Wake up!
The voice was back with a vengeance, echoing in her head. Celia’s eyes snapped open. The room was gloomy, not yet completely dark.
Get up, the voice said.
“I can’t,” she muttered, then realized that she’d said it out loud. Her jaw worked!
She sat up, feeling no resistance to the movement.
“What happened?” she asked.
Deep inside a soft murmur seemed to say, Go home.
The healer that was left to guard her was nowhere to be found. Perhaps he had gone to relieve himself, or joined with the others, or…who knew? For that matter, who cared?
She was free.
She slid off the bed and made her way to the door, expecting her legs to be wobbly. Instead, she felt wonderfully strong, as if she had rested a full night.
The hallway was empty. She ran down the stairs at the end taking them two at a time. At the bottom a servant in the grays of House Towering Oaks watched her with mouth agape but didn’t try to stop her as she ran across the floor and out the door.
No one in the compound tried to stop her. She made it to the entrance, then out, past the sentry who called to her but didn’t pursue, and into the forest.
She was free, she was going home.
It was dusk, a time in Dunfield that the hunters came out and scoured the streets, seeking victims to drag away. They were now here in the Greenweald, too.
She almost hoped to run into one. She would pretend it was Solomon.
♦ ♦ ♦
Things hadn’t changed back at Whispering Pines. It was dark by the time she got there, the twilight time of the hunters already over. Nothing challenged her in the forest, and she made excellent time from Towering Oaks to here.
Now, she made her way back to her father’s library, and closed the door behind her. Not bothering with a light, she stretched out on the sofa and closed her eyes, inhaling deeply. The sofa was there for her mother. Florian never sat on it, preferring the chair behind his desk, or one of the others placed near the shelves. But Celia’s mother wanted a place to recline, so Florian had the sofa put in place for her.
Celia hoped to catch the smell of her, but it was long gone. Gone before she ever went to that other world, or her father had died.
Still, it was where her mother spent time, and soon Celia slept again, this time because she wanted to.
She’d only been asleep for a short while when she woke again, restless.
She rose and walked around the room, still not lighting a lamp. It didn’t feel like she needed one. It was too dim for her to read one of the books, but she could see the room well enough regardless.
What was it that woke her? The noise of someone outside the door?
She heard nothing now, but opened it anyway, finding only darkness in the hallway outside.
Not that, then.
Again, that voice, so quiet as to be almost nonexistent, spoke.
Go home.
“I am home,” she insisted.
Go home.
“I did,” she said again, knowing that it wasn’t so.
She wasn’t home. Not anymore.
There was only one place that was home now, and to get there, she’d need to go to House Glittering Birch.
Chapter 79
If asked, Jocasta couldn’t have said why she agreed to go along with the plan. What difference did it make to her if the Greenweald was destroyed? She was intending to go back to the Southern Seas and her ship anyway.
It was possible that whatever was infecting the Houses would make its way there, of course. Maybe that was why.
She joined the others in the Towering Oaks conference room three hours after they dispersed. She’d spent the intervening time walking the compound, wondering what her father had done here, where he lived, and who he was. It wasn’t that she wanted to think of those things. Being here simply lent itself to those thoughts, and she wasn’t able to help it.
Which put her in a fouler mood than normal when she met the others.
“Are we doing this or not?” she asked.
Her fingers were placed lightly on the hilts of her daggers. An old habit that she’d cultivated long ago as a wordless threat.
No one seemed any more impressed by it now than Shireen had been in Glittering Birch. She forced herself to stop doing it.
“We are,” Solomon said. “It’s time to end this. First, we fix what’s wrong here. Then we decide what’s next. We need to find Shireen, and also fix Dunfield. And, if shutting the gates doesn’t do it, we need to figure out how to heal those already infected. And finally, we need to find out if those taken by the hunters are still alive.”
“Hang that,” Jocasta said. “You’re on your own there. I’m helping to off this Malachi guy, then I’m going back to the sea.”
Solomon gazed at her and Jocasta felt discomfort steal over her. It wasn’t disappointment that she saw in his eyes. It was acceptance. Acceptance that she’d reached the limits of what she could endure.
“We’re grateful for your help now,” Solomon said.
Jocasta glowered. She wanted to lash out at him, but for what? He hadn’t said anything wrong, and what’s more, he meant it. There was no hint of mockery or condescension in his voice.
“Let’s get on with it,” she muttered, suddenly ashamed of her statement.
“Thaddeus?” Solomon said.
Thaddeus must have found a healer. He was in much better shape now than he’d been in during the meeting.
“Right. Here’s the plan. We’ll go in two groups. Darius, Willow and Jocasta in one, with Darius holding the gate. Melanie, Solomon and me in the other. Melanie will open our gate.
