AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Annassa Soteira smoothed Cassia’s hair back from her clammy forehead. “The memory of sunlight cannot keep me from those who need my healing.”
“These must be my memories and thoughts. You are in my mind.”
“We are here together, and we will set you to rights in no time. Meanwhile, Alea and I are sitting on our terrace, and you are in your guest bed at Rose House.”
Tears spilled from Cassia’s eyes, and her breath shuddered in her chest. “I thought it was real. I thought I had lost Orthros. I can’t—I cannot. Never again.”
“You need never leave Orthros, unless you wish to.”
Cassia met the Annassa’s eyes. She saw the truth there, the secret one she knew and treasured. “I don’t ever want to go back to Tenebra. I want to stay in Orthros forever.”
“Then you will.”
“Is it too late?” A hacking cough interrupted Cassia. Heave after heave, it burst from her chest and left agony in its wake. “If this is the end—I want—the Gift.”
The uproar outside the door went quiet. The room faded into shadow. The space around Cassia seemed to fill with the silent music of joy and glimmers of unseen starlight that she could feel. Annassa Alea turned from the crowd at the door and together, the Queens of Orthros smiled at Cassia.
Annassa Soteira touched the top of Cassia’s head. “That is a sacred request. We will honor it.”
“If it must be now, I am not sorry. I can hardly wait. I want it so much.”
“You shall have your Gifting under happier circumstances than this. Your life is not in danger.”
Disappointment made tears cloud Cassia’s vision again. When relief dried them, she could see the desolate sickroom around her again and smell the sweaty bedclothes on which she lay. “What happened to me?” she rasped. “I collapsed…after I left the Dexion’s study. What did the mages do to me?”
“Your body is running over with Apprentice’s Toddy.”
“Only that, again!” Cassia cleared her throat, but that only made the pain worse. “I feel as if he poisoned me.”
Queen Soteira put her hand over Cassia’s heart, her face grave. “There is the scar of necromancy here. The Gift Collector turned medicine into malady. In normal doses, the tonic is merely relaxing, but this dose was so high, you fell unconscious. It entered through your lungs.”
“I breathed it. Skleros dosed me with his smoke.”
“This horrifies you in a personal way,” Queen Soteira observed.
Cassia looked away from her benevolent gaze. “Can you see all my thoughts, Annassa?”
“I could, but I do not. I am not here to slay the monsters in your mind. If you choose to introduce me to them, though, I will help you tame them to be your liegehounds.”
“The monster of which we speak cannot be changed.”
“They can all be changed.”
“This one is what it is—but I have yet to become it. I hope I will never have to.” Cassia coughed again. “Is everyone else all right? Only Lio could have escaped inhaling Skleros’s smoke.”
“The necromancer crafted a dose that would affect only you, targeting your life force. I am cleansing every vestige of his magic from you as we speak.”
“Rudhira has told me of your great powers against necromancy.”
“The mind healers who passed their teachings down to me understood the ways of evil before people ever settled in the lands that are now Cordium and Tenebra.”
Warmth and strength filled the hollowness in Cassia’s chest and emanated through her entire body. The pain vanished. She felt like a cup that had been empty all along, but was now full for the first time and running over. If only she could feel this way all the time.
“You are using your magic from all the way across Selas,” Cassia marveled.
“That is no distance at all. I would reach much farther for you.”
Cassia glanced at the crowd Queen Alea held at bay.
