“Okay.”
“Because I feel like the girl who’s going mad again. Seeing things, feeling things. And you promised to tell me if I was.”
“You aren’t going mad.” I grab her hand at that, needing to give her some form of reassurance.
She turns her head, and I barely make out the light in her eyes. “But if people keep choosing what they will and won’t share with me, how will I ever know what’s real or what’s not?”
thirty-three
. . .
Ever
Every emotion I’ve had since entering this cursed place crashes into my head, weaving inside my mind and torturing me with doubts and second-guesses.
And for a second, I miss my power. Because at least I could fight back with that and use it to somehow stop myself from feeling this way.
Weak.
Alone.
Naive.
My fingers squeeze Ten’s, and I’m desperate to go back to a few hours ago, when I was blissfully unaware of what he kept from me. I keep trying to wrap my head around his decision to keep me in the dark, to hide something as important as who my parents might be from me, but I’m getting nothing. What he said a moment ago is valid, but it’s hard to know that there might be information that’s still being kept from me. If people just told the truth…
None of this lessens the ache in my chest and the anguish clutching me.
The Maker’s words drift back to me—possibilities. Earth and space and time… could I go back? Erase or change the past? That question echoes in my mind like a bell chiming midday.
“I will tell you. I promise. But right now, please, let’s go back. I don’t want to be out here when my father’s guards find us.”
Without letting go of my hand, he stands and pulls me to standing. And I let him.
“Do you want to ride or walk?” he asks.
“Nettle can’t take us both.” My body draws back from the idea of being that close to him right now. It’s too much. Too overwhelming.
“You can ride. I’ll walk.”
He helps me back onto Nettle, and I gaze out at the darkness left for us. Would Nettle have taken me all the way home before I scared myself and stopped?
We plod back, the bruises now digging into my muscles in protest at all the activity, the bath now long forgotten. I pretend not to notice how far Ten came to find me and decide to thank him when I’m not so angry at him, and when I can look at him without my heart aching.
The silence stretches like the night before us, and I wonder at what point our powers will start to return.
Ten doesn’t try to fill the quiet with talk, and neither do I. Perhaps neither of us has anything else to say tonight.
The forest on my right starts to emerge from the shadows, and now that my fear is under control, I’m drawn to the question about what really lives in there. In the dark.
“How about you head to the training residence, and I’ll make sure Nettle gets back to the stable?” Ten offers.
“I stole him. I should take him back.”
“I don’t think what you did counts as stealing. He’s yours, isn’t he?”
“Not technically. Well, Lyle didn’t say who he belonged to. But said the horses were from Kirrasia.”
The low din of music and voices carries like whispers on the breeze as we approach The Court. When we reach the training residence, Ten offers me the choice of walking again, but I stay put on Nettle. We cross over the bridge, still guarded, but with no trouble, considering I fled against their protest earlier. For a split second, I wonder if all of this was just a ruse to get me to return, but I shut that down. There are too many opportunities to second-guess, and they will turn me mad.
