Page 67 of Daughter of the Dark Sun
Mireithren turned to Therat, a curious look on her face. “I don’t understand. The day you hate the most?”
Therat clenched his jaw, forcing a breath of air down. He wanted to tell Mireithren about his parents, share what shaped him into the broken man before her. But a part of him never left the blood-stained oasis, experienced the horror over and over and over, hovering on the brink of insanity as his grief consumed him. Only Adon and his grandfather Nazith knew the truth of Therat’s pain—at least, part of it.
He swallowed the lump in his throat before forcing out the words.
“I ran from my ghosts the night I first saw you. My parents, they… they were murdered. A cult or ritual, I don’t know. We were camping in an oasis they brought us to often. A little thing, a cluster of palm trees, and a little lake shaped like a crescent moon. We were going to leave, but I saw a shooting star. I asked Mama to stay. I was chasing Adon in the dark, and when I turned around… when…” Therat trailed off, unable to finish sharing the rest of his darkest memory. He squeezed his eyes closed, trying to chase off the images forever burned into his mind.
Mireithren placed her hand on top of his.
“You don’t need to relive it again,” she said with a squeeze of her hand.
“It’s hard not to. It made me what I am today. I was too young to shadewalk on my own, but I tried. I could only think of saving Adon. In some twisted way, I got my wish.”
“Would you take it all back if you could?”
Therat thought often about the moment his life changed. For his entire life, the decision never haunted him—he would always save Adon, even if it meant sacrificing himself. But now, hewondered if that night brought him to Mireithren. If he couldn’t save his parents, he would take on a thousand curses if it meant finding hisliraes.
“It brought me to you,” he whispered.
“You’re irrational.”
“Only because of you. I wanted to run away, find a place in the dark to let the shadows sink in and fester. But you were there, a woman from behind the Wall in the dark surrounded by a Shadow-weave of her own. You looked different than when I first saw you in the Market. Your eyes held nothing but the endless void, two cuts bleeding across your upper cheek.”
Mireithren reached up to her scarred cheek at the mention of her face. She gingerly touched the top two scars.
“I saw a maiden of shadows. Mireithren, I named you. All I wanted was to save you. You drove me to madness with one look. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. I needed to find you, understand you. But you never came again, and I forgot reality. Yet, always you stayed in my dreams.”
“So that’s why you call me Mireithren,” she said with a smile.
It dawned on Therat that he didn’t know her true name. It was odd, the things he knew and didn’t know about the woman he loved.
“I suppose it’s time I used your true name. It must be confusing, answering to a name a stranger gave you.”
“My father’s name mocks me. Apattar, the Silent Dove,” Mireithren said with a snarl. “He couldn’t kill me, but he never had to give me a name worth loving.”
“Apattar.” Therat let the sound roll over his tongue. He thought it beautiful, but it never could describe the woman he loved.
Mireithren laughed, amused at some internal thought.
“Yes, hewasright. No one will remember the name Apattar.” She turned to face Therat. “I am Mireithren now. To you and the world. I think I always have been, I had my name stolen.”
Therat’s heart skipped a beat, and a warm feeling spread from his belly.
She wants me to call her Mireithren? Gods, this woman is too perfect for me.
He wrapped a hand around the back of her head and pulled her forehead to his.
“Mireithren you will be, from now until your last breath, and further still when the world sings of your name and the stars burn for you.” Lips searched for the gentle sweetness of her kiss. He melted into her touch, every breath intoxicating his senses.
thirty-two
Evocation
Thin, wispy clouds gatheredin front of the sun not long after Therat and Mireithren resumed walking. Here and there, the lone tree would stand among the dead remains of its brethren, silver bark cracked with deep black lines. The land rose fast in front of them, a massive hill with swaths of green grass sweeping over the landscape. The trees gathered togetherin small copses further up, offering the tantalizing promise of a sea of silver and green over the hillcrest.
It took another two hours of switch-backs before Therat and Mireithren reached the first copse of silver trees and another hour before they reached the top of the steep, massive hillside. Mireithren gasped as the view unfolded below.
Silver mixed with deep green stretched as far as the eye could see to the north and east. A dark black line, the vast Naváthir River feeding the Andesiri, snaked along the western horizon. A mist lay over the nearest part of the forest, obscuring the lower half of the northern hillside and the start of the tree line. A chill settled over Therat’s skin, goosebumps rising in reply.
