Stopping at the corner where the back of the cottage melded into a field with the oak tree standing watch, Dnara let her head fall back to stare upwards to the heavens, to where Faedra’s Sacred Halls were said to exist, beyond the vision of man. Shadows cast by passing clouds blotted out the early stars, before the moon rose to look after them. The jewel of Faedra’s crown, the moon, appeared less than a rising sliver of white in the growing darkness, still held captive by the Shadow King’s cloak. The moon would grow brighter each night, pulling free of Demroth’s embrace, until he would pull her back to him in their endless struggle to control the night and the fates of man.
Dnara sighed at the night, eyes closing to block out the stars. Perhaps she, too, had been caught up in their struggle, her fate no longer so assured as it had been living in the tower. Part of her missed that security, of every day being the same as the last, and strange as it may seem, part of her also missed the keeper who had offered such security in exchange for her freedom.
Her hands fisted tightly as an anger rose; anger at herself for having such thoughts. She should be grateful to be free. She should be running into the uncertainty as if it were a gift, even if she ran straight into the arms of magic and all it made her fear.
A gift.
Her eyes snapped open to the star-filled sky. That’s what the voice had called it. A gift.
A gift of what, or for what, she didn’t know. But maybe it was time she stopped asking so many questions and simply listened instead. If the voice was her imagination or real, in her head or carried by the wind, it didn’t matter as long as it could give her answers.
Unclenching her fists, she exhaled and strained to hear any hint of the wind. A light breeze blew through the trees, tickling her clammy palms and making the oak’s branches dance, but it carried no words. Only the crickets offered her company.
In that moment, she felt truly alone. With that came a fear, and an unexpected peace. She realized she had never been alone. Before Athan there had been the tower, and after the tower there had been Athan. A moment to herself in the mornings, or at the bathhouse, but not alone. Like her time in the tower, she had become content with letting Athan choose the path, following where he led, trusting him, depending on him to keep her safe.
She cast her gaze past the fields to the horizon, where the Axe Blade Mountains stood as a jagged foreground to the vanishing sun. She had the freedom to go anywhere now. To do anything. To become anyone. An apothecary, a forester, a bathhouse keeper or a traveling trader. Endless were the possibilities, all there, laid before her in an unknown world.
Her foot touched the next stone. The quiet breeze tugged her cloak backwards. She stopped, not but a single step forward, daunted by the unknown.
She did not know this world. She knew its gods, its stories, the flora and fauna, but she didn’t know the world, the way of men and their trading, their soldiers, their burning of farms, or the threat of the blight. In a word, she knew nothing. Nothing that mattered.
She wouldn’t last a day in a world not written in an outdated book she hadn’t been allowed to read in the first place. With another sigh aimed at the moon, she turned back to the cottage. Her bladder then made her turn the other way and follow the path to the outhouse. After fixing that problem, she washed her hands in the tiny brook running past the oak tree and headed back to the cottage so she could begin dealing with all the other ones.
As she rounded the front corner of the cottage, a cloaked figure waited for her return. Startled, she paused at the corner and peered past the shadows. Athan lowered his hood and pushed off the wall, the relief in his eyes highlighted by the low lamplight shining through the cabin’s small front window.
Dnara stepped closer, his relief at her reappearance filling her heart with appreciation. “Worried I may not return?”
His relief melted into chagrin as his hand raised to the back of his neck. “You were gone a while, but I thought it might be... inappropriate to actually go seek you out at the toilet.”
“I don’t know much of this world,” she said, her own lips twitching in a want to smile. “But yes, I think that would be inappropriate.”
He nodded at that with a muted chuckle, hand lowering and thumbing his pants pocket. After a pause filled with cricket song, he let out an audible breath that puffed white in the increasing cold of night. “I did consider it, though. You, not returning. I’m glad you did.”
His words sent tingling spirals up her arms and into her chest. She had not considered that, in her thoughts to leave, that she would be missed, that someone waited for her return. Her feet took a step closer, her fingers moving to touch his sleeve but splaying against the cool cobblestone wall instead. “Sorry I took so long. I just needed a moment to myself, to think, to take...” She raised her arm, the strange scars once again fully healed. “To take all this in.”
Athan closed the remaining distance between them and took her arm in hand. “Fully healed again?” His thumb moved over the thinnest of the scars jaggedly etched on the underside of her
