Page 66 of Daughter of the Dark Sun
“We can cross there, I think.” He stopped, head cocked to the side as if remembering something. “Your voices are not so unique, Mireithren. As a boy, when my mother, when… when she was alive,” he paused and gulped before resuming. “She taught me how to shadewalk. I heard a woman’s voice. She called her Amaren, the Silver Maiden. An ancestor of ours, she said, a shadewalker so powerful that when she died, her memory lived on in the Shadow-weave we call upon. I heard her again the day before you came to me. She spoke of your coming and told me to find a guide in the silver forest. To hunt for the truth. I think there we will find our passage to the West and this city you speak of.”
To hunt for the truth. Laisha had something similar about her people, how they sought the truth of what happened to their Goddess. Could it be her luck? Did Therat too hear the voice of Eithranren, know a different fate for them? The idea of the Goddess being wrong about sacrificing Therat made her head spin.
“Have you heard of the rumors of people with gold chains around their ankles?” Therat asked.
Apattar nodded her head.
“People say they are slaves from the West. Did your pale woman say anything about slaves?”
Why is he asking about this all of a sudden?
“It-it’s complicated.” Apattar felt strange defending the slavers, even if their ingenuity allowed them to change the world.
Therat’s jaw clenched with her reply. A pained look colored his eyes. She wanted to know more, but sensed it had something to do with the tangle of dark memories he wasn’t ready to share yet.
“I am sure of it, we must go to the great forest,” he said with a strained voice. Apattar placed a soft hand on his forearm; the pain in his eyes melted away.
Nodding, Apattar closed her eyes and conjured the image of the northern edges of the desert to her mind, to a place she once visited four years ago and longer now on a quest to find her freedom. The portal sprang to life, a dim amber glow emanating from the shifting glass-like surface.
“I can’t take us there, but I can bring us to the northern edges of the desert. Are you up for a bit of walking?” She turned to Therat, who had a grin on his face.
“With you by my side during the cold nights, I’d walk through the frozen mountains if we needed to.”
Blood rushed to her face, cheeks flush with giddiness. A giggle escaped at the thought of Therat following her around like a puppy. As if she wouldn’t do the same.
I’ve gone and ruined everything, just for you. Do I hate you, love you, despise you, crave you? Do I even care what I feel, so long as you are mine?
thirty-one
Metamorphosis
Therat never journeyed thisfar north of the great Madhira Desert. The Crags, slate gray mountains jutting up in a protective ring around the northern boundary of the sea of sand, now disappeared into the haze of the southern horizon. Hills of green rose in the west, and past them flowed the great Andesiri River.
After nearly six weeks of travel during the dying month of the year, Therat and Mireithren seemed to be drawing close to the great forest. Dead, charred trees scattered across a rocky and barren landscape, whole sections carved from the earth. Mireithren said she read about this place in one of her hundreds of books. The God Fists, she called them. An ancient part of the forest once sprawling across the northern reaches of the continent, now reduced to a land of ash and craters. In the fallout of the Discordance, the stars fell to the earth, desecrating the beloved child of the Green Goddess Kathiél.
It should have been agonizing, spending this much time alone with one person. Even when he and Adon traveled in their younger years, Therat would split off for a day to find peace. But now, isolation would be torturous. At night, he shifted into his cougar form and hunted for food, racing back with his quarry to where Mireithren waited by a fire of blue flames. Though he knew her more than capable of defending herself, a thousand scenarios of harm befalling his lover haunted their time apart.
Therat wanted to know everything about Mireithren. Wanted to make her smile with bliss and erase all memory of pain. Every cell yearned to feel her warmth against him, to taste every part of her exquisite body. Each night, they inevitably found themselves tangled together, learning all the ways they could make each other scream with pleasure until they fell asleep curled up under the stars. Some nights, their love was tender, every soft touch an exploration of the other. Other times, pain mixed with ecstasy, each devouring the other with their Shadow-weave. The black mark under his left ear throbbed with pain, a constant reminder of the way he fell under the siren’s spell.
Therat sometimes thought of the blue door of his ancestral home, the silver raindrops and crescent moons painted on by generations past. In another lifetime, if the gods never broke theworld, he could almost see Mireithren standing by his side, a young child playing with paintbrushes at their feet.
How could he be so in love? Did it even matter why?
Mireithren spoke often during the day, almost giddy to have someone to talk to. She spoke little of her childhood and even less of her father. Instead, she recounted the histories read in books or her prison breaks during the day with her handmaiden, a woman she spoke of fondly. Therat wondered how often she had experienced companionship behind the white Wall of the Named Houses. He had a feeling it was limited to furtive interactions. He wanted to know more of her childhood, but could never ask her to open the wounds carved into her face. Every time the thought of her father harming the maiden crossed his mind, the Shadow-weave inside lurched, screaming for the wretched man’s blood. Therat would kill anyone who dared lay a hand on Mireithren again.
Today, Mireithren did not speak. She woke with a scream, drenched in sweat, lips trembling as she clutched her breast. Therat held her close, but she never spoke of the nightmare. She smiled every time he looked at her, but her eyes betrayed the maiden’s pain.
The sun reached its peak, but it gave little warmth to the land below. The winds blew hard from the west, cold hands piercing through even the thick cloak on Therat’s back. The two stopped for rest under a cluster of dead trees, their backs to the wind as they ate.
“Do you want to talk about it all?” Therat asked at last, the question burning in his mind since the morning. He placed a hand on Mireithren’s leg.
“Not really,” she mumbled.
“Can we talk about something, at least? To take your mind off it?”
Mireithren nodded.
“Hmm, I’ll never forget the first time I saw you at night. I realize now that meeting you again on the day I hate the most cannot be a coincidence.”
