Page 57 of The Sundered Blade

Focused on the brightening light of Karreya’s call.

It truly was growing with each passing moment. As if she were not standing still, but moving closer. And there was more… He could feel more than just need. He could feel determination. Anticipation. Suspicion. Movement, and then watchful stillness.

Vaniell lifted his head and opened his eyes, startled by the sudden conviction that she was truly there—standing across the fire, watching him. And in his grief and exhaustion, his mind provided a vision of her emerging from the darkness dressed in night itself, with more daggers than fingers and her pale blonde hair flowing about her shoulders, bright as spun gold in the firelight. Her golden eyes were wide and wary, and she stood poised like a deer prepared for flight, uncertain of her welcome.

Vaniell blinked, but the illusion did not vanish.

He blinked again, rubbed his eyes, and leaped to his feet.

She had not disappeared.

“Karreya?” he choked out, still convinced that this was some trick of the mind, an apparition brought to life by his own desperate need.

“You came.”

It was Karreya’s voice. She was real, and the truth of it broke him.

Had he stopped to think, he might never have done it, but he had been so afraid that he merely acted. Strode across the clearing and pulled her towards him, wrapping his arms around her shoulders with desperate strength. She froze for a moment as he clutched her closer, tucking her against his shoulder, burying his face in her hair and squeezing his eyes shut against the threat of tears.

“You’re all right,” he whispered. “I’m so glad you’re all right.”

And with those words, she let out a strange little sigh, turned her face into his chest, and wrapped her arms around his waist.

“I should stab you,” she murmured, “but I am too relieved that you are here.”

“Stab me next time?” Vaniell suggested softly, his words somewhat muffled by the golden waves of her hair. “How did you even find me?”

She pulled back to look at him. “I do not know how, but I believe your beacon and my magic were working together. Once I left the city, I knew which way to go, much as I know truth from lies.”

“What happened in there?” He searched her face, looking for signs of distress or injury. Not that she would show them openly, but perhaps she was there when Leisa…

Her body stiffened, and she took a step back from him, arms falling to her sides and chin lifting so she could look him in the eye.

“I failed,” she said simply. “You were correct—the ruler of this land is indeed my father, but he has planned too well to be deterred. Niell, he is here with my grandmother’s full knowledge. He will not stop until he has fulfilled the terms of her bargain with him and obtained what was promised.”

It was not the news they’d hoped for, and yet, hope was not entirely dead unless…

“What of Leisa?” Vaniell inquired urgently. “Where is she? Kyrion’s link with her went silent. He believes she’s…” He couldn’t say the word aloud.

“I don’t know.” Karreya’s usual unshakeable confidence seemed battered by her experiences within Hanselm’s walls. “She was with Lord Kellan when my father arrested everyone who does not support his war or his empire. They were taken, and when I tried to find them, I could not discover a way to do so without revealing my presence. The guards and locked doors would have meant too much death. I sensed you were close, and so I judged it best to warn you first. Let you send word to the others, so they will know what they face on the field of battle.”

She was right, and yet…

“You did the right thing,” Vaniell told her. “Never doubt that. We will find a way to send word, but we also cannot leave Leisa in there. I have to believe she is only unconscious, not dead. Modrevin would not have killed his prisoners. Not in secret. If they’re marked to die…”

Karreya’s eyes suddenly went wide and wary.

“I did not tell you that name,” she said coolly, “and neither did Senaya. How did you learn it?”

“Does it matter?” Vaniell could not quite understand her discomfort. “Is there some reason why I should not use it? I have wondered for so many years who might be wearing my father’s face. Refused to call him by the wrong name, because I wanted to remember what he’d done. Having his real name… it seemed like a gift. Like I could finally feel that my enemy was more than a faceless, invulnerable phantom.”

“It is not wrong for you to use it,” Karreya assured him. “And I am sorry I did not think to tell you. But if someone else in these lands knows of his name and his presence… I am not certain why, but that fills me with unease.”

“She is not an enemy,” Vaniell said hastily, “though you may have known of her. Her name now is Yvane, but many years ago she was much like you—a tool of the Enclave who escaped and chose a different life.”

Karreya reached out swiftly to grasp his arm, her expression stark and searching. “And you are certain she did not harm you in any way? The Enclave’s weapons are many and varied, and some have dark magics of the mind.”

“And so she did,” he agreed, placing one hand over Karreya’s where it rested on his arm. “But she has walked away from that, just as you have. Wants nothing more to do with it. She…”

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