Unbound (The Griever's Mark series Book 3) (26 page)

Chapter 38

WHEN KRONOS DRAWS me into the Drift, time and light press around me once more. I lose track of Logan and even of Kronos. I am wrapped in myself, caught in the strange layering of time. After what happened with Belos, I pay more attention, and I find the threads of my life weaving around one another, all the moments that I’ve lived tangling into a mess. If it is not a mess, it is a pattern far too intricate for me to follow. I flow back and forth and around in this weaving, catching brief sensations of times long past. If I could follow the threads correctly, maybe they would take me forward, but I find myself moving back.

I catch on a moment, a sweet and clean moment that I cannot place. I seize it, press myself into it, desperate to know what beautiful thing I have forgotten.

Light engulfs me, then darkness.

I am compressed into nothing, and again it feels like I must be dying.

Then I fall to my hands and knees and know at once that I am in the physical world. My body weighs me down. Air moves around me. But I know, even before I open my eyes, that I am in a room.

My hands are sunk in something soft, and I open my eyes to find a thick sheepskin rug beneath me. Heat washes my legs, and I jump at a crackle of fire.

“Are you all right?”

I jump again at the voice. I look up to find I’m in a large, wood-paneled room hung with tapestries and with an open wall, a kind of balustrade, that looks out to the distant sea. A slim blonde woman looks at me with concern.

“Are you hurt?” she asks. She wears light, filmy robes like an Earthmaker, but a fine woolen shawl drapes her shoulders. A delicate silver bracelet encircles one wrist.

“No.”

“The fire is going strong now. Thank you.”

I glance back at the hearth, where fire licks at fresh logs. There is something familiar about this hearth. In fact, this whole room is familiar, though the open wall overlooking the sea is different. But I know the pattern of this wood floor, the dimensions of this room, the feel of the air here. I know where I am, but I can’t quite believe it. I certainly can’t believe this woman is...

A thin cry comes from the edge of the sheepskin rug, and the woman rushes past me to reach an ornately carved cradle. The woman’s silken robes flow behind her, and a long blonde braid hangs messily down her back. She reaches into the cradle and picks up a dark-haired infant.

“Hush now, love,” she croons. “Hush, hush.”

Humming softly, she rocks the infant in her arms. She wanders to the open wall and sits on the edge, leaning her back against a smooth stone column.

She calls to me, “Could you bring her blanket?”

I lurch into motion. I bang into a chair, making it screech against the hardwood floor.

“Sorry,” I mutter, but the woman waves it away, her eyes never leaving the baby.

I cautiously approach the cradle and peer into its plush depths. I snag the white knitted blanket from the cradle and start toward the woman. I approach slowly, weighted down by the strangeness and terrified of the yearning I feel. Afraid, too, of letting her really see me.

When I hand her the blanket, she smiles kindly. I expect her to stare at me, to realize she doesn’t know me, to demand why I am here.

She wraps the infant in the thick blanket and motions me to sit. I lean against the balustrade, tense and ready to flee.

Sibyl—for it can only be her—looks out to the distant sea, where the sun hangs on the horizon, near to setting. She says, “This is my favorite time of day. The world quiets down, and tomorrow’s possibilities lie unspoiled ahead of us.”

She is less fierce than I have imagined her, but maybe it is only that she holds her child in her arms. Heborian once said that when I was born, she had little thought for anything else.

My eyes twitch to the infant and away. I cannot assimilate that just yet.

The door opens, and Heborian—as though conjured by my thoughts—walks into the room.

Sibyl calls to him, “Come see your daughter and perhaps you won’t look so grim.”

He stalks across the room, a younger man than I know. He has all the lithe grace of a wolf and an expression just as dangerous. Sibyl passes the bundled infant to him. He takes her in his arms, cradling her close to his body. He rocks her gently, but his face loses none of it grimness. If anything, he grows more somber.

Of course, I know why. His deal with Belos was made before I was born, and at this time I have already been promised away. The only one here who doesn’t know that is Sibyl. I want to tell her, but the words stick in my throat. When he is gone, I will tell her.

“My Astarti,” Heborian murmurs. I start, but his eyes are on the infant in his arms. “Sibyl, love, go get yourself some supper. Let me have a little time with our child.”

She pushes away from the balustrade reluctantly and says, “Of course.”

I want to follow her, but I seem frozen in place. Heborian has not noticed me, and I don’t want him to.

When Sibyl is gone, he cradles the infant closer to his face and presses a tender kiss to her small, delicate head. I cannot equate that fragile child with myself.

Despite his affection, I recognize the look of intent about him. He is planning something, and the wisp of regret in his eyes will not hold him back from it.

He says to the infant, “I would spare you this if there were another way. But there isn’t. There wasn’t. There cannot be. And I am a ruthless man, my little Astarti, so ruthless.”

He gently shifts the infant until she is upright and leaning against his chest. He tugs down the plush blanket to expose her neck. She wraps a small fist in his hair, grabbing one of the Runish braids. She makes a “Gah!” sound and tugs. Heborian does not seem to notice.

A blue glows blooms around his fist. It tightens and intensifies until it clings only to his finger, extending from it like a pointed fingernail.

I know what he is about to do. I don’t know why I don’t try to stop him.

When he bleeds the first branch of the Griever’s Mark into her skin, she wails. He bounces her gently, murmuring, “Hush, hush,” much as Sibyl did. The back of my own neck prickles, as though the Mark is being freshly cut into my skin.

He mutters in Runish as he raises his finger again to make the other branches. When he is done, he holds her to him, rocking her gently as she cries. Tears stream down his own cheeks to catch in his bread. He buries his face against her swaddled body, rocking and bouncing to quiet her.

“It doesn’t hurt so very much,” he says. “Hush, now, hush. It is the only thing I can give you that he cannot take away.”

As the infant cries in his arms, slowly quieting, I keep a hand pressed over my Mark. It is not how I have imagined this moment. Finally, she falls asleep.

When Sibyl returns, she knows at once that something is wrong.

She closes the door behind her, and all the fierceness I’ve been told she possessed appears in her face. “What is it? What’s happened?”

“Nothing,” Heborian says.

“Don’t you lie to me.” She holds out her arms for the infant, and Heborian passes the bundled child to her.

“She’s sleeping,” Heborian protests as Sibyl begins tugging the blanket aside to inspect the infant.

When she finds the Mark, she exclaims, “What is this?” and the baby wakes, crying.

“Protection,” Heborian says gruffly, and I can see the distance growing in his eyes. Distance from Sibyl, and from the baby. The Mark may be protection, but it is also what I have always known it to be: a way of letting go.

“Protection?” Sibyl says doubtfully. “From what?”

“The world is dangerous and cruel. You know that better than most.”

“She’s a baby!”

“Even children are not safe,” he says heavily. “You know that.”

“If you’re referring to that boy they sent to the Ancorites, let me assure you that no such thing will happen to my daughter.”

Heborian turns a hard expression on her. “Parents cannot protect their children from everything.”

“Perhaps not. But it should be their first priority.”

Heborian doesn’t answer, but I know his mind. I was not his first priority, nor was Sibyl. The kingdom, always the kingdom.

He turns away and leaves without another word.

When the door closes once more, Sibyl rocks the baby back to sleep, but her ease never returns.

The sun vanishes below the horizon, and the room glows pink and orange. But it fades, and soon the room is dim, lit only by the fire in the hearth.

When Sibyl lays the baby in her cradle and covers her, she looks at me. “You will wake me if she’s restless?”

“Yes,” I croak.

“Then goodnight.”

I watch her disappear into the bedroom. After a while, I sit on the sheepskin. I don’t look at the baby, but she is always at the edge of my awareness.

I stare into the fire, torn.

I am on the edge of sleep, curled on my side, when a face shapes itself from the flames. “Why are you here?” Kronos asks.

“I want to save her.”

“The baby?”

“Sibyl.”

Kronos gazes at me for a long while, saying nothing.

“Is it possible?” I ask. “Can I change things?”

“Do you really want to?”

“Of course. Is it possible?”

“There are many possibilities. You will have to decide.”

“On what?”

“On what you are willing to sacrifice.”

The word hangs in my mind as I drift into sleep. Surely saving a life is not a sacrifice?

*     *     *

I pick my way through a battlefield littered with corpses. I am looking for someone, but I don’t know whom. I nudge one stiff body then another. The faces are bloated, the features distorted by death. What if I don’t recognize him?

Him?

Suddenly, I am running, desperate to get to him.

I see someone in the distance, picking through the corpses as I have been doing.

“Logan!”

He looks up. His clothes are torn, his face streaked with the blood and grime of battle. When he sees me, his face breaks into a wide grin, and he is racing toward me. The sun sparkles in his eyes like they are precious gems. I throw my arms wide to meet him.

Something snags my foot.

I am falling.

Falling and falling.

And falling.

*     *     *

I wake with a jerk on the sheepskin rug. For a moment, I think I am in the hut where I once stayed with Logan, but the sheepskin is too clean, and the room is too big. I stare at the cradle beside me, utterly bewildered.

Then I remember.

I rise to my knees and peer into the cradle. The firelight plays over the sleeping infant, making a dancing blend of light and shadow.

Her skin is pale and fine, contrasting sharply with the thick dark hair. I don’t know enough about infants to judge her age. Less than a year, certainly, or Belos would have her by now.

Looking at her, so unaware, makes my eyes sting. I know what she will face. For the first time, I can see that she is me, and I grieve for her. For the first time, I have sympathy because I can recognize that this is not her fault.

I trace the Mark on the back of my neck.

Why did I not stop him?

*     *     *

Throughout the next day, I follow Sibyl like a half-acknowledged ghost. No one seems to notice me but her. I don’t want anyone else to notice.

We walk along the beach for hours. Sibyl carries the baby in a sling wrapped around both their bodies. She doesn’t ask me to share the burden, and I don’t offer. It’s partly that I would feel too strange holding my infant self, but it’s more that I love to see Sibyl holding her.

Sibyl picks up an oyster shell and shows the baby the flood of color inside the dull exterior. The baby grabs for the shell, exclaiming with infant delight.

“No,” Sibyl says gently. “Sharp.”

She tosses the shell back into the surf, and the baby laughs. It’s a sweet sound, one I did not expect.

At one point, Sibyl stops and gazes out to sea, a lonely expression on her face. I follow her eyes but see nothing. The Floating Lands are out of sight today, but I suppose they are never far from her thoughts. Then the baby laughs at a seagull, and Sibyl smiles and walks on again.

I am deeply touched to see Sibyl so happy with me. I am glad that I was a comfort to her after she was cast away from her people. Will Logan be cast away? The question is still unanswered.

Logan.

I have never felt so far away from him, not even when he was a captive of Belos. Where is he? Why am I alone here?

“What is it, love?” Sibyl asks. At first, I think she is talking to the baby. Then I find her eyes on me.

“I was thinking about someone,” I tell her as I hurry to catch up.