“Good book?” she said, drawing his attention before her thought process ran any further aground on itself.
His head came up, though it took him a second to pull himself out of the written world and refocus on her. When he did, his lips curved in a long, slow smile. “Not as useful as I would’ve liked.” He flashed her the cover as he closed the book and set it aside; it was one of the histories of the star bloodline that she had skimmed through earlier and bypassed as being too superficial to be of any real use. “You look better.”
“I’m not covered in frost and wearing soaked jeans and an expression of terror, you mean.” Even saying it brought a burst of pride laced with deeper, less sure emotions.
“Something like that.” He took her hand, idly turning it so they could both see her forearm, where the scribe’s mark was unchanged, even though everything was different. “Big day.”
“Yeah.” The grin felt like it lit her from the inside out. “I’ve got magic.”
“I never doubted it.”
They sat like that for a moment, and Jade found her thoughts going not to the magic, but to what had happened just before she cast the spell. “I talked to Shandi again. She told me more about what happened right before the massacre.”
“More about your mother?”
“Not directly.” Before she realized she was going to, that she needed to, she was telling him about Shandi’s revelation, how it explained so much, yet didn’t give her any options. The words spilled out of her, tumbling over one another. “I’m not responsible for the will of the gods,” she finished, “and I can’t undo the bond between us. Or maybe I could, but to what end? Denny and Samxel are gone, just like my parents are gone. Shandi—” She broke off, frustrated. “I don’t know what to say to her. She’s been harboring a grudge for twenty-six years. It seems inane somehow to say that I’m sorry for her loss. More, if you ask me what I really think, it’s that she needs to grow up and get over it already. It wasn’t my fault, and blaming me for it is . . . pointless.”
“Shandi’s not stupid. I have a feeling she knows that.”
Jade looked up at him. “Meaning?”
“Maybe it stopped being about you a long time ago and became the thing that keeps her going from day to day,” he suggested. “And maybe she even realizes that herself, but is afraid to let it go, afraid to let herself care for you, knowing what the future might hold for all of us.”
“That’s . . .” Jade trailed off, thought for a moment, then finished, “. . . not the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Shit. Give me a minute here.” Needing to make a mental shift, she pulled herself up to sit cross- legged in the bed, with the sheet pulled over her legs. Pressing her fingertips to her temples, she said, “You’re right. She lost her family to war; it’s possible that she doesn’t want to run the risk of living through that sort of loss again. Although I’d like to point out that unless the Nightkeepers win the war, she wouldn’t have long to grieve, because we’re all going to be wiped out in thirty or so months.” Her stomach knotted on the thought, which suddenly seemed far more real than it had before.
His expression went grim. “Even if the Xibalbans and Banol Kax are defeated and the cycle of time restarts, there are going to be casualties. It’s only natural that we’re going to worry about each other more and more as time passes, and that we’re going to want to see the people we care about stay safe.”
Hope—her own personal demon—stirred to life within her. “Are you saying you’d rather I stay safely back behind the lines?” She didn’t want to have that debate . . . but she thought she wouldn’t mind hearing him make the pitch.
“We’re talking about you and Shandi.”
“Right.” Her heart took a little slide in her chest, though, warning that her emotions were far too close to the surface. In the space of a few days, she’d taken a lover who threatened to become too important to her. She’d been to hell and back, had her worldview shifted, and met her mother, though she hadn’t recognized it at the time. And now she’d found her magic. She supposed it was understandable that her normal defenses would be down. But that didn’t mean she was going to cave to the first hint of pressure. She was through being that woman.
She snagged a piece of French toast off the tray and took a bite, both because she was starving and to buy herself a moment before she said, “You think I should . . . what? Stay in the background because it’ll make her feel more secure? That’d be an illusion and you know it. Furthermore, it’s bullshit.” She didn’t know when or how, but she suddenly realized she’d come back around to the idea of wanting to fight. Or maybe she did know. Maybe it was the moment she’d accidentally leveled a showroom’s worth of furniture with ice magic. If that wasn’t a fighter’s talent, she didn’t know what was.
An image flashed in her mind’s eye: that of a dark-haired baby with clenched fists and a scowl on her face.
“That’s not what I’m saying at all.” Lucius paused, considering. Finally, he said, “There were a last few lines in the journal, at the very bottom, that I haven’t told anyone about. I felt like they were a private message between the journalist and the next Prophet, so I kept them to myself. Now that we know who the journalist was, I think maybe they were a message, but not for me. I think she may have meant it for you.”
The air trickled out of Jade’s lungs. Oh, Vennie. “What did it say?”
“I may be flubbing a word or two here, but the gist was: ‘Magic isn’t what’s going to save the world. Love is. So find someone to love, and tell them so. Better yet, show them your love by making them happy rather than miserable. Don’t be an idiot like I was.’ ” Jade’s eyes filled. “She was talking about Joshua.”
“And you.”
“Maybe. Probably. And I’m sure she meant it at the time.” But an aching hollow opened up beneath her diaphragm.
Lucius tilted his head as he looked at her. She halfway expected him to hug her, soothe her. And a large part of her would’ve welcomed it, for too many reasons. He didn’t touch her, though, beyond the hand he still held. Instead, he said, “It wasn’t your fault the gods chose Shandi . . . and it wasn’t your mother’s fault she was seventeen.”
“I know that. Of course I know that. It’s just . . .” She paused, trying to sort through her thoughts.
Finally, she said, “It’s like there are two versions of her inside my head now, two different thought chains pertaining to her. On one hand, I pity her. I picture this spoiled, ego-driven kid who wasn’t much different from half the teenagers I’ve ever met. My heart hurts at the thought of her being so alone, isolated from both her own family and her in- laws, convinced that she’d been chosen as the next Prophet but the others couldn’t see it. How can I blame her for that? We’re doing the same thing now, trying to interpret the will of the gods from old prophecies and and a few scattered clues. When I think of her going through the library spell alone, it makes me so sad for her. And then, when she came back out and tried to go home . . .” She trailed off as the hollowness inside her turned to an ache.