It was only at Aliver’s urging and Hanish’s quiet whisper that she agreed to put the enormity of the world aside for just one day, the last they would spend with the ones they loved. From the middle hours of one morning, through an afternoon and evening, still further through the dark hours of the night and into the next sunrise. That was the span of time that Corinn and Aliver let the world wait for them. They spent it together with their children. For Corinn, it was a lifetime.
In the short span of time she had left to live, Corinn would cherish many moments from that single day. When she lowered the cowl from her chin was one such moment. She hated doing so and acquiesced only after Aaden had asked her to quite firmly. She searched his face for any sign of disgust. There was a tenseness in his jaw and a quiver on his left cheek and a sudden moistness that brimmed his eyes. But there was no disgust. He said, “Mother, look at that. Now why did they do that?” He sounded like an old woman, full of empathy. His fingers extended toward her, asking permission. She gave it with a nod and he touched her damaged face. To her surprise, she felt the warmth of the life within him, his skin soft, gentle. For a few seconds, she almost thought his touch had healed her. Then she raised the cowl into place.
A few days ago she would not have been content to sit with Benabe across the table from her. She would not have been able to look at Shen and acknowledge the loveliness of her round, brown face without fearing that it threatened her son’s legacy. She would not even have allowed her brother to be fully himself. As she sat with them, listening to the tale they had to tell, the things that had once seemed logical reactions to a predatory world now seemed like rules composed in a foreign language. She did not understand herself anymore. The woman she had been stood unmasked. She felt that she, in her own way, had been a puppet to base parts of her nature that should never have been allowed to rule her.
“Leave that for now,” Hanish said. She tried to.
They climbed up to the Terrace of First Light later in the morning. Elya’s children were there, almost too large now to all crowd into the space. They seemed to sense that something was wrong from the moment Corinn entered. They greeted her half-covered face with suspicion, sniffing her and scenting the air with their slim tongues. Corinn calmed them by sending soothing, yet somber thoughts to them.
“I don’t like them as much as Elya,” Aaden said. He turned apologetically to her. “I’m sorry to say that. They are incredible, Mother, but Elya is special. I don’t think that any of these would have saved me the same way she did. Do you?”
Corinn ran her palm over his head, all the answer she wished to give.
Still, when Aliver and Shen shot up into the air on Kohl’s back, Aaden clawed at her, begging to follow. Po, competitive as always, was eager to oblige. The four of them swept down from the palace, over the terraced layers of the city. They swept over the lower town and then beat their way higher. Corinn thought of the day when all four Akaran children had ridden horseback with their father. They had galloped out from the town and along the winding road over the island’s hills, down to that beach, the one she saw hundreds of feet below her now. That had been a memorable day. Perhaps, for these children, this was another such day. She hoped so.
They flew out to Haven’s Rock, where they stood in the wind and listened to Aliver eulogize his former tutor, Jason, and Leeka Alain of the Northern Guard, the first to slay a Numrek and the only one to ever run down fleeing sorcerers. He thanked the tutor for being the first to draw the map of the world in Aliver’s mind, for being such a lover of knowledge and a keeper of history. “It was he who first challenged my princely arrogance. I should have thanked him more for that before this.” About Leeka, he said, “And here, after years of service, his last deed. He returned to us and said the words that saved us for the now.” Looking at Corinn, he added, “In the end, he did what mattered. For that, he will not be forgotten.”
After that, they returned to joy. They dove down from heights like seabirds. They skimmed out over the water, the waves growing more and more pronounced as the sea grew deeper. Aaden shouted above the rushing air, “It’s wonderful, Mother. Let’s go faster. This is like Mena said!” Corinn did not know quite what he meant and she could not ask. She could go faster, though. She urged Po to do so.
A nd then all too quickly it was night. How tired they all were, or should be but were not really. The notion of sleeping hours away seemed so wasteful. When Aaden proposed that they stay together throughout the entire night, Corinn was amazed at how easily that problem was solved. Of course. Why sleep? There were not enough hours left to sleep! Listening to the two children’s cheers, Corinn could not help but think of that day long ago when her father promised them a late-night snowball fight. That night never came to be. This one would.
They had the servants stoke the fire in the center of a small amphitheater on Aliver’s terrace. Night sky clear and chilly above them, they curled up among the blankets and cushions and furs. So many things to remember: the shape of Shen’s teeth when her head was thrown back in laughter. The way Benabe could make any sentence into a song just by putting music in her voice. The stories Barad told, the tree trunk of a man, stone eyed, holding the children rapt with his deep voice.
Corinn would always remember the comfort she took when she slipped Aaden’s head from her lap, thinking he was asleep. She tried to move away, but he said, “Mother, it’s not over, is it?” She could not speak and his eyes were closed, but he did not need to hear or see her answer. “You’ll fix it. I know you will.”
A little later, after sleep finally overpowered both children beside the fire pit, the two monarchs sat beside each other on the stone bench that looked out over the harbor. They had both read yet another message, this one from Mena, describing what she intended to do. Corinn tried to reach out to her across the distance. She was tired enough that it almost worked. She did shoot up out of her body and above the palace. She flew, wingless, toward the north. But as with that time she had searched in vain for Dariel, she eventually came to a halt, hanging in the air, no feeling for where to go or how to reach her.
“Mena is a warrior. If anyone can hold back the Auldek, she can,” Aliver said. Then he asked her more about dream travel, about what it felt like to separate a soul from a body, and about what she knew of how the Auldek could hold spare life forces inside themselves. She had Rhrenna bring her documents the league had provided, and together the siblings talked through the fantastical horror of it. “What greater form of slavery could there be?” Aliver asked. “Enslaving not bodies but souls.”
Corinn did not answer, for she could think of none.
As Corinn had wanted to speak with her brother without other men’s voices, she had asked Barad and Hanish to stay among the others. Instead, she spoke with a quill and parchment. It made her choose her words carefully. She wrote, I know. I just wish I could have seen her again, and Dariel. I sent them both so far away. Now I can’t understand why I didn’t want them near me and Aaden. Don’t make Mena wait long. Go as fast as you can. Reach her. Fight beside her. If I could, I would go with you.
“I’ll get to her. I’ll do everything I can to end this before I end myself.”
I’ll do the same.
Aliver slid a hand over hers, held it there a moment. She did not like the quiet hopelessness of the gesture. She pulled her hand away, wrote, and turned the page so he could see.
I know what to do. I have the book.