The room vibrated. The gems all hummed louder. Something resonated through her body, reaching into her bones.
Avena’s real eyes snapped open.
She awoke, back in her body. The alien feeling that had descended on her right before the dream swallowed her had passed. She blinked and realized she lay slumped on her side on the carriage bench. The clatter of wheels over cobblestones echoed as she sat up. Drool stained her left cheek.
Dualayn appeared enraptured with the Primer the White Lady had given to him. It must be his hundredth time he’d studied it. It held the guide to deciphering Old Tonal, the primordial language spoken before the Shattering.
He didn’t notice that I passed out?
She shivered, glad it had happened while she was in the carriage, safe from harm. They were returning from a visit to the hospital. They had three patients—a man and two women—who seemed beyond normal jewelchine healers to help. Dualayn would work on them in his lab. She glanced at the window and saw they were almost home.
She had passed out right after leaving.
The dream remained with her. The handsome man, the lover of the white-haired woman, burned in her memory. If it wasn’t for his blue eyes, she would call him a Qothian like Ōbhin. And the woman . . . The White Lady? Avena had never seen a young woman with white hair before, and she’d felt young in the dream, her body healthy. And who were those others? What was that room? Those jewels were huge and linked together. Why?
She shivered, focusing on the dream instead of her body betraying her again. Whatever fanciful delights her mind had conjured, no doubt gleaned from studying the primer and the Recorder with Dualayn for the last week, was better than dwelling on her weakness. She needed to accept that her mind hadn’t been fully healed.
Dualayn had still accomplished a miracle.
Living with the occasional fainting spell was better than death. It had just stolen away standing by Ōbhin’s side. She couldn’t trust herself in a fight not to faint and be a burden. He might get hurt trying to protect her unconscious form.
“Anything useful?” she asked as they turned off the road onto the driveway of his estate.
“Very,” he said. “I am intrigued by your earthen gauntlet. It’s a remarkable idea. I hadn’t thought of attaching them to the outside of the body. Imagine if we used other gems beside emeralds. Suits that could make someone immune to fire or maybe to breathe underwater. Imagine exploring the bottom of a river or the sea.”
She smiled. Research with Dualayn was where she could best serve. It wasn’t as exciting, wasn’t with Ōbhin at her side, but it was something to feed the emptiness inside of her.
Little morsels to keep despair at bay.
*
Ōbhin climbed off the carriage seat as it pulled up before the manor house. In the week since Avena’s mugging, she hadn’t tried to join the training once. Hadn’t come near him at all. She just drifted like a ghost around the yard when she wasn’t inside the lab becoming a second Dualayn.
The carriage door opened and a pale-faced Avena stepped out. She had a frailness about her, a tremble in her fingers as she took Miguil’s larger hand to help her step down. She held her dark-green skirt with her other hand, her twin tails of brown hair bobbing with her movement. A hollowness echoed in her eyes when they met Ōbhin’s.
Hers darted away.
“Let’s get the patients inside and see what we can do with them,” said Dualayn. “Avena, I’ll need your help with the initial exams. I think one of the women shall be easy to heal, but I have reservations about the man and the other woman.”
“Of course, Father,” Avena said, her voice soft, almost a whisper.
The fiery rose bristling with thorns who’d stood up against the bandits had been replaced by this wilting violet. She vanished inside the open doors of the house, leaving the hot sunlight behind. Ōbhin wiped sweat from his brow, disgusted at what he’d done.
“What’s wrong with her?” Miguil asked in a low voice. “I’ve never seen her like this.”
“I was too hard on her,” Ōbhin muttered, lashing himself. Trying to keep her safe only hurt her worse.
“I never thought anyone could leash her.” Miguil closed the carriage doors. “Feels wrong.”
“She’s not resonating with a healthy tone,” Ōbhin said, staring down at his sable gloves. I managed to destroy her in a different way.
*
Avena slipped out of the lab. Of the three, the younger of the two women was recovering. Avena needed help to get her into a guest bed and out of the lab. Dualayn planned to work hard on the other two. She could already see the manic delight in his eyes.
He had ideas. Tests. He would do all he could to heal them, working day and night, pushing himself to unhealthy levels. She should object, but this timidity weighed on her. She couldn’t trust herself any longer. She felt betrayed by her body. Her mind. It had her off-balance, withdrawn.
The emptiness hadn’t felt this close to her in years. It was swallowing her bit by bit. The more she worried about her fainting spells, the less strength she had to keep away that hollow void in her.
She hovered on the edge of becoming that silent girl again, too scared to be noticed. For two years after her mother murdered her sister and her father abandoned her, Avena hadn’t spoken. A patient woman named Daughter Heana had coaxed her out of this unfeeling void. She’d brought Colour to Avena’s world.
Every day it paled more and more.
Dualayn had worked a
