The voice echoed from just inside the door.
Occa had been watching Raum since the moment he stepped inside. Now he moved toward their table like someone who had already decided how the next minute would play out.
Slone spoke first. "Occa." Her tone carried an authority she didn't use with Vaelora. "This is a family matter. Stand down."
"Precisely," he said, and kept walking. "Which is why I'm here."
"No one asked you to speak."
"No," he agreed. "I wasn't."
He crossed the room until he stood between Raum and the door. He stopped just shy of three feet from Vaelora. The stoppage was precise. As if he had done it thousands of times and the correct spacing between he and Vaelora was the distance between the two now.
He did not look at Lonz. He did not look at Slone.
He looked only at Vaelora.
"You decided," he said. It sounded at first like words of encouragement.
"I did," she answered.
"And you.. Decided to tell them first." His voice quickly dropped in pitch.
"I thought that was more polite."
For a moment something passed between them, years of shared agreement, disagreement and history in a blink. Then Occa turned to Raum.
"How long have you known her?"
"About a day."
Occa nodded making a slight noise with it. Not in agreement, but only acknowledging what he had said. "Then what you know is only the parts she chose to show you."
---
She had been three when they brought me in to be vetted.
Slone laid out the requirements. The role, the restrictions, what Vaelora meant to the family and to the city. Lonz watched from across the room without a word.
I answered every question they asked.
In the corner, Vaelora sat rearranging a set of carved wooden figures into patterns only she understood. She knocked one over. Set it upright. Knocked it over again, testing whether the world would answer the same way twice.
Her violet and blue tattoos were already there, spread across her small chest, sharp and complete, as though the artist had known exactly what she would become.
I had never seen phoenix marking so complete on someone so young.
Slone stopped the question she was asking me, then glanced at her child who had taken an interest in me. "She already knows you're here."
Vaelora looked up from the floor. "You have a serious face," she told me.
"Yes," I responded.
"Do you know any stories?"
Slone gave a lighthearted laugh, as a new requirement to the job just appeared.
---
"She will go further than you expect," Occa said now, voice low. "Harder than the situation calls for. She'll get interested in the wrong thing at the wrong moment." He composed himself after those words. "When she decides something, you cannot stop her."
"I know who Vaelora is," Raum said.
"You think you know." The correction was gentle. "You don't yet. If you did, you'd be more concerned."
Vaelora made a small, indignant noise beside the table. "I'm right here you know."
"I know," Occa said, and looked at her for the first time since he had entered. "That's why I'm talking about you."
---
She had been nine the day the fire arrived with intent.
Not the little sparks she could already create and played with all day. Those were harmless, not even hot enough to burn a fly. This was different.
She was beside me on a table when the room was too quiet. Usually she would ask me questions, make child like noises at something that bothered her.
I turned to look at her.
Both her hands were ablaze. Palms open, eyes wide in amazement at the scene she was creating. The curtain behind her had already begun to lift and ripple from the flames rolling off her skin.
"Vaelora." My voice came out harsh and stern. It was discipline she hadn't ever heard in the six years I had served as her personal bodyguard.
She blinked, looked at me, then at the damages she had caused. She managed to stop the flames from continuing to spread.
"I'm sorry," she said. She began to weep, not from the fire and damages she caused, but from being scolded by me.
I lowered myself to one knee and brought her close.
"When it happens," I said, "you tell me first."
"Before or after?"
"Both."
She nodded. I never raised my voice to her again.
After that day I realized purpose differently. Not to protect her from the world. To protect the world's access to her. Long enough for her to decide who she wanted to be.
---
Raum said nothing.
"She's leaving."
It wasn't Raum who said that. It was Slone. "We both decided." The two shared a nod.
"I did not cry like that," Vaelora said.
"Vaelora was going to leave one day or another. She presented her reasons and she's in capable hands now," Lonz said gesturing towards Raum.
Occa met his eyes. "I know."
"Then why are you still talking?"
Occa was quiet a moment. He looked once more at Vaelora. Her crimson hair, the violet eyes, the heat that always seemed to radiate from her like a banked coal. "It's still my job, sir," he said.
Vaelora pushed her chair in, making a slight creak.
She looked at her parents. Neither of them had moved since Occa had begun talking. She started across the room toward the door with Raum.
---
She had been sixteen when she asked me about the sky islands.
For three years she had read everything she could find. Travelers' logs found on abandoned beaches, explorers' notes, maps that might or might not have been real.
I brought her every book without being asked.
That year she had changed in ways that were hard to name. She was still loud, still curious, still Vaelora. But she had begun looking at windows first when she entered a room. She had begun finishing sentences in her head before she spoke them aloud.
"Do you think they're real?" she asked one afternoon.
"The islands? Yes."
"Do you think I'll ever see one?"
She said it the way she had started saying many things that year. Not like a question, but testing whether I would be the one to say no. She already knew what she believed.
"I think you'll see everything."
I understood now that it had been a promise.
---
Raum hadn't moved from where he'd been standing since Occa began. He looked at him now differently than how he had when he first enetered.
At the doorway Vaelora paused.
She looked back at Occa over her shoulder. Not at her parents. At him. "I'll see you later," Was all she said under a soft breath.
He held her gaze. "At the gate."
She nodded once, as though she had expected exactly those words. As though she had known he would say them the same way he had known she would leave.
Raum walked first. At the threshold he glanced back at Occa once. His eyes were already on him. Not the same look he'd given him when he entered. No hostility, but a subtle nod telling him all he needed to know.
Vaelora followed behind him.