark as I mend her.
Afterward, I settle on a rock near the sleeping woman and stare down at my hands, dreading them turning black again, dreading the darkness returning and harming the fragile life growing inside me.
The darkness will not harm either of us.
I won’t allow it.
I shift enough to touch the satchel Tersah gave me. Tentatively, I run my fingers against the cracks in the leather, knowing I need to learn how to use her flowers. Maybe Mildred can teach me when I see her again. I smile as I think of the Muchrah and Annaleigh.
While I rest, Tersah and Everly cook venison stew, and everyone gathers around them, eagerly awaiting the food. As the smell drifts through the air, I sit back, watching them and the horizon, still expecting someone to chase us.
Surely, someone will discover the fortress and all the dead Kyanite guards soon, and then they will seek their revenge.
But no one appears, and slowly, I relax, allowing my body to droop with exhaustion. I close my eyes and feel the familiar ache in my chest. That reminder that Hector is calling me back to him.
“You aren’t darkness, Sol. You are goodness.”Hector’s words whisper in my thoughts.
How I long to hear them from his lips again. How I long to see him. To touch him. To kiss him and show him he was right.
Iamgoodness.
* * *
The next day, as we continue toward the Bloodstone mountains, I look over my shoulder and see a thick cloud hovering behind us.
Tersah follows my stare. “The high gods.”
“I beg your pardon?”
She nods toward the cloud. “They are protecting us and stopping the Kyanites from following us.”
“How do you know?”
A smile pulls at her lips as she looks forward again. “Because I have seen the way they work through my sister, and I have seen a cloud like that before.”
Tersah’s words comfort me and lessen the tension hammering inside me as the cloud continues to follow us. Always there. Always shielding us.
On our third day, we encounter several caravans of merchants, and even travel next to one of them for an entire week. As the days pass, most of the former slaves split away, taking different paths.
One of them stood out to me, a young woman with white hair and fierce blue eyes. They sparked with pain, yet buried beneath all her sorrow was determination.
After the first day, she told me her name was Wisdom, and that she was from the Carnelian tribe. I asked her why she didn’t have the tattoos on her face, and she said because she never had her ceremony—the one where she would have received her blessing to cast Carnelian magic. Without that blessing and tattoos, she couldn’t see if she had any gifts.
Long after she walks away, I think about her, and I wonder if she is the one the high gods wanted me to rescue the most. I could ask them, but I doubt they would answer.
Somewhere along the way, the cloud disappears, and I know the threat from the Kyanites is gone with it.
Five of the men we rescued continue with us—Quinn’s brother and four other men, who state that they have nowhere to go and are indebted to Everly, Tersah, and me for saving their lives.
The weight of what I promised Jerrod presses on my chest. I know he will hunt me down if I don’t bring him the relic he demanded.
As the days shuffle by, I try to distract myself by staring at the cliffs looming in the distance. Then, I stare up at the deep blue sky with wispy white clouds.
