And when it did, the quiet it left behind felt less like containment and more like patience. As ifithad decided to wait rather than being made to.
I looked to see where the girl had gone. She'd slipped back into the settlement's flow without a ripple, as if she'd never paused to crouch in front of me.
I looked back at my hand.
Whatever she'd confirmed, she was keeping it to herself. I hoped. Or maybe it wasn’t that simple. For my sake, I hoped that things were simple here.
Vorn found me when the light was failing.
Not that the light failed much here. The valley had its own kind of illumination, bursts of steam breathed their pale blue-white into the dark, the hot springs threw up mist that caught and held whatever light was available, softened it, and gave it back. It wasn’t fully dark in the valley. Just differently lit.
It was eerie yet gently soothing.
I sat near the edge of the settlement, watching the mist move across the valley floor, when he lowered himself onto the rockbeside me with the ease of a man who had done this specific thing many times.
“Thiece wants to speak with you,” he said.
I sniffed, not looking at him. “In a language I don't understand?”
“I'll translate for you.”
“And is Thiece okay with that?”Thiece— the name sat strangely in my mouth the first time I tried it, rhyming with the geese that never came this far north. I looked at him sideways. “Why?”
He was quiet for a moment. “She says you carry something that doesn’t belong in this place.”
I kept my expression still. “I don't know what that means.”
“I think we all do.”
I looked back at the valley. The mist moved in slow, rolling banks, catching light from everything and nothing. Beautiful in its own quiet, unassuming way.
“What does she want from me?” I asked.
“A conversation,” he said. “And to see if you’re a danger.”
I looked at him then. “If I were a danger, Vorn, why would I be your prisoner?” I asked him, and he gave me a stare that told me he didn’t think I was a prisoner.
“You’re not my prisoner, Amarya.”
“Tell that to the ones you kidnapped me from. Tell that to my tied hands.”
“Which I cut you free of, a short time later.” He squinted at me. “Are you trying to change the subject? It won’t work.”
I would neither confirm nor deny.
“She thinks I’m a danger? To them?”
“To everyone.” He looked at me steadily. “The things walking the land we haven’t seen for many years — the creatures, the wrongness of it all — she says it started when people like you stopped declaring.”
I went very still.Declaring?
“Declaring?”
“People who carry more than theychoose.” His pale eyes were steady. “In the old language, they had a word for it. It’s what the institutions were made for. It’s why they have the Chosen.”
I thought about the Verei Kahn. About the Chosen ones. About the girl I'd been when I first understood that what I carried inside me was larger than what a normal girl was allowed to be. I then made the choice that has shaped every day of my life since.
“What's the word?” I asked.
