I woke up coughing liquid. I was in the dark.
My torso bent forward. My lungs squeezed, trying to expel water that wasn't there anymore.
Pain pulsed. Ribs locked in a vise, throat burning, raw flesh, scraped. Like I'd swallowed embers that still scratched on the way down.
I brought a hand to my throbbing cheekbone and a sharp pain drilled through my mind. "What is this?"
Something soft under my fingertips. They lingered on a rough perimeter of a thing stuck to my cheek with a thick substance. I brought my fingers to my nose and sniffed.
"Beeswax?"
I turned. My shoulder protested immediately and something creaked inside. My movement stopped with a hiccup that tasted like bile.
Where am I?
Darkness wrapped around me completely. I smelled unfamiliar scents: new wood, cold wax, clean. The silence pressed against my ears: no hammers, no saws. Mom's constant humming was missing.
What happened?
The memory surfaced, dirty, fragmented, unwanted, ugly, bloody. Broken glass cutting through my mind as I tried to piece it together.
Flames and water colliding. Screams. Fangs. Dirty fur and those bestial and evil eyes that gleamed in the night. Shapes on the ground I didn't want to look at, that couldn't be my mother and my father, they couldn't… mustn't be dead!
Water. Fire. Magic.
Thought came sharp as a blade.
"Never again. Magic is cursed. It only brings death. Only trouble. Never again. Mom and Dad were..." I brought my hand to my lips. "They were right."
But another thought crept in, a snake slithering in the darkness of my mind.
If I'd been stronger... if I'd controlled it better... if I'd known how...
"No."
Word came out broken, barely more than a whisper. I bit my lip until I tasted blood.
"It's magic that kills. That attracts misfortune. Not me. Magic."
But the contradiction just sat there, unresolved, rotting in my chest. Tears started falling on their own, wetting the edge of the wax.
Mom. Dad.
I'm sorry.
It was all my fault. I'll change.
But for you it's too late.
I needed to figure out where I was. I sat up on the bed with difficulty. Sheets had a familiar smell, but it must have been just my imagination seeking comfort. I ran my hand over the surface of the mattress to find a handhold, a fixed point in that pitch darkness.
"Can't see anything. Is it still night?"
My fingers slid along the edge until they met the frame. Smooth wood, fine grain. Oak
"This shape... and the wood is oak?"
The smell of lacquer hit me straight in the stomach. I knew this smell. I knew this wood.
I knelt on the mattress, ignoring the sharp pains hammering my side, and slid my palm toward the headboard.
A sharp intake of breath.
I inhaled through clenched teeth, lifting my left shoulder to reach the upper part of the wood. Dislocation sent an electric shock along my nerves, almost making me lose consciousness for a moment. Wood under my fingers was new, free of imperfections. I felt frantically searching for a precise point. There it was.
"Dad!"
Tears stung again. I recognized that carving even with my touch, it was the signature my father left on every important piece. A perfect circle enclosing the silhouette of the great elven tower of Astermond. It was his work. It was one of his beds.
"Where am I? Why is this bed here?"
In the darkness I couldn't see it, but I felt it clearly under my fingertips, real and solid. A sudden creak made me jump. I turned sharply toward the door as a sliver of light, so violent it seemed like a blade, cut through the darkness. I instinctively brought my hands up to protect my face.
"Arek? Are you awake?"
The voice was light, almost spectral. My heart leapt into my throat.
Mom?
No, Mom was dead. I'd seen her. Who was it then?
Hide! Go!
I threw myself off the bed, but as soon as I touched the ground I fell heavily to my knees. My injured foot gave out under my weight, reminding me with excruciating pain that I'd run on cobblestones without a boot. I held back the scream, biting my tongue until I tasted blood.
A dark figure entered the room, moving toward the opposite wall without sparing me a glance.
Then, suddenly, light invaded every corner of the room. Warm and aggressive. I closed my eyes for a moment, blinded, before finding the courage to open them again.
Footsteps were quick, a dry clicking on the wooden floor that approached. The figure was a black silhouette outlined against that unbearable light.
Run. I have to run!
Instinctively, something inside me reached toward the water in the moist air. I felt it. It would only take—
No.
I pushed the instinct back, fighting against something that wanted out.
Never again.
"By Eteria, Arek. What are you doing on the floor? Do you feel sick? Are your wounds tormenting you that much?"
Small but firm hands grabbed me under the armpits, lifting me with unexpected strength. I was sitting on the edge of the mattress, head spinning.
"Who...? What...?"
A young woman was stroking my hair. She had a kind green gaze, framed by chestnut locks that caught the room's light.
"Sweetheart. It was a terrible night. Don't worry, you're safe now."
Safe. Where? With who? Who are you?
Her hand moved to the bandage stuck to my cheekbone. The touch was so light I barely felt the contact with my flesh, wet, warm, throbbing under the gauze.
"Do you remember me? I'm Sister Cora. We met... when you brought the beds with your father and mother."
The name floated in my mind, a fragment of a past that seemed centuries away.
Cora.
Do I know her?
A glass five-sided amulet hung from her neck, catching the light, every corner ended in a different color: blue, white, red, gold and silver. The colors of the Gods.
That. I've seen it before.
The church. The fountain. Mom gripping my wrist.
The beds, sure. Now I remember.
"Yes." The word came out hoarse. "My dad..."
Dad was there. With me. He'd brought the beds. He'd talked to her. He'd...
I hesitated, my throat dry and my vision blurred for an instant.
He'd made this bed? This bed is under me. His work. Dad's signature hidden in the wood.
And now Dad is...
My chest tightened, like something inside had broken again.
She noticed my uncertainty and ran her thumb across my cheek, wiping away a tear's trail. Cora nodded silently, waiting for me to speak.
"My dad brought you beds."
I don't remember when. Before... before.
"That's right, Arek."
"My parents..."
A sob broke my breath. Words stuck in my throat like dry sand.
Say it. You have to say it. If you don't say it, it's not real.
"They're... they're..."
Dead. Say it. They were on the ground and they weren't moving and there was blood everywhere and—
"No."
Slipped out as a broken whisper. I covered my face with my hands.
"They are… they did… no… They are not..."
I couldn't finish. Cora's arms wrapped around me, pulling me tight against her chest.
Her warmth. Human warmth, feverish and pulsing, contrasting with the cold I felt inside.
"I know," she whispered, and her voice trembled. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, darling."
Her tears wet my hair.
She's crying. Why is she crying? She didn't even know them.
But it didn't matter. Nothing mattered anymore.
I clung to her. Searching for something solid after the dream, no, the nightmare of yesterday.
My chest emptied, hot air came out without control, and with it went something I'd held locked inside, and the tremors in my ribcage finally broke free.
We stayed like that. I don't know for how long. The time had no meaning anymore. There was only the sound of my weeping mixing with irregular breathing, the distant crackling of a fire burning somewhere in the building, the creaking of wood under our weight when one of us barely moved.
At some point, the crying ran dry. Not because the pain was less. Just the tears were gone, I had no more water to shed.
But my hands still trembled.
I was empty, exhausted, like I'd run for miles without ever stopping. Tears continued falling but soundless, just warm tracks sliding down my cheeks and disappearing into the fabric of Cora's dress.
She slowly loosened her grip, as if afraid I might break. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. They were red, swollen, a lock of hair stuck to her wet cheek.
"I need to change this," she finally said, touching the gauze with extreme delicacy. Her voice was hoarse, worn.
I nodded without looking at her. It was simpler than speaking. I had no words. I had nothing left. Nothing.
"I tried to heal you while you slept."
While I slept. How much time passed? How long was I... gone?
Her fingers still trembled as she lifted the bandage. Skin pulled under the resistance to the beeswax, some small tears along the edges.
"But it didn't work."
Cora's green eyes looked at me, and there was a strange light in her gaze. Not fear, but... confusion. Uncertainty.
"You had a yellow light. Here." She touched my chest, in the exact spot where I still felt that residual pulse. "Whatever healing magic I used, it was repelled. Or sucked away. I've... I've never seen anything like it."
Magic. Filthy magic.
My stomach tightened again. A sudden discomfort I didn't know where it came from.
I don't want to hear about it. Not now.
She stopped, biting her lip. Her green eyes studied me too carefully, as if searching for something she couldn't find.
"Do you know what it is?"
No. Yes. Maybe.
I only knew it was inside me. I only knew it scared her. And I knew that everything involving strange things, things that shouldn't be... brought trouble.
I had to lie. It was safer.
"I... I don't know."
My voice came out thin and broken.
Or maybe yes. Maybe I know. I only knew there was something wrong, something pulsing in the spot where she'd placed her hand, in the same spot where months before I'd felt burning when she'd spoken that name and given that blessing.
But I couldn't say it. I couldn't even think about it without pain returning, a phantom burn that wasn't there anymore but I felt anyway.
Cora nodded slowly, as if she understood I wouldn't say more. Or maybe as if she understood I was lying, but had decided not to insist.
"It's okay, Arek. It's okay."
There was a dry sound behind me.
I jumped.
I didn't look up. The world outside that mattress didn't matter anymore.
But Cora stroked my hair, touching light as a breath. "Arek... I want to introduce you to your new siblings. If you'd like."
I turned slowly, nausea pressing against my sternum. I already knew who I'd find. I knew I'd meet those eyes that, in my head, were now inextricably linked to the image of my father stopping breathing.
I rotated my body slowly, and when I met the two pairs of eyes, one gray and the other that unnatural red that had haunted me in the darkness, what froze my blood wasn't their presence.
It was the way Sister Cora spoke their names.
"Arek, these are Emma Grey and Sipar Grey."
My breath caught in my throat.
My father's name.
My name.
"They're... Grey too?"