Page 18 of Daughter of No Worlds

I must have barely made it to the Orders’ gates.

I’m told I collapsed when the door opened. That I choked out, in raspy, fractured Aran, “My name is Tisaanah. I am from Threll. Friend of Zeryth Aldris. I must speaking him.”

I remember the way the woman’s silver hair caught in the waning sunlight, how I let out a weak, shuddering cry when she touched my back.

But that’s all.

Chapter Six

Chattering.

The sound circled around me, like bells twinkling the rise and fall of music.

I opened my eyes to see a silver brocade pattern through streams of light. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust enough to realize that I was looking at a patterned wall.

Gods, my neck hurt.

I was lying, mercifully, on my stomach. My body was cradled by white blankets that were thicker and softer than anything I had ever felt in Threll — though then again, in Threll, it was so hot that we would have no need for such things.

I blinked. A groan creaked from my lips.

The sound stopped. It was only when a plump woman’s torso, clad in a simple blue blouse and a long, billowing skirt, entered my vision that I realized it had been a voice.

I lifted my chin, ignoring the stiff pain in my neck, just as the woman bent down to look at me. She was perhaps in her mid-thirties, with white skin and silver hair that was piled messily on top of her head, leaving some curly tendrils hanging around her round cheeks.

A Valtain.

All at once, I realized that I must be in Ara.

At the Order of Midnight.

The woman said something to me in Aran, but she spoke so quickly and my mind was so fuzzy that I let her words slip through my fingers without translating them.

The woman smiled at me, her eyes crinkling with concern.

“Tisaanah?” She said. Her voice was high and light. No wonder it sounded like bells. “Your name?”

She spoke slowly, emphasizing every word in a manner that might have been patronizing if she hadn’t seemed soaggressively kind.

I nodded. “Yes.”

Her smile broadened. She placed her palm on her own chest. “Willa.”

“Hello,” I whispered.

“Hello, de-ehr.”

De-ehr. De-ehr.I prodded my brain, searching every Aran word I’d ever read. It was so much easier in writing.

Slowly, it clicked.De-ehr. Dear.Term of affection.

I could do this. The corners of my mouth turned up.

This small sign of comprehension, was, apparently, all the encouragement that Willa needed to launch herself back into a chirpy onslaught of words. I had to force myself to follow her sentences.

“—been out for quite some time. I needed to come in here to heal you three times a day at first. You had a bad infection.” She shook her head. “Very bad.”

In-fect-shun.

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