Page 108 of The Iron Dagger
The dull yellow lighting that suffused the space flickered slightly.
“We came here to free you from this place so you do not have to miss anything else,” said Hara.
“I’ve tried to find a way out, love. But there is nowhere but here.”
Hara thought about the fae’s trick, hoping that it would have more meaning now that they were entrenched in thestone’s glamour.Retrace and do the hard thing.How had Turnswallow done it? What had his realm looked like?
“Hara,” said Gideon in an undertone. “What if you tried to enter someone’s present who isn’t here inside the stone?”
“Like who?”
“Sarai?” he said. “Would that pull us out of here?”
“Seith will know what to do,” said her mother suddenly.
“Seith is a traitor,” said Hara. She had glossed over the details of Seith’s involvement in the coup, not wishing to soil their reunion with his treachery. But it seemed her mother still held some trust for him. Hara could not abide it. “He betrayed you, Mother. He erased your visions from your memory.”
“He would never do that,” said her mother with shocked eyes. “Why would you say such a thing?”
Hara and Gideon exchanged a glance.
The Commander’s diary said that her mother’s mental state was fragile after her memories had been erased so many times. Now that they had revealed twenty years were missing from her life, Hara was afraid they might have broken what remained of her sanity. Hara worked to control her voice, speaking in a low, soothing tone.
“Mother, how do you find someone’s influence? For me, it looks like water.”
“Go into one of these rooms,” said her mother, waving a hand.
Strange, but simple. They left the room with the three chairs, and Hara took both of their hands in her own. Then she felt for Sarai as she walked into the next empty room. She found her instantly. Only instead of threads of seaweed to grasp, she appeared as a faint scent that Hara pulled deeply into her lungs.
When she opened her eyes, they were in a white laboratory almost identical to the one at the palace. The onlydifference was that it was much tidier, and the usual scraps of metal were cleared away.
And there was Sarai, bent over her work station. She did not glance up as they approached her, and Hara turned back to look at Gideon uncertainly.
Then she realized that just outside the door, the tall, circular corridors loomed. They were still inside the stone.
“It was a good guess,” she said.
She waved her hands before Sarai’s face, but her friend did not react. There were no other doorways in the laboratory that they could take, and when Hara thought about it, there wouldn’t be. Sarai did not have Sight, and so she only occupied her present. As they turned to leave the room, Hara glanced back at her friend bent over the table. Something about the tidy workstation struck Hara as odd. Why would the stone replicate every detail of Sarai’s surroundings, except for the metals?
When they exited the room, Hara started, halting her steps.
A tall figure stood on the balcony, gazing down at the levels below.
“Seith!” said her mother, quickening her steps with her arms held aloft.
Hara’s anger surged up at the sight of him. It appeared Seith had followed them into the stone despite their threats and against Hara’s wishes. She brushed past Gideon as she charged forward. She did not care if her mother was elated by his appearance. He needed to know that he was not welcome.
Then the tall figure turned, and Hara let out a small scream.
It was taller and more slender than Seith, and it held out its arms to embrace her mother. But it was not her father. The thing wore a mask of Seith’s face, unmoving and stiff as though it had been painted.
And then a distorted copy of Seith’s voice spoke from behind the mask.
“Angharad. I’m so glad you are here.”
TWENTY
Gideon
