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I lean in closer, my heart beating fast. “Can you tell me more about her? Please? You hardly ever speak of her.” I want to know about her gift most of all, but I don’t say it. I just wait.
A sad expression wobbles across his face, but it doesn’t drag him down like it used to. “You are so much like her, it hurts sometimes to look at you.” He smiles softly. “I am sure the only thing you inherited from me is my crazy hair.”
My hand shoots up to my wayward waves, and I smirk.
His humor fades and he sighs. “I didn’t know what drew me to your mother in the first place—except that she was breathtaking, of course. But there was something else I couldn’t figure out.”
The fire illuminates half of his sallow face. His eyes see somewhere far, far away. “She showed up in the market one day. I had never seen her in Utsanek before, yet I felt as if I had known her my whole life. She chose me, someone endlessly plagued by darkness.Me.” A shimmering reflection appears in his eyes, and he blinks it away. “I still cannot understand it.”
He clears his throat. “When we were together, there was never any darkness at all. She had a way of setting my fears aside, and I found it hard to be apart from her for even a moment. When she showed me what she could do, how she could keep the ténesomni at bay with a mere flick of her wrist, she awoke in me a consuming instinct to guard her.” His hands release mine, and he drags a fingernail across the wood grain.
“Maybe it was because the light within her could not be held back,” he continues, “but she became so restless living in the city. I never knew much about her background, and she turned strangely evasive when I would mention it. I started to wonder if she even came from the Vale at all. All I knew was the day she showed up, it became a better place.”
Oh, Mada ...I squeeze my eyes closed, trying to picture her.What secrets did you withhold?
“But with each sola the valefolk hunted, she grew more and more distressed. And the power within her that held the shadows back became even more potent. I was afraid for her safety and sought counsel from her brother.”
My mouth falls open. “She had a brother?”
He nods. “Yes, and he was equally as gifted as Ellehra. Only he took a different view of it. He insisted that if she could change her attitude and seek how the darkness could be appeased, there could be harmony and prosperity as a result.” His fists clench on the table. “To my everlasting shame, I listened to him, not her. I chose to back the Shrouded instead of the solas.”
A heaviness presses down on my soul as I watch my father rake his hands into his hair and stare at the tabletop. His shoulders rise and fall as he tries to gain control of his breaths. I would reach out to him, to offer him comfort, but I feel just as wrecked as he does.
“After they took her from us,” he says, raising his eyes to find mine, “I pretended not to see the same gift in you. It was small at first, easily ignored. Or hidden with a good lantern. If I could not see it, and nobody else could, I didn’t need to think about what it could mean for your future. But I always knew you gave light back to me, as Ellehra did.” His eyebrows go up, pleading. “Can you ever forgive me for pushing it—you—away?”
“Yes,” I say. “Of course, I can.”
We sit there in silence for a while. My mind winds through the events of the last few weeks. How I noticed my gift spark to life the moment the solas came back to the Vale. How I witnessed even the smallest light dispelling the darkness. How Elyon has led my steps to those who are hurting and awoken a yearning to see the shadows broken.
“What should I do with it?”
He sniffs loudly and looks at me. “With what?”
“My gift. Mylight.”
Folding his hands and leaning his chin into them, he thinks for a beat and sighs.
“I do not want to tell you to hide it, the way I did for seventeen years. It is yours. A part of you, as it was your mother. As you are a part of her.” Shaking hands move to encase mine. “I know it means you will be endangered, but maybe ...” He gulps and steels himself. “Maybe Elyon meant for you to shine at such a time as this.”
I suck sharply through my nostrils, struggling to absorb all he’s told me. Who is this broken man who sits across from me? Broken not as he was, torn to shreds by guilt and fear, but broken away from the influence of that fear over his mind and heart.
Without waiting for me to respond, he reaches into his pocket and pulls something out. He holds it up, and it dangles between us.
The necklace.
My eyes go wide, and so do his, for as he holds it, the dull metal begins to glow, bright and piercing. He stands up, the chair scraping the floor, and comes to me. I grab my hair in two fistfuls and hold it up and out of the way as he ties it around my neck.
“Amyrah,” he says, coming to kneel before me, “my ‘quiet song.’ You were made for so much more than this shadowland.”
Pressing the beautiful pendant to my throat, I slip off the chair and hold my father tight.
29. Wehna
WEHNA
“ELYON ÉRIT AGÉRTU.”
The phrase spirals around the secluded sanctuary of the forest, acting as the cue for the congregation to disperse. Bryn smiles at his wife as he closes his book and joins the stream of people. I stand in the middle of it all, unable to make myself move, watching women find each other with outstretched arms, men slap each other heartily on the back, and parents struggle to keep track of their rambunctious children.
