Page 4 of Keldori By Daybreak

There she’d been Sarah, town gossip and local harpy. Here she was Sorcha, Magick healer and—well. Local harpy.

“My ulcers are fine.” I tried to pull the quilt back over my face, but Sorcha swatted at my hands.

“She saw Lady Saergrim,” Ciarán said from the corner of the room to where he’d retreated.

“I told you to call her Gams,” I snapped.

“And I told you, I’m not calling the Frozen God ‘Gams’.” His orange eyes glowed at me from the shadows of his corner.

“You saw Ethel?” Sorcha snorted. “Did you tell her that her damn cat peed on my pillow?”

Jonquil meowed where she was nestled at the foot of my bed, as if she knew Sorcha was talking about her.

“Wren saw Ethel?” A second old woman bustled into my room. Gladys—or rather, Aoife—had been Sarah’s more pleasant counterpart in Keel Watch Harbor, but that didn’t mean I wanted more people surrounding my bedside. “Should I summon Eliza? She’ll want to know.”

“No!” I asserted. The last thing I needed, other than all these people crowding me, was my mother. “It’s fine. Gams is okay. Thank you, Aoife.”

“Obviously not if she’s wasting Magick to summon you,” Sorcha tutted. “What did she want?”

I forced myself to sit up despite my injuries. There was something embarrassing about being the only person lying down in a busy room.

“She was warning me.” I balled the folds of my quilt in my fists and refused to look anyone in the face, instead watching Jonquil where she was curled up by my feet. “If we don’t reseal the Rift, the volcanoes in the mountains will erupt and seal it for us.”

A heavy silence fell over the women as they stewed in my words.

“When?” Aoife finally asked.

“About a month from now, give or take depending on ‘other factors’, but she didn’t say what those were. The mountains are already waking up. It isn’t safe here. She wants us to evacuate.”

This gave us less time to prepare. Less time to figure out how we’d get past two armies and the storm, all while fleeing south.

“That was it?” Sorcha sniffed. “That was all she wanted?”

“Is the threat of a volcano doomsday not enough for you?” Aoife snapped.

“It’s not that it’s not enough,” Sorcha said. “I’m just tired of Ethel making everything about her.”

“She’s the Frozen God. Everything is about her.” Aoife shook her head. “And just because her cat peed on your pillow doesn’t mean we let her sacrifice herself.”

“And what’s the alternative?” Sorcha snorted. “We sacrifice ourselves trying to make it through her storm?”

“We find a Lyrian,” I remembered, a plan rapidly forming in my head. “Gams said a Lyrian would be able to help us get back to Keldori without going through the storm and the Rift, and we can reseal Gams from the other side.”

That wasn’t quite what she’d said. She’d been very clear to flee south and let the volcanoes do their work, but if a Lyrian could reunite me with my mother in Keldori, why couldn’t a Lyrian help us get to Keldori to reseal Gams? The others, they didn’t need to know that wasn’t Gams’s exact directive. I was a Saergrim, too, after all. I had authority.

“A Lyrian?” Sorcha repeated. “Very convenient when you consider they all live in an unfindable city.”

“It’s not that unfindable. Orla, Fana, and I, we’ve been there.”

“We’ll talk about it when everyone’s awake,” Aoife said evenly. “I think it’s more important to realize that Ethel calling Wren proves a Nightmare can be summoned from within the same realm. They’re both on this side of the Rift, yet Ethel was able to summon her.”

“So?” Sorcha said.

“So, it leaves Wren vulnerable to anyone else in Skalterra who knows her name.”

Sorcha’s head swiveled so fast in my direction, I thought her neck might snap.

“Who all knows your full name?” Sorcha demanded.