Sisters of Shadow and Light

by Sara B. Larson

  Come back to me, Nara. Come back …

  To Zuhra, to my sister, to my home. It was she who called me, who had always been there, calling for me. It was she who I stretched out to reach. And, finally, at long last, I surged up, up, up, back into myself, and woke with a gasp.

  My eyes opened to a broken, empty room, and my body crumpled with the memory of it all.

  “Inara! Oh, praise the Great God!”

  I turned to see Sami kneeling beside me, her wrinkled cheeks glistening with wetness. Tears. Tears for me?

  Beside her, Halvor crouched, watching me solemnly. A strange awareness filled the space between us—I could sense his trepidation and relief, almost as if they were my own emotions.

  I couldn’t meet his gaze. My eyes dropped as I forced myself to sit up. I cocked my head, waiting for the roar, but there was … nothing. The sound of my own breath, the muffled noise of Sami’s sobbing, the groan of the citadel—as if it knew of the assault it had undergone—and the muted murmur of the wind, exploring this new space through the shattered window.

  “She’s gone,” I said.

  Sami’s quiet crying cut off with a sharp intake of breath.

  “I lost her.”

  “We can get her back.” She reached out to pat my hand, but I jerked away. I never jerked away from touch—I felt it, knew it, so rarely—but I had let in a monster … I was a monster … and I didn’t want her comfort.

  “I lost her,” I repeated. “I did this.” I gestured to the room, encompassing the whole of my awful deeds.

  “You healed me.” Halvor’s whisper drew out a flicker of fire deep in my core—a tiny flare of the thing within me that had woven him back to life. “I should have died.”

  I stared at my hands in my lap—my bloodstained, perfectly unmarred hands.

  I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t know what to do.

  I’d done enough … I’d never be able to do enough.

  Zuhra was gone.

  My skin was whole, my body was healed, but no power in the world could mend the serrated edges of the unseen wound within me, the hole that was so big I didn’t know how I could function with it inside me, how I could ever live with her missing from my life.

  How did a body hold all of that inside? How did it contain blood and bone and muscle and power and fear and guilt and a gaping hole wider than the broken window that let the chilled breeze steal in the citadel and brush the wetness on my cheek, like a cruel lover relishing my pain, sending a shiver down my spine?

  You did this, the wind whispered as it fingered my hair, as it scraped cold nails down my skin.

  I closed my eyes and lifted my chin, accepting its truth, accepting my fault. And wishing I had ignored her voice and remained in the dark.

  Perhaps I had gone the wrong way. Perhaps she had been calling to me from within it, not out of it. Perhaps I had lost her far beyond any hope of ever reaching her again, until the darkness came for me once more.

  “What do you mean, Master Roskery?” Sami’s voice was an alien thing, her question so far removed from where I wished to be that I winced. “In the citadel, I heard … I thought I heard … What happened in here?”

  I felt his hesitation, his concern, as he paused and gathered an attempt at a response.

  What, indeed.

  “A monster.” I spoke before he could.

  “A monster,” Sami repeated slowly.

  I pointed at the wound the citadel bore. I’d healed Halvor. I couldn’t heal that.

  “She … she touched the door—the gateway,” Halvor began quietly. “It absorbed her power and opened. A rakasa came here and … and something else dragged Zuhra through it.”

  Sami made a noise that was part terror and part gut-twisting anguish. “A rakasa? Here? Now? And Zuhra … she’s … she’s…”

  “In Visimperum. She must be,” Halvor insisted.

  I didn’t know what that was. I didn’t know what rakasa meant or gateway or anything he said other than: I had touched the door. I had done this.

  A monster had come, yes, but a monster had already been within the whole time.

  “That’s not possible. It’s closed. It was supposed to be closed!” Sami’s voice rose until it was nearly a shout.

  The silence after was crushing.

  Halvor didn’t respond. He didn’t have to.

  “We have to do something. We have to warn them—we have to—”

  “How? How can we do anything? We’re trapped here!” For the first time, Halvor’s voice rose too, a sharp bite that cut off Sami’s hysteria.

  “I did this.” I forced myself to stand on legs that trembled and threatened to buckle.

  “Inara?”

  I forced myself to walk across broken glass, tiny pricks of pain cutting and tiny bursts of flame healing. Not gone, then. Little embers of power still flickered through me. Good, good, I thought as I climbed the stairs, come to me, fire. Come back to me, Zuhra.

  “What is she doing? What are you doing?”

  “Inara, stop! Don’t do this!”

  I heard him behind me, I felt his terror coating my tongue—or perhaps it was my own—but I was closer, faster.

  “Going to get her,” I said and then, ignoring his shout right behind me, I grabbed the handle.

  TWENTY

  ZUHRA

  “How do you know me?” Speaking was agony, but I couldn’t keep the question from blurting out.

  He stared at me, his glowing blue eyes glistening. “I would know my daughter anywhere. You—you look just like—”

  In all the scenarios I’d dreamt of seeing my father again someday, none of them had involved him saving my life, being unable to finish his sentence because of the emotion thick in his throat, and then grabbing me in a bone-crushing hug, holding me as if he were just as desperate to have had me in his life for the last fifteen years as I’d pretended I wasn’t to have him in mine.

  And the last thing I’d ever imagined in all of these made-up scenarios was how badly I’d needed to have my father want to hug me, for him to cry when he finally saw me again.

  “Oh, Zuhra…” he mumbled against my hair, his body shaking. “My sweet, baby girl.”

  Not even the pain from his shoulder pushing into my broken jaw or his tight grip on my broken arm could have induced me to pull away in that moment. My father had called me his sweet, baby girl. He was in Visimperum, not out in Vamala somewhere, as my mother had assumed. But … how? And why?

  “The girl is gravely injured. She’s losing blood rapidly,” someone else finally observed in my language—another male, but this one sounded younger.

  My father immediately let go and though I tried to conceal my wince, his eyebrows drew together in concern as he quickly ran his eyes over my injuries—pausing on my ravaged leg that was in fact surrounded by a growing puddle of blood. Ignoring the fresh waves of agony and the lightheadedness starting to overtake me, I stared up at him, drinking in his features. Strong jaw, long straw-yellow hair tied back off his face. Squint lines at the corners of his glowing blue eyes—or perhaps laugh lines. Though his expression was grave at that moment, I could easily imagine him smiling, laughing—I could imagine him as a loving and devoted husband and father, not the monster my mother had painted him to be.

  That maybe she’d had to force him to become in her mind, to survive his disappearance.

  “Raidyn, do you have enough left to heal her? I used too much on the Bahal for wounds of this magnitude.” I hardly knew him, but even I could recognize the change in his voice—the tightness, the alarm—as he glanced over his shoulder. My gaze followed his to a Paladin standing a few paces back, watching us with his arms folded across his chest, his gryphon sitting back on its haunches beside him. I realized he was the Paladin who had spoken of the magnitude of the injuries I’d been trying to ignore.

  Raidyn was … stunning. I couldn’t think of any other word to describe the young man, whose expression was completely unreadable as his brilliant azure
-blue eyes traveled over my body in a cold, clinical manner. His hair was the color of sunshine, and though he wore it shorter than my father’s, it still fell forward across his tanned face, forcing him to brush it back out of his eyes. His white tunic was pushed up to his elbows, the supple leather of the vest he wore doing little to conceal the breadth of his shoulders and chest. “Her injuries are quite severe,” he said quietly.

  Something unspoken passed between them, an unnamable emotion flashing through Raidyn’s eyes. A strange tension built around us; I could sense the other Paladin standing nearby shifting or exchanging glances.

  “Are you asking or issuing a command?” the younger Paladin finally asked.

  After a moment, my father simply responded, “She is my daughter, Raidyn. My daughter who I thought I would never see again.”

  There was a long silence, heavy enough to make even me want to squirm. I would have been overpoweringly intimidated to have not one but two men talking about me—hovering over me—except with each passing moment, a growing weakness had begun to spread through my body alongside the pain. The men’s features swam before my eyes. I didn’t understand what was happening, what was being asked of him—only that it was obviously not something to be taken lightly.

  “I should be capable of doing enough,” Raidyn said at last.

  My father sighed, an exhale redolent with relief, and shifted away from me. My concern must have shown on my face because he immediately took my good hand in his and squeezed. “Don’t be nervous. Raidyn is very talented for one so young. He will do a fine job, I assure you.”

  “A fine job of what?” Speaking was excruciating, my words were garbled, and I was afraid of exposing my ignorance. But I had no idea what he’d just agreed to do to me. The younger Paladin closed the gap between us and knelt at my side, his eyes narrowing when I spoke.

  “Her jaw is broken as well.”

  Ignoring Raidyn’s pronouncement, my father answered, “He is going to heal you.”

  Heal me? As in … entirely? It hurt too much to question his claim, but I supposed it shouldn’t have been too shocking. If what Halvor had told me about Inara was true—about her healing herself—perhaps it was possible for the Paladin to do the same thing for others. My father’s hand tightened around mine, a surprisingly reassuring gesture from the man I’d been pretty sure had ruined all our lives up until a few minutes ago.

  Raidyn looked at me for a moment longer, directly into my eyes. He was so beautiful, it was almost painful to hold my own gaze steady, especially as it felt as though he were looking through me, not at me. It was all I could do to keep from shivering beneath the intensity of his blue-fire scrutiny. But then, mercifully, he closed his eyes, and the blue fire raced down through his veins, lighting up his skin as he placed both of his hands on my body: one on my broken jaw—his fingertips brushing as softly against my skin as a butterfly’s wing—and the other on my thigh, pressing more firmly into the muscles just above the mangled mess of my leg the Bahal had torn to shreds.

  A heat that was both delicious and excruciating suddenly entered my body from both points of contact with his hands and quickly raced through my veins and muscles and tissue, flaring even hotter at every point of injury it encountered. I wanted to watch him use his power, but as the agony of the magic surging through me escalated, my spine arched backward and my eyes shut as if they had a will of their own. Dimly, as though he were suddenly a great distance away, I heard my father urge me to hold still.

  And then there was nothing except for fire and pain. I wanted to cry and scream and thrash and make it stop, but somehow, beneath it all, a gentle, soothing murmur deep within my mind assured me it would all be over soon. It was a wordless promise, a touchless caress, a deep thrumming presence that I knew wasn’t me and yet felt as if it were threaded into my very being.

  Raidyn. Somehow I knew it was him. His power had infiltrated every part of my body, even my mind—my soul. But instead of feeling violated or upset, the sensation of his steady, calming presence within me was the only thing that kept the inferno beneath my skin from overwhelming me.

  It was the single most intimate and painful and beautiful experience of my entire life.

  And then, suddenly, it was over.

  The fire ebbed away, the comfort of his presence withdrawing alongside it, receding from my body as quickly as water draining from the sink in the citadel’s kitchen, leaving me completely drained—empty in a way I’d never experienced before … as if having him there and then gone left me hollowed out.

  It took a few beats of my heart for awareness to seep back in—the soft itch of grass beneath my arms and legs, the pressure of my father’s hand on mine, the balmy breeze brushing my damp hair from my face … and the realization that my pain was gone. All of it.

  “Take a deep breath, my sweet girl. It might take a few moments to regain your equilibrium after such an intense healing.”

  My father’s suggestion still sounded further away than it should have for someone kneeling beside me, and I did as he suggested, keeping my eyes shut and inhaling slowly. I was afraid of opening them—of looking at Raidyn, the veritable stranger who had somehow become part of me for a space of time. At least, that’s what it had felt like. My neck and face warmed at the thought.

  “Are you able to speak and move freely now?” The sound of Raidyn’s voice outside my mind was almost foreign, even though I hadn’t truly heard him speak to me during the healing. I’d … felt the words he’d been sending to me as his power had infiltrated my body. But somehow, that wordless, soul-baring communication had seared his voice into my memory. “Is there any remaining pain?”

  Raidyn’s questions induced me to finally crack my eyes open. He crouched beside me, watching me with hooded eyes that barely glowed, dulled to indigo, as if the light within him had almost burned out. What had it cost him to do that for me? I flushed even hotter as I tested my jaw, hesitantly lifted my arm and then my head. Nothing remained, not even a twinge or lingering stiffness.

  “The pain’s gone. I feel … fine. Better than fine, I feel perfect,” I hurried to add in case “fine” was insulting after what he’d done for me, and then had to suppress a groan of embarrassment as I pushed myself to sit up. I was on the verge of babbling. I had spent my entire life trapped with three women until last week. I had no idea how to go about interacting with a male who had woven himself into my very being within minutes of meeting me, and healed injuries that could very well have been life-threatening.

  Raidyn nodded once, a brief dip of his square jaw, and then he silently stood and walked away to his gryphon, who hadn’t moved from where it sat, watching me with its sharp eagle eyes. When Raidyn reached the creature’s side, it clacked its beak and pushed its head into his chest, a soft bump in what seemed a gesture of concern.

  It was all so … much. Though I was no longer losing blood, a strange lightheadedness still lingered. I was sitting on the grass in a different world, with my father next to me, surrounded by gryphons … and Paladin—had just been healed by one of them—

  “Zuhra—how did you get here?”

  My father’s question was a dose of icy reality.

  “Inara,” I breathed and scrambled to my feet.

  “Zuhra?”

  I ignored his alarmed cry and ran back toward the gateway. It stood partially up a small hill, surrounded by crumbled ruins of what might have once been a building mostly buried under earth and grass and weeds. Normally, I would have been awed to be looking at something other than the confines of the citadel and its grounds, but instead there was only panic. The stone archway was cold, nothing more than stone—the glow of Inara’s power was gone.

  Which meant I was trapped here … and she and Halvor were trapped in the Hall of Miracles with the monstrous rakasa.

  “Inara!” I shouted, rushing up to the gateway and slamming my hands into its cold, hard surface.

  “Zuhra! What are you doing?”

  I spun to face my
father, who had dashed after me, the rest of his battalion staring at me like I’d lost my mind. I had to ignore the overwhelming sight of so many gathered in one spot to focus on my father—on what truly mattered.

  “We have to open it! I have to go back! She’s stuck there—with the monster! She’ll die—they’ll all die!”

  My father halted at my side, his eyes wide. “Slow down, Zuhra. What are you talking about? You opened this gateway?”

  “No.” I couldn’t calm the racing of my heart, the panic that sped through my veins like bee stings. “Inara did—my sister! And a rakasa came through and they’re trapped there—”

  “Your sister,” he repeated, stunned. “She opened it by herself?”

  “That monster is in there with her—with Halvor and Sami and…” The word “mother” died on my lips but he recoiled, stricken, as though I had said it after all.

  “Cinnia,” he whispered, turning to face the gateway.

  “We have to open it—we have to go back!”

  My father lifted his hand and pressed it to the cold stone, his head falling forward in defeat, a shadow of such utter sorrow crossing his face it turned my stomach to lead. “I can’t. We can’t. I’ve tried … for years. It takes an inordinate amount of concentrated power and the council won’t … I don’t know how one Paladin opened it on her own—if I could have done it on my own I would have come back. I would have come back,” he repeated, a haunted whisper.

  I shook my head, unable to comprehend what he was saying. “But … Inara. That rakasa…”

  A female Paladin shouted something in their language, and my father whirled.

  “We have to go,” he said, grabbing my arm and tugging.

  I yanked back. “No! We can’t leave—we have to find a way back!”

  “If there was one, I would have done it!” He grabbed my arm again, more firmly this time. “I know how upset you are—believe me, I do. We’ll go straight to the council—we’ll make them let us open the gateway. But right now we have to go.”