Page 22 of Enthralled

Ilusine snorts and looks down at her small, shrunken, wounded self. “Do I look as though I have the power to rip open portals through realities?”

“No, of course not. But if we were to heal you—”

“Impossible. Not in this world.”

“Will you ever recover?”

“Before your mortal air does me in? Unlikely. Judging by the bare traces of magic in this atmosphere, it would take a thousand years to bring me back to what I once was. Something tells me this body won’t last more than a hundred, maybe less.”

She speaks the words calmly, but there is a slight quaver to her tone. How horrible must it be to find herself suddenly rendered mortal. Did she know this would be her fate when she carried me through that portal? Did she know she would end up far from everyone she knows and loves, trapped in a broken body? She sacrificed everything for Castien’s sake.

A sudden upswelling of feeling burns inside me. Not jealousy, not hatred, but love—love for this woman who should be my rival. How can I not love someone who loves my beloved so unselfishly?

Ilusine makes a face. “Don’t look at me like that. It’s grossly unsettling.” She tosses her lank hair over her shoulder. “I’ll find my way back to Eledria. It might not be a time I know, and everyone I love may be either dead or not yet living. But I won’t end my days in this world, of that you may be certain.” She tips her head back then, her withered face set in hard lines. “But first we’ve got to get you back. And in the right time, or as near to it as we can manage. Otherwise all this trouble will have been for nothing.” She tries to take a step, totters, and braces herself, one arm outstretched to grip the mantel over the fireplace, very nearly knocking the porcelain shepherdess from her place. There she stands, breathing heavily, and I don’t dare reach out to her. At long last she sighs. “There’s really only one thing to be done so far as I can see.”

“And what is that?” I ask.

“We’ll have to go to the Daughters of Bhorriel.”

Ilusine is less than pleased to learn that I’d already been to see the Daughters of Bhorriel once before. She listens with growing disgust as I relate the bargain I made to receive a way down to Ulakrana, the merkingdom at the bottom of the ocean.

“Three days of pain,” I finish softly, staring down at my bare feet on the cold floor. “That was the agreement.”

Ilusine mutters a Soliran expletive. “And these three days were supposed to begin in three days’ time?”

I nod. “But—”

“But nothing. The crones would not take pain from days you couldn’t remember. They must have forestalled their taking until your awareness returned. When was that exactly?”

“Does it matter?”

“Answer the question.”

I look out the dirty window, trying to guess the hour. Mid-afternoon sunlight stains the murky glass. Was it really so little time ago that I was walking to the chapel of Nornala, intending to get married? I drag in a shuddering breath. “Two days. One and a half, rather.”

Ilusine considers this. Then she smiles a bitter, cruel sort of smile. “No doubt the crones are feasting greedily.”

I drop my head, unable to bear the look in her eye. Because she’s right; the pain of these last few days has been intense. The dawning awareness that something was missing, the realization that my brother was not who I believed him to be . . . and now this. The knowledge of who I am and what I have done. The agony of knowing that Castien—that the children—that Lir and the librarians and all the people of Vespre are out there, cut adrift into the Hinter. Suffering, possibly dying. And it’s all my fault.

I betrayed them. I can no longer hide from the fact. The truth of who I am is laid bare before me. My willfulness. My stupidity. My arrogance. It is truly torturous. Burning poison seems to roil in my veins, in my heart. I feel as though I shall erupt at any moment. Didn’t Dad once write a story about spontaneous combustion? About a suffering soul who refused to acknowledge his own evil until it finally—and quite literally—burned him up from the inside. A gruesome tale, a particular favorite amongThe Starlin’sdevoted readers. I understand it now so much better than I did as a child.

You’re not seeing right . . .

I grind the knuckles of one hand against my forehead. “Stop it!” I growl. Gods spare me, the last thing I need is for Emma’s voice to pop back into my head again. “Stop it, stop it!”

Ilusine watches me. Flushing, I pull myself together only to realize there are tears streaming down my face. Hastily I dash them away. “There . . . there may be some truth to what you’re saying,” I admit.

The princess narrows her eyes. “What wasthat?”

It takes me a moment to realize what she means. Then: “You heard her?”

“I saw something. Just for an instant. Like a shadow hunched over your back, its long fingers plunged into your shoulders.” Her gray skin pales to a deathly hue. “It was unpleasant.”

I briefly consider admitting to Ilusine that I am, in fact, being haunted by my own Noswraith. Just now that might not be the most helpful information to share. “Forget it,” I say instead, my voice low.

Ilusine narrows her eyes. Then she shrugs. “Mortal magic,” she says and hisses through her teeth. “I sometimes forget just how powerful it can be.” With a shake of her head, she drops her shoulders and assumes her incongruously dignified expression once more. “Very well, mortal. We must bide our time. A day and a half remains to the suffering you owe the Daughters of Bhorriel. We must wait it out.”

“Wait it out?” I echo desperately. “But every passing hour carries Castien years away. A day and a half might easily pull our timelines irrevocably apart!”

---