“All right, Jenny.” Dnara clutched the blanket over her legs before she asked her next question. “What will you do now?” And more importantly, to her, “Where will you go?”
“I’d like to stay,” Jenny quickly said. “If that’s okay? I figure, if I’m to start making amends, maybe the best place for me to do it is protecting the one person in this world who seems to have a way of fighting back against the blight.”
Although what Jenny said frightened her, the idea that she could somehow be the only thing, mage or otherwise, to have this effect on the blight, the thought of Jenny staying to protect her lightened her fears. “I’d like it if you stayed.”
Jenny let out a relieved breath. “Feels like I’ve been given a second chance. Just hope I can-” A soft knock on the door left her hopes unfinished. “That’s probably Athan. Said he’d be back around sundown.”
“Does he know?” she asked as Jenny walked to the door.
“No,” Jenny said as she opened the door to Athan’s worried expression. “But I guess I should tell him.”
Athan immediately looked past Jenny to the bed, his worry shifting to a smile at finding Dnara awake, then he met Jenny’s eyes with curiosity lifting his brow. “Tell me what?”
21
After telling her story for a second time, Jenny departed to stretch her legs. Left alone with Athan, a comfortable silence lingered; the calming sense of safety that came from being within his reach. Dnara’s eyes closed as she took in a few long breaths, accepting she had become dependent on his presence and no longer concerned enough about this new invisible collar to fight against it. This collar, made of soft smiles, kind eyes and reassuring words, wrapped around her more like a blanket than a piece of cold magicked steel.
He rose from the chair, and she could hear his footsteps against the stone as he paced, then the wooden chair being scooted closer to the bed and the light jingle of his belt pouches as he sat down. When she reopened her eyes, she found Athan watching her, his concern returning. “How do you feel?” he asked.
“My chest hurts a small bit,” she answered honestly. “But, I’m not as tired as last time, and my arms don’t burn.”
He took her arm in hand. “The scars didn’t reopen.”
He thumbed one long scar line that ran jaggedly from her wrist to the inside of her elbow. Her eyes closed and she focused on the sensation. The warmth of his hand became everything; a central focal point to which she could tie an anchor.
“It... The magic seemed different this time,” he said.
“It was,” she answered without opening her eyes. A quiet moment passed, and when she worked up the courage, she asked, “How is Elizabeth?”
“Healed,” he said, a note of caution in his voice. “At least, physically. Mentally... I don’t suppose anyone is prepared for the loss of a child, born or not.”
Dnara dove inward to clamp down on a tumultuous current of emotion quickly rising to the surface. “I tried,” she whispered, the ache of water back in her lungs. “But the sea was too deep and the blight too strong.”
“It’s not your fault,” he emphatically replied. “Elizabeth didn’t know she was with child, and Mayor Whitehall didn’t know she’d eloped.”
Her eyelids lifted. “Eloped?”
“Yeah. It’s a right mess.” Athan sat back in the chair and let out a tired sigh. “See, Mayor Whitehall had forbidden her to marry, afraid that, well, what did happen would happen. But, she fell in love with a soldier in the King’s Army. They were married in secret two months ago, before his deployment to the dredges of Fort Tomlay. It’s why Garrett couldn’t face...this. Not because she’s his twin, but because he’d encouraged her to defy their father and marry Thomas. Garrett had a guess at the cause of her sickness, and the guilt drove him from town.”
Dnara thought on his words, but none of them made her feel less guilty about the life that could not be saved. She could understand why Garrett had felt the need to run from Lee’s Mill. Glancing out the small window to the darkening sky, her legs had an urge to flee from the temple, from Lee’s Mill, and the memory of a now barren shore.
“Garrett tried to track Thomas down at Fort Tomlay,” Athan explained during Dnara’s gazing silence. “But, they’d moved Thomas to Fort Eastwind for some gods’ forsaken reason, and you can’t just cross through the Grey Marsh without an escort, and no King’s Army is going to escort a mayor’s son from a little dot on the map like Lee’s Mill. So, Garrett was forced to turn back, and left with few options, like the item I procured for him...”
Athan stopped again, and shame came to his eyes before they turned away from Dnara. “It’s a rare herb, and even harder to get this time of year. Maiden’s Thorn.”
Dnara set a hand on his arm. “He thought to rid her of the child?”
“Aye,” he sighed. “And I agreed to help. I didn’t know it was Elizabeth. Thought it was one of the women in town who are always fainting at the mere sight of the fool. Don’t make it any more right. A woman asking for it
