3

Chapter Three

Reunion

The next day, Sonea paid the price for the few moments of bliss she had barely been able to enjoy. Far too soon, they had separated Akkarin and her by force when shouting would not work, ignoring the couple's angry voices just as they had been ignored before. Sonea had been lifted off the ground by either hands or magic, she could not tell, carried to a room, sat on a bed and then left alone with Marin. The Healer had had a look on his face as if he was only seconds away from strangling her.

"What were you thinking?" he had asked, his voice strained with the rage he was holding back. "Have you completely lost your mind? There will be consequences to this, and I promise you you will regret it." Then he had slammed the door behind him and she could still feel the magical barrier on it.

It was not that powerful that she could not have destroyed it, but doing so would mean to blast the door to pieces and then she still would not be able to leave the bed. The broken leg throbbed with an intensity that almost took her breath away, and she doubted that she could endure even a single step.

But every part of her that did not hurt was floating. All her worries, all the grief she had not allowed herself to feel had been unnecessary. She had never been happier in her life. She felt as if she was not in her own body anymore but too light to stay attached to the earth. Even when Marin returned the next evening, still very much as disapproving as the day before, she could not make herself take the matter as serious as he did.

"Are you even listening, Sonea?"

She immediately snapped back into her body, and regretted it bitterly. "No, I'm not listening," she admitted, and tried to hide the smile on her lips. "I didn't hear a word of what you said."

Marin shook his head. He seemed furious. "Sonea, you'll need to have the bones set and there are a few splinters that have wandered off so far that we need to remove them. You are facing a hard way to recovery. I'll have to talk to Lady Vinara before I can say how much we can do."

A knock on the door interrupted her thoughts before they even came to her mind. Marin scowled, turned on his heel and rushed to the door, opening it a crack and at the same time blocking the visitor from view.

"What is it?" he hissed, but as he saw whoever stood outside on the corridor, he froze.

"You should not be here," he said.

"Lady Vinara gave permission." Sonea's heart jumped. She knew that voice, she had longed to hear it ever since the day before.

She could see that Marin hesitated, and she hated him for that although she knew it was wrong. "Fine," he finally said. "But against my advice."

He had one last glance at Sonea, then left the room and let Akkarin enter. Within a few heartbeats he had pushed the chair to her bedside and grasped her hands. He looked grey, she thought, older than ever before. There was pain in his eyes, even as they rested on her and a smile spread on his face.

"I thought it was a dream until now," he said quietly. "But I regret that you had to suffer for it…"

She waved it away. "It is not your fault. You are here, I don't care about anything else."

She tried to examine his face without him noticing and really did not like what she saw. Akkarin seemed to have aged at least ten years compared to her last memory of him on the Pass. His eyes were dull and she almost expected to see grey streaks in his dark hair that hung loosely on his shoulders. If he had not held on to her hands that tightly, she would have touched his face only to see if he had not died and returned to her as a ghost.

"I talked to Lady Vinara this morning. She told me… I am so sorry to have dragged you into this. I should have sent you away when I had the chance."

"I would not have let you," she said with a smile, trying to comfort him. "I never would have left you."

He sighed. "I know. We are talking about you, after all. The most fearsome woman in all Kyralia." The smile transformed his whole appearance and Sonea felt as if a weight was lifted off her shoulders.

"I am afraid I don't feel very fearsome at the moment," she said lightly, but at once the frown returned to Akkarin's face. His fingertips traced the fresh red scar on her cheek without touching it, and his expression became dark with anger.

"If he weren't already dead, I would kill him for what he did to you," he said. "How ironic that you would be the end of him when he set out to kill me and you were nothing but a little disturbance in his plans."

So Kariko did this, she thought, weirdly relieved that she knew at least something now. Then she had to force herself not to shudder as she thought, and I killed him.

"I never seem to be part of anybody's plans, and yet I apparently have the unique ability to destroy them all." She knew that the joking tone she forced on her voice sounded anything but natural but she wanted with all that was in her power stop this conversation from becoming what it was threatening to be – she wanted to see Akkarin smile again so she could believe that he was still the same man and that they had nothing to fear anymore. For a long time she had been afraid of him and never seen him as a person she would want to make happy, but now there was nothing else she could think of.

She felt the pain coursing through her body only as if from far away, and she knew that she could sit like this for hours and not feel any different. She felt the most alive she had in weeks.

But once again, their moment of reunion was cut off by others when somebody knocked on the door and entered only a heartbeat later. Although almost smiling, Lady Vinara seemed grim and stern as ever.

"Good evening to both of you," she said as she stood by the door with her hands at her hips, then without hesitation moved on. "Akkarin, I am afraid you will have to give me some space so I can have a look at Sonea. And then you will excuse yourself," she added firmly. "It is almost midnight and neither of you can do without sleep."

She waited, her arms crossed before her chest, for Akkarin to whisper something in Sonea's ear and then, still smiling, rise from his chair and step away from her bedside. He swayed for a moment before Vinara caught him by the arm and steadied him, pushing the chair aside for him to sit again.

It had only lasted for the blink of an eye, but to Sonea, it seemed to last an eternity, and something was suddenly so clear to her that she cursed herself for being so stupid. And as Akkarin sat there, just out of her reach, fighting for breath and pale as death, she could not gain control over her words long enough to say anything. It took all her willpower to school her expression so he would not suspect anything because for some reason she did not want him to.

He had been injured. Of course he had. She felt so guilty for not knowing and not asking how he felt. It must be a serious injury or he would not be suffering from it anymore, and she had not the slightest clue what might have happened.

Vinara now called out to the corridor for somebody to take Akkarin back to his room, then closed the door behind him and turned to Sonea.

"You haven't told him," she said matter-of-factly, and Sonea did not question how the Healer knew.

"I couldn't," she replied and looked at her hands, one of them still wrapped in bandages and the other now holding tightly to the bed sheets.

Vinara nodded absentmindedly. "What do you remember? You obviously haven't lost all your memory."

Sonea shrugged. "How long was I unconscious?" she asked, not because it would help her remember but because that information was something she had wanted to get ever since her head had been clear enough to think.

"About four days."

That was longer than she had expected. She must have completely drained herself of power during whatever had happened before. She needed a moment to process that before she was able to answer Vinara's original question. "I remember making our way to the South Pass. We were being followed… We met Dorrien on the other side of the mountains and he wanted to send us back, but we were confronted by the Ichani who had been following us. I think we killed him but I'm not sure and I really have no idea what happened after that."

"You are missing about ten days, then. It's not unusual," Vinara said. "We have records of cases like yours. Sometimes the memory returns after some time, but sometimes it does not. You are lucky that you only lost ten days and not your entire past. Now to something different."

She sighed and sat at Sonea's bedside. Up close, she looked tired. "Lord Marin has given his reports to me, of course, but I'll need to have a look at your leg before I make up my mind about what to do with you. But I can already tell you that what you did yesterday was completely unnecessary."

Sonea wanted to answer, she highly doubted that it had been unnecessary, but the Healer had already closed her eyes and taken Sonea's healthy hand. She felt Vinara's presence more clearly than before, and she resigned to staring at the ceiling for a few moments until Vinara had finished her examination.

The Head of Healers frowned and shook her head. "This is not good. We can mend the bones, but it will be very painful. You will be dealing with this for a very long time."

Without another word, she rose and left Sonea alone to chase sleep.

Finally! I'll be a little faster from now on, the hardest bits are over. And don't worry, no matter how long it takes I'm not planning to give up on this story…