Page 44 of The Shattered Rite
It sounds absurd.
She laughed, exhausted. “See? I knew you’d get it.”
Silence. Then, his voice, quieter:You do not need to understand all at once. You know what the prophecy proclaims; the rest will come with time.
She slowed, resting her forehead against the edge of the table, breath shaking out of her like smoke. “I’m trying, Vaeronth. I really am.”
I know.
She hadn’t expected that to help. But it did. Enough that the trembling in her hands began to still.
When she lifted her head, she studied her fingers—the runes curling across them like vines that refused to stop growing. They shifted when she flexed, restless, alive.
“I wasn’t supposed to be this,” she murmured. “I was supposed to be… just a healer. I had a garden, once. Red roses.” She swallowed hard. “My mother planted the first bush with me. Said one day, I’d grow into something far more dangerous than thorns.”
And you have.
Her lips curved, humorless. “All that’s left of it now is ash.”
Ash feeds new roots.
She huffed a laugh, jagged but real.
Her marks glimmered faintly, catching the lamplight like embers stitched beneath her skin. She wouldn't recognize the woman she had become. And yet… she wasn’t afraid of her, either.
“My mother warned me,” she whispered, almost to herself. “She said I would be more than I wanted to be. More than I was ready for.” Her fingers brushed the runes. “And here I am. No garden. No roses. Just fire.”
Not fire. Power. And you were never meant to be less.
Silence settled, deep as a heartbeat. Then Vaeronth added, low and certain:
Stop mourning the girl you were. And stop apologizing for the woman you are now.
She swallowed.
“Okay,” she whispered.
Rising slowly, she crossed to the tub. The tattered remains of her shirt and trousers fell away easily, dropping in clumps of bloodstained fabric. Her skin looked… wrong, and right. Dragon marks shimmered in the soft steam, curling down her arms, her back, over her ribs. Patterns meant for battle, not bathing.
She slipped into the water, hissing as heat licked over bruised skin. It wasn’t just warmth. It wascleansing.Like her body had been holding on for far too long, and only now could begin to let go.
“I thought of my mother,” she whispered into the steam, her arms resting on the sides of the tub. “When I walked into the hall. When they looked at me.”
Vaeronth didn’t interrupt.
“She would have been proud." A pause. "I think."
The silence that followed felt heavy, so she filled it. "She used to talk about the old ways, the old powers, like they were more than history. And I laughed. I didn’t believe her. I just thought… she needed something to believe in because we had so little.”
She believed in you,Vaeronth said.
Eliryn smiled faintly. Her eyes stung, but she didn’t cry.
She slid deeper into the water until it kissed her chin. “I’m still scared, Vaeronth,” she admitted quietly. “I don’t know if I can carry all of this.”
A long pause. Then:
We will carry it together.
