Page 16 of A Touch of Stars and Stones
It’s coming from Lyle as well.
“You are lucky. Or perhaps just blind. You should have brought her to us sooner. Did you really think?—”
“There was no reason to think she might be,” Lyle answers her with a fierceness that is still alien to hear from her tongue.
Another part-conversation I tuck away for inspection and questions later on.
The witch leans forward and places her hand on my head. I brace for another shock of pain, but nothing comes. She raises her head to the sky, and I see the sliver of moon slip from behind the clouds.
Then nothing.
“Take her inside. It will be a few weeks, but there’s time. Aslendrix grants us this. Her symptoms will subdue now she’s under her watch.”
An audible sigh comes from Lyle’s lips as I watch her and the witch in turn.
“Ever Hart, welcome to The Court. Kyra will take you both inside,” she says.
I pull myself up and grab the strap on my bag to steady myself as I stand on shaky legs. A petite woman, similar in age to me, I guess, with a soft smile, emerges from behind the witch and nods. Lyle moves first, and I follow. Blindly.
Stupidly.
My head is fuzzy, my body aching, and my heart still racing with fear.
Kyra escorts us to a room in amongst a labyrinth of doors and corridors, high up in a wing of the half-moon main building that shouldered either side of the tall spire, no, The Tower. The Chamber Tower that I collapsed in front of.
Kyra disappears as soon as she shows us to the door and opens it for us. I look around, and I’m struck by the finery: the ornately carved wooden door and the plush materials decorating the sitting chairs and chaise lounge that fill the space in front of us. Flames flicker on the walls, sending shadows dancing over them, and it’s bright despite the late hour. After sunset, it was always dark at home, lit by only a few candles.
Looking around, my eyes want to take it all in and drown in all the details, but I’m bone tired, and there’s a chance I might collapse all over again if I stay standing for a moment longer.
I stumble forward and then realise there’s more—a room off to the side and beyond the door, a bed. There’s no question in my mind that I’m sleeping in that. I don’t care if Lyle has to take one of the soft chairs.
I’m also not ready to speak to her right now. Or look too carefully at the events of the last few days for fear that I maynever be able to forgive her or order my mind to make any sense of anything ever again.
No. I can’t even look at Lyle.
Even if she’s the only person I have in the whole world.
I continue my trudge to the bed and collapse into the softness. I crawl up against the pillows, pull the bag that I’ve carried with me all this way, and set it on the little table next to the bed.
Tomorrow.
I will start asking questions tomorrow.
The dawn pours in through the window, flooding the room with light. And the sun creeps across the room, inching ever closer as it continues to rise into the sky outside. I watch. From the bed. The ridiculously comfortable bed that I fell unconscious in the moment I closed my eyes.
But I’m awake now.
I’m in a new kingdom, if that’s what they call it—Kirrasia.
In a new place, a city.
And magic exists.
Magic, that, putting things together, I might have, but it also might turn me mad or render me unconscious with pain. Neither fills me with excitement.
There’s a witch who I can hear talking to me in my head, and she can cause me such pain that it brings me to my knees with a simple touch.
And Lyle, the one person in the world I’ve thought of as family, has kept all of this from me. Watching me in her role as a Kirrian Watcher.
