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“There are linens there,” the priestesses’ windy voice echoed from behind me and I turned, her spindly fingers pointing toward a slight cut away in the cloud wall where fragrant steam curled through the air, the scent of roses permeating through what I could barely make out as a door.
I could almost feel the tension in my core settle, a hot bath. A truly hot bath. I hadn’t had one of those in ages.
I turned toward the priestess who had followed me in from the hall, expecting further instruction or a hint as to what was going on, but instead of facing the same sunless woman as before I faced a man. A man with long blonde hair and a scar that ran down his face.
“Who…?” I began, before realizing I had seen him before, although then he had not had a scar. He was the man who had been outside of the banquet hall when I had been shut out of Batian’s and Aeinya’s feast. He stood in the white robes of the priestess, exactly where the willowy woman had been only seconds before. “Where is the priestess?”
I turned, expecting to see the priestess tucked into another wall, but it was only him, in her robes. He stood there, his blue eyes smiling as he stepped forward.
“Do not worry, she will be back soon.” He smiled as he had before, the look kind and calm and full of some kind of awe I didn’t understand. Nor did I want to.
“Do not worry?” I nearly choked on the words. “You emerge out of nowhere and…” I couldn’t make myself say it. “Who are you?”
“Vaelar. I am here to help you.” He stepped closer and I shifted back, the panic I had felt before returning like a thunder clap.
“Help me? How did you get in here? Who are you?” My boots left behind giant marks of brown dirt with every step I took over the white floor as I backed away from him. I raced toward where I thought the door was, looking for a seam, or a ridge, or anything that I could pry open.
There was nothing but smooth white stone.
Well, formerly white, my hands were as dirty as my shoes. Everywhere I touched left streaks of brown and red behind, the shadows of the dirt from when I slept under the wagon with Aeinya and was forced to relieve myself on the side of the road while the guard watched. It was the blood I stared at the most, however, the streaks of red from where my mother had sliced me open, so deep I was amazed she hadn’t killed me.
“I am what is known to my kind as a Vynari.” I froze at that, my hands flat against the cloud wall before I turned, those two words sinking into my soul.
“My kind?” I repeated them back to him as he lowered that white hood all the way, revealing two pointed ears. I hadn’t noticed those before, but I hadn’t exactly been looking anywhere but at his eyes.
“Fae.” I gasped the word, and he nodded.
Again, that same feeling as before took me, that I should be horrified. That I should fear for my life. But, like before with the Boy, I felt nothing but that weird calm, as though I knew him.
“May I have your hand?” He held out fingers that were nearly as long as the woman’s, although his were covered in calluses, and nearly as much dirt as my own. His hands didn’t seem anything like I would expect from someone who had once enslaved my people.
“I do not have much time, Elara, and I would like to remove the bind on your magic. You will need it, very soon.”
“The bind on my magic?” Again, he nodded, his hand still held out to me.
“Yes, I have released the bind before, but I had not assumed it to be placed again so quickly. You will need it for what is coming.” His hand remained between us, that pull to grab his hand, to place mine in his growing.
I really must be mad if I was considering it. But then, I had touched him before and nothing terrible had occurred.
Well, nothing except a tingling warmth followed by my magic exploding out of me for the first time only minutes later.
A bind… I pushed the thought away and forced myself to take a step back.
“How do you know what is coming?”
“As I said, I am what is known as a Vynari, or a Walker in your tongue. I move through time. I have moved through yours many times before, although you may not have lived them, yet.” He was so confident in what he was saying, but he might as well have been speaking a different language for all the sense that it made.
“Your hand, love. Our time is short.”
I stared at his hand, at those fingers. All of the stories and warnings told me not to trust this man, this monster. But the Boy told me otherwise. The Boy had proven otherwise. My hand shook as I stepped closer, placing my palm in his.
Just as before, the glittering light I had felt when he held my hand before rattled over my skin, it moved through my bones and made everything feel like stars and fire and wind and rain, as though everything in the world was dancing.
I gasped in breath, sure I had forgotten how to breathe as he stepped away, leaving me covered in warmth and light, and not a bit of that cold that had been everywhere before.
The cold that had chased my magic away every time I had felt the heat of it rise.
“My mother,” I whispered, holding up my hands, looking from the hand that he had held, that I was sure that must be glowing, to the hand that was still caked in blood. “She…”
