Page 81 of The Ember and the Emerald

“Where are you going?” I demanded.

Long strides took him outside, through a door made of the same straw used for the walls.

“Stubborn Tinman,” I mumbled.

I forced myself to stand, despite my protesting muscles, and tripped to the kitchenette to search for a weapon. All I found? A spoon. I returned to the beds, where I used the utensil as Jasher had done with his coin, searching for a hidden mechanism. But the more I worked at the seamless metal, the sharper the spikes became. The more I bled and shook and weakened.

How had he done it? There must be a trick.

In a fit of frustration, I huffed and tossed the utensil across the hut.

Fatigue added a hundred-pounds of weight to my eyelids, and they sank. Darkness cloaked my mind, visions waiting at the door of my consciousness, attempting and failing to enter. Inside my chest, a pulse of energy flickered on and off, spotlighting Ahav, as if an answer waited with him.

Glittery tears. His miraculous rise.

I see the truth. His words reverberated, tapering into an echo.

The truth. I needed to see it too. Needed the truth.

Truth.

The Ring of Truth.

I awoke with a gasp, immediately aware. Yes. That. The Ring of Truth. That was what I needed. The only place I could mine every bit of knowledge from every life I’d lived. Maybe I’d learn more about Malkom and Sin, too. Ian’s “masters.”

Elowen had said I would die if I entered the Ring, but I now understood what she meant. I wouldn’t die physically. Rather, the woman I was would perish. A new me would be born.

I would remember everything. The memories waiting at the fringe of my mind. Those still in hiding, hoping to never be found. The good, the bad, and the ugly. All of it.

Finally, I was ready.

Too many people had fed me too many lies in too many lives, until I didn’t know what was what anymore. That must end. Besides, Ahav wanted us to meet him at the palace. Two tasks, one mission.

I had only to escape my cuffs and⁠—

A jolt shot through my chest. Someone approaches.

Ripping out of my head, I snapped my gaze up and scowled. My visitor had already arrived. “Elowen,” I growled.

She stood before me. Easing down, she settled next to me there on the beds, resplendent in a gossamer scarlet gown, casual and calm. “Hello, Rye,” she said, her tone as elusive as ever. She peered at me with her fathomless smile. “Sister.”

25

SISTER MAY I

So many thoughts and too many emotions as I stared at my sister. On the front lines? Torrents of anger that whipped hard. “You knew of our connection from the beginning, yet you left me floundering. Why not share everything right at the start? Why make me find out this way?”

Elowen raised her chin, familiar and foreign to me at once. “You think I didn’t try that, in other lives? It never turned out well. In each life, I have learned something new and done something different. Anything to keep our enemies off your trail until you are summoned to Hakeldama.”

Okay, so, she was going to be reasonable. It only made me madder. “Who summoned—summons—me twenty years from now?”

“Iris, at my instruction. She is learning to wield the storms. Though she hasn’t yet mastered the craft, as you experienced. That’s why she sought the monstra in Gerald’s camp. To study its connection to the rain and the wind.”

I remembered my first trip, the chapel I’d taken shelter in, how it went spinning wildly through the sky. Recalled the agony of breaking my wrist. The shock of being in a whole new world. Almost dying on Jasher’s chopping block. No, she hadn’t mastered her craft. And yet, my anger downgraded to irritation. “Go on.”

Elowen closed her eyes, as if gathering her thoughts. “I know many things when you’re born, but you aren’t the only one forced to put the pieces together.” She crossed her long legs in casual repose, yet strain infiltrated her mouth, thinning her lips. “What you’ve gleaned of Morris and Andrea is true. They were married, and I’m their child. He mined in Mount Emerald, and there was a cave-in, trapping him in a cavern with Sin, Malkom, and the shells.”

“Sin hurt your father.” A statement, not a question.