Page 6 of Crown of Storm and Silence
After they leave, the cottage falls into heavy silence. Mira busies herself cleaning up, but I can feel her watching me.
"Mira," I begin, but she holds up a hand.
"Sit. We need to talk."
I sink back onto my stool, suddenly exhausted. Mira settles across from me, studying my face with sharp blue eyes.
"You've been doing small things," she says quietly. "Things you forced yourself to forget. The baker's burn that healed toofast, old Ahmet's fever breaking at your touch. But this was too big to deny."
I press a hand to my rounded stomach, where new life grows. Mira had suspected my condition after examining me that first week, her experienced eye recognizing the subtle signs. "Several weeks along then," she'd told me. Six months now, and the child grows strong despite whatever trauma you endured. Six months of carrying a life I can't remember conceiving, with a father whose face is lost to the darkness that swallowed my past. "What if I was someone terrible? What if there's a reason I can't remember?"
Mira leans forward, covering my hands with hers. "Child, I've lived long enough to see true evil, and I've seen true good. Terrible people don't weep in their sleep for wrongs they can't remember. Whatever power flows through you, it comes from compassion."
"But the way it feels when I heal them—it's like remembering something just out of reach."
"Power often feels that way," Mira says, something distant in her voice. "Like an echo of something we once knew. The trick is learning to trust it." She's quiet for a moment. "I was young once, in love with a man who could make flowers bloom out of season. This was before the war between the Light and Shadow Courts drained most magic from our world. He died in the final battles, using everything he had to shield our village." Her voice grows soft. "I learned then that power isn't about what we can do—it's about what we choose to do."
"And what am I choosing?"
"To heal. To help. That tells me everything I need to know about who you are, memory or no memory."
The afternoon brings market preparation,and I find myself sorting herbs while my mind wanders. My hands seem to know things my memory doesn't, which plants heal, which harm, how to blend remedies that shouldn't work but do.
The dreams are getting worse. Last night, burning forests and shadow-wreathed figures. A voice calling a name that wasn't Elif. I wake gasping, my body aching with phantom pleasure and remembered fear.
The worst part is that I'm not sure they're dreams at all.
"Elif." Mira's voice cuts through my thoughts. "There's a merchant outside asking about lodging."
The door opens, and a man steps in. Tall, lean, with kind eyes and burnished bronze hair shot through with gold. Perhaps thirty, with the look of someone who lives on the road, but something gentle in his demeanor.
"Forgive the intrusion," he says, his voice warm and musical. "I'm Sinan, hoping you might have space for a weary traveler."
Something about him makes my pulse quicken, though I can't say why.
"We don't usually take lodgers," Mira begins, but Sinan's attention has fixed on me with startling intensity.
"I can pay well," he continues, producing a pouch that clinks with coins. "And I promise to be no trouble."
Mira looks at me questioningly, and I find myself nodding. "There's a room above the stable. Small, but clean."
"Perfect." His smile widens, and something in my chest flutters. "Thank you for your kindness."
As he turns to leave, I catch a glimpse of something on his wrist—a scar, pale against sun-darkened skin. For a moment, theworld tilts, and I see another scar, on another wrist, connected to hands that traced patterns on my skin in darkness.
The vision vanishes, leaving me gasping and clutching the worktable.
"Child?" Mira is beside me instantly. "What is it?"
"Nothing," I manage, though my heart races. "Just...tired.”
But it wasn't nothing. For just a moment, I remembered something—a feeling, warm and golden and terrifying.
That night,I lay in bed listening to the village settle into sleep. Through my window, I see candlelight in the stable room, and wonder what Sinan is doing.
Sleep brings dreams more vivid than any before. I'm in a great hall filled with shadows and starlight, wearing a gown that flows like liquid night. Someone walks toward me through the darkness, and my heart pounds with anticipation and terror.
Dark eyes emerge from the shadows, not kind like Sinan's, but wild and desperate and burning with intensity that steals my breath. Hands reach for me, and I know those hands with the certainty of my own heartbeat.
