Page 56 of Realm of Thieves

“My mother,” I tell her, the memories coming over me like a blackened cloak. They want to smother me until there’s only darkness. I feel like I’m trying to stay above water, so I talk fast, too afraid to dwell in it. “My mother was dying. It came one evening, we don’t know what it was. It was as if her body started to shut down. The pain she was in…she lost her voice from screaming. Her eyes started to bleed, her skin turned…like she was one big bruise. She couldn’t walk or eat or do anything but die. She could only just die, painfully and slowly.”

The heat of tears prickles behind my eyes but I ignore them. They can fall if they want. Brynla is looking at me with quiet horror, though I can’t tell if it’s from my confession or from her own pain.

“Everyone knew of my gift,” I tell her. “I was only thirteen; I’d barely had time to understand what I could and couldn’t do. I was able to fix a broken bird’s wing. I could heal cuts that our horses gotafter a rough day’s foxhunting. I was able to cure Vidar’s terrible headaches, at least for a little while. And suddenly my father told me to heal my mother. And I knew I couldn’t.” I shake my head, a tear spilling down and stinging the fresh cuts on my cheek. “I just knew that I couldn’t. Is that what doomed me? That I didn’t believe in myself?”

“What did you do?” she whispers.

“What I had to. I would have done anything for my mother, anything. My father never had to make me do anything. I stayed by her side, I put my hands everywhere I could, her heart, her lungs, her head, and I felt her pain, this sickness, this dark disease. Death. I knew it was death. And then I felt my energy leave my body and go into hers and I had a hope and a prayer. I stayed with her a whole day and a whole night and then when the morning broke, she was dead.”

Her eyes widen, then twitch, shifting through pain and sympathy. “I’m so sorry.”

I swallow the lump in my throat, the sheer panic of sorrow clawing in my chest, like a ravenous beast that’s waiting to be set loose and destroy me. I don’t let the beast out often. It needs my grief to survive. “Not as sorry as I was. Not as sorry as my father was, who blamed me for my failure. What use was this power if I couldn’t use it to save the woman he loved? What use was I?”

“But it wasn’t your fault,” she says, shaking her head. “Clearly, she was very ill. You did what you could.”

“I did and it wasn’t enough to save her. What good is the power to get rid of a headache and heal a cut if I can’t save my own mother, my own flesh and blood?”

She lets out a shaking breath and leans against the cave wall. “I’m sorry you couldn’t save her. But you can save others.” She closes her eyes, her head dipping down as her hands go to her stomach, her breath coming in sharp.

I hate watching her like this.

“You saved Lemi,” she says. “You can heal; it’s your gift to use.” She lifts her head and meets my gaze, her eyes watering. “Please use it on me.”

I should be nodding. I should be at her side, doing all I can to help.

But I just hear my father’s voice.

Hear him calling me a disappointment. That I’ll never amount to anything because I failed my first test. My final test.

“Please,” she asks again, the desperation in her voice nearly choking her. Her brow is crumpled, anguished, pleading, and I want nothing more than to make her pain go away, to bring her relief.

But it’s my own pain, the fear of it, that’s stopping me.

“If I fail…” I whisper.

“Then you fail,” she says, her eyes squeezing shut as she lets out a low cry. “You can’t hurt me more than the pain I’m already in.” She manages to look at me, her gaze piercing. “You owe me this.”

She’s right. I do owe her this. I owe her a lot of things, considering what I’ve done to her life.

I nod, feeling resolve, and before I can change my mind, I look through my pack again. I take out the blanket, laying it down on the softest surface of the cave, a mix of airy pumice and fine sand beside the fire.

“Lie down,” I tell her, my voice coming out shallow. “On your side.”

She staggers over to the blanket and collapses on her hands and knees before going into the fetal position. The pain is palpable. I wonder if I’ll feel hers like I did with my mother. A different kind of agony, but an agony all the same.

I carefully walk around her so I’m at her back, and then I get down behind her so that I’m lying right behind her, trying not to get too close so I don’t make her feel uncomfortable. I take in a deep breath and put my arm over her side, moving slow. She still startles under my touch.

“I’m just putting my arm over you,” I say, making sure she knows exactly what I’m doing. “I’m going to put my hand where the pain is. You just tell me where.”

She swallows, her breath quickening.

I place my palm on her stomach and she takes my hand in hers, moving it farther down.

I swallow thickly, trying to concentrate on the task at hand and not where my dirty thoughts want to go. I pay attention to the feel of her lower belly, the way it’s still soft and curving even under the leather armor.

“This might work better if I could touch your bare skin,” I say, my mouth at her ear so that she can hear me over the ever-present roar of the sandstorm outside the cave.

She nods, letting out a whimper of pain.

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