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“No, that feels entirely different—like someone has stabbed your heart with a pickaxe. I should know. I felt it when you died in Vindrake’s cavern after he tortured...” Jireo scrunched his nose up. “I’m sorry, Alora. I know you mustn’t be reminded of that.”
“It’s okay, really. It doesn’t bother me anymore. Not since Laethan emptied everything out.”
“So you don’t have PTSD anymore?” Beth offered Alora a glass of water, which she drank with greedy abandon, soothing her parched mouth.
“No PTSD for me. I’m not so sure about Kaevin, though.” Alora was only half-way kidding.
Raelene slipped through the door, clapping her hands when she spied Alora. “You’re awake! It seems you spend too much time sleeping these days.”
“Could be because I’m a teenager,” Alora teased.
As Raelene smoothed Alora’s hair away from her face with a gentle touch, she looked a little weepy, but Alora was enjoying the lighthearted banter too much to let her grandmother go all mushy on her. She thought of a distraction.
“How’s Bardamen? I haven’t heard anything except that I saved him.”
It was the right question. Grandmother laughed, slapping her thigh and gasping for air.
“He’s Bardamen, just the same. He wasn’t awake more than half a finger before he was arguing with Mera. And there she was weeping over him for days. But when he piqued her pride she was shouting in his face and declaring no woman would ever be able to tolerate him.”
“What were they arguing about?” asked Alora.
“Mera mentioned she was considering taking the oath to defend the Craedenza. I’m certain she hoped Bardamen might be encouraged to express his feelings for her. And of course Bardamen doesn’t wish her to take the oath and be bound forever to Glaenshire. But instead of spilling his heart and asking her to marry him, he spouted off about her having too few years to make such a decision. I think he may have called it a foolish decision, as well.”
“It was pretty bad,” Beth agreed. “Doc was still in the room, at the time. And he told them if they killed each other, they could just stay dead. He was done saving people for the night.”
“But that’s terrible,” Alora protested. “Why are you laughing, Grandmother?”
“Because I’ve realized who Mera and Bardamen remind me of... me and my Laeander.”
“You and Grandfather?”
“Yes, dear. Your grandfather and I fought like enemy warriors for moons. Until one day he saw a man on his knees at my feet in the village square. Thinking the man was proposing marriage, Laeander declared his love at the top of his lungs, while running to intercept me. He knocked the man over in his haste to take a knee and ask for my promise.” She reared her head back and laughed again, until tears were running down her face. “Of course the poor man was only searching for a toggle that had dropped from his tunic.”
Beth was giggling. “What did he do when he realized he’d made a mistake?”
“He stood and kissed me, as I’d never been kissed before. It was quite scandalous, for I was not of his clan. And as the bearer for Stone Clan already, I couldn’t leave my council position. But his Forest Clan village was far from Stone Clan, and none there knew his family. He returned with me, and we were promised, passing him off as Stone Clan, as his eyes were not so very light green. And none were the wiser.”
“And that’s why I can draw power from water, stone, and forest,” Alora told Beth.
“Yep. And you can transport people from one place to another and from one realm to another. And you can sense evil. And you can manipulate emotions and do weird stuff with pain. And you can fight off evil and withstand torture. But...” Beth waggled one finger in the air. “But, you still have a panic attack if I suggest you go to a dance.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I’m just too busy to go to a dance. And I’m not invited to school dances anymore, since I’m homeschooling.”
“So you’d go if you were invited to a dance and you weren’t off on some adventure in Tenavae? Like, for instance, if there was a dance at the end of the summer at the community center?”
“Well, I don’t know,” Alora began, fighting the butterflies in her stomach.
“There’s a dance?” Kaevin limped over, sitting on the edge of the bed, his hand pressing against his abdomen. Carefully, Alora drew a bit more of his pain away, but not enough for him to notice.
“We’ll probably be in Serenshire at the end of the summer,” Alora protested. “We have to put off the trip now while Kaevin and Jireo are healing.”
Kaevin smiled, flashing his white teeth, freshly brushed with minty toothpaste. “If there’s a dance, we’ll be there. Nothing will keep us away, except perhaps if Vindrake has one of us bound in irons. Distance is no obstacle. One of many advantages of having a soulmate who’s also a bearer.”
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