“Could a fire have done all this?” Dnara asked aloud. “Even a magical one?”
The wind whistled through the ruins and Treven stopped to gaze up at the tower along with Dnara. Treven could not answer and Athan remained silent in the saddle. But, he’d known. Athan had known the whole time the impossibility of her story. When she said she’d lived in the tower, his shock had been apparent, and now she knew why. No one had truly lived in this tower for untold years well beyond her age.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered and felt the wind tugging at her cloak.
With careful movements, she slid from the saddle then helped Athan down. He slumped to his knees but then managed to shuffle with her to the tower stairs before collapsing fully. She brushed his bangs aside and he lifted his eyes to look on her with sad regret. Words formed on his lips, but no sound came. Agony filled his expression, his hand clutching the shirt over his chest. All thoughts of the knoll and the lies he’d told fell away as her heart filled with sadness.
She held him for a quiet moment then eased him onto his back against the steps. “You were wrong,” she said, her fingers tracing lines along his cheek. “This is my fault.”
“No,” he began to argue but couldn’t finish.
Dnara placed a finger atop his lips. “Melakatezra, whoever she is, tricked you and your brother all those years ago, because she knew this day would come. It is because of me. The why of it, I don’t yet understand, but... But there is something connected between all of us. A soul-thread, Keeper Ishkar would call it, tying our lives together for better or worse.”
“Mela-,” he sucked in a tight breath. “She’s not- ...her name... it’s-” but he could say no more, by a magical pact Dnara assumed, and the frustration in his expression overshadowed the pain. “Dammit. Dammit it all to blight and back,” he spit out along with a wheezing cough.
Dnara wished it could be so simple, to damn it all and blame the blight, but she’d come to understand a more complex answer existed, somewhere. She glanced around the ruins, hope dwindling that the answer could be there, under a pile of stones. When Athan grunted in another wave of pain, she returned to Treven.
After unbuckling a saddlebag filled with herbs and food, she rubbed Treven’s nose while trying to see past the glassy black eyes of the mule. “Your brother is in great pain, and I don’t know what I can do to help.” To her words he nodded and lipped her sleeve. “The second day will dawn soon, the day Garrett said he’d meet us. Can you find your way back to the northern edge of the grove and wait for him, show him how to get to us?”
Treven hesitated, turning his long face to Athan. With a sweat beaded brow and eyes darkened by exhaustion, Athan nodded his agreement to Dnara’s plan. Giving a resigned heavy snort, Treven nodded as well and set off back through the broken gate.
Kneeling beside Athan, she offered him a drink from a waterskin. “How young were you, when you struck a deal with the raven?”
Athan drank deeply before answering. “I’d just turned nine. Treven, six.”
Hearing him say it made the whole story feel much more real. “So young to have lost everything.”
“No younger than you had been,” he argued then sputtered through another sip before handing back the skin. “You are too kind, Dnara. You should have left me alone to face my choices.”
“Then I would be no better than the raven,” she replied while searching through the saddlebag.
Her words ended his arguments and he lay propped halfway up on the first stair in silence while she worked. Pulling out two cloth-wrapped packages from the bag, she mixed a few herbs and bound them within wild onion sprigs plucked from a patch growing out of the floor. She paused a moment, trying to see the mosaic pattern the floor had been decorated with, but grass and dirt had completely covered the tiles.
“It doesn’t make any sense. I’ve only been gone a few weeks,” she muttered and handed the bundle to Athan. ”Here, for the pain.”
Athan popped the bundle into his mouth without question and chewed, grimacing at its less than pleasant flavor. After masticating the bundle to release the herbal oils, he stuffed it into the top of his cheek next to his molar then spoke. “There’s a door down there, still intact.” He indicated the dark crevice in the corner where a stairwell led downward.
“The vault,” Dnara said. “Keeper Ishkar keeps- kept his most prized books there.”
“I couldn’t get into it, but didn’t spend much time with it, either. I wanted-” Shame refilled his eyes and he looked away. “To be there when you woke up,” he finished quietly.
“I’m glad you were,” she said honestly and placed her hand on top of his.
He didn’t look back at her and closed his eyes instead. “There might be answers in the vault.”
She knew he was right, but she hesitated to leave him alone with the guilt he carried. “Will you be all right alone for a while?”
To this, he nodded and settled back against the stair with a wince and unsteady exhale, scarcely able to move an inch farther. “I won’t run off, I promise.”
His jest made her smile, reminding her of all the pleasant moments shared between them. Even based on a lie, the happiness he’d placed within her
