Chapter Nine – The Tasks Ahead

Akkarin had found a bottle of wine and two more or less suitable glasses somewhere, saying he was sure to need it. Sonea had cleared their two chairs of stacks of books and paper which had collected there during the day. They had not spoken much since the ceremony and Sonea had been tempted to call off this conversation more than once but she had somehow found the courage to resist.

Akkarin held a glass out to her and she took it, knowing she would not drink. She was too much on edge, she could feel her hand shaking to badly that she had to set the glass on the floor beside her chair.

He watched her, his face unreadable. "Are you sure that you want this?"

She raised her chin. "Yes. I'm sure."

Sighing, he took a gulp of wine and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes. When he spoke, his voice was calm, flat, devoid of all emotion, almost as if he was reciting from a book he had not particularly cared about. Sonea listened intently, her fingernails digging into the skin of her knees because she had to feel that she was alive and the pain reminded her.

Sometimes she would think that something he said sounded familiar, it would give her goose bumps or make her stomach turn in ways that she took to be prove that what he was telling her was the truth. It seemed too harsh to be a lie, anyway.

Only when he described Lorlen's death did his voice crack, and had she been able to move she would have said something, anything. But she was frozen in place, her mind too busy processing the flood of surreal information that should have been her memories.

"We confronted Kariko and his two surviving partners in front of the University." He was struggling to regain control over his voice but failed. "They were weaker, and more exhausted, so they died quickly after it had begun. But he was still strong, and both of us worn out. He used a trick to make us advance and then shot his knife from the ground where he'd planted it before, that was how I was injured. You were not even shielding when he grabbed you and dragged you away from me, out of my sight."

The anguish made him look and sound like a stranger.

"I could hear him talk but you did not say anything back. I thought he had already killed you until you screamed but I did not know what he'd done and I couldn't move, I was half dead myself. I think now he must have cut your cheek and tried to take what power you had left. But, and I am as sure about it as I can be, when he touched your skin you stopped his heart and managed to shield in the heartbeat it took before his power consumed him. I felt the heat where I was lying, and I heard something – you – being thrown against the Arena, and then everything was silent. I was ready to die then and there but I couldn't until I knew if you were alive."

He cleared his throat, drank more wine. The numbness was draining out of her, leaving her limbs tingling and her head spinning. She loosened the grip of her hands on her knees, not daring to look up at his face. She was sure she could not bear it to look at him.

"I'm so sorry," she finally said and watched the fingers of her right hand trace a pattern in the palm of her left. "I should not have asked you to…" She was unable to finish the sentence. She knew no words to describe her cruelty.

"It's alright," he replied but with that dead undertone that had already scared her earlier. "I understand why you had to know."

Before she could stop herself, she was by his feet, not kneeling but sitting with her legs tugged to the side, and although she could still not look in his eyes, she reached up to take his hand in hers. His was still the same she remembered, smooth and elegant and barely hinting at his past, while hers had always been different, rougher, with pieces of her childhood and upbringing imprinted on her skin. There was a new scar, too, fresh enough that she still remembered the wound it now covered. At least now she could imagine how it had got there.

She traced the lines on his skin with a fingertip. His hand closed around hers, holding her tightly.

"I love you," Sonea said quietly, trying not to sound as deeply troubled as she actually was. How could she ever repay him for this? How could he ever forgive her?

Akkarin did not reply, just kept holding on to her hand and staring at the floor. Sonea finally managed to look in his face and it almost broke her heart all again. "And I am so, so sorry."

They sat, unmoving, for a long time, until Akkarin let go of her and Sonea decided to sleep in her own bed for the tonight.

She woke to the sound of glass breaking and a muffled curse.

When she had finally gotten to her feet and reached the guestroom, she found Akkarin bent over the remains of a wineglass and his bleeding hand. Noticing her and her bare feet, he waved for her to stay away. "There are shards everywhere," he warned.

"Don't be ridiculous," she said and limped closer. She could see the pieces glittering in the morning light. Concentrating, she cleared a space wide enough for her to sit, then took Akkarin's hand. "You've got glass in here. But it's not too bad, I'd say."

She closed her eyes and concentrated on his skin touching hers. She felt the cuts in his flesh and the blood flowing and the sharp pain travelling up his arm, and the cold pieces that didn't belong there. It took her a moment to draw on her power then she worked silently for a few minutes until she was satisfied with the result.

"There. As if nothing ever happened."

That was true; she had sealed the cuts so well that not the faintest line was visible. She almost regretted it. Akkarin's eyes met hers. Not blank anymore but still not the same as they had been before last night.

"Thank you, Sonea."

Quietly, she began gathering up the pieces of glass that had scattered all over the room. Lacking a pail or even a cloth to put them in she tipped her hands full of shards into the other wineglass, and protected her skin with the thinnest shield of power. She had to brace her weight on her good leg and still she could barely imagine a more uncomfortable position but she refused to acknowledge that she probably should not be crouching down like this.

Holding up the evidence of the incident, she asked, "How did you even do this?"

Akkarin shrugged in a movement that seemed far too careless for him. "I must have grasped too hard."

Sonea studied his face. "Have you slept at all?" A look through the half-open door of the larger bedroom determined that he had not; the bed sheets were untouched. When she noticed the wine bottle that was considerably emptier than the night before she sighed, placed the glass on a box where it would hopefully not be knocked down and took Akkarin by the shoulders to lead him to the bed.

"I'll be right here if you need anything," she said, closed the door, and collapsed in a chair with her face buried in her hands. This was bad, worse than she had imagined. But what was she to do? At least, he had not been as unresponsive this… was it morning still? She couldn't tell from the light.

She ran a hand through the tangles that had once been her hair. She had not caught too much sleep either, instead tossing and turning for hours, staring at the thin strip of light under her bedroom door. She should probably do something about her appearance, or she might be confused for a ghost.

Somehow, Sonea managed to change into the black robes without bursting into tears. They felt endlessly wrong. The fabric was heavy and soft against her skin but every movement reminded her of their full length and every time she spied a hint of black from the corners of her eyes she flinched because it was just so wrong. But this was apparently who she was supposed to be now, so she would have to get used to it eventually. Even so, she avoided seeing her reflection in any way lest she might break down entirely.

The guest room was a chaos. While the two bedrooms contained barely anything besides the beds and an (empty) chest of drawers each, the guestroom was filled with boxes stacked three or four high, the standard furnishings of a table and three chairs crammed in between with barely enough free space to move around. There was the door to the corridor on one side and a window to the gardens on the other; white, empty walls. At least she had something to do.

The first box she opened contained items she recognised from the one time she had entered Akkarin's bedroom at the Residence, mostly the sort of trinkets one would place in a bookshelf and forget about but also several bundles of letters that Sonea left untouched. She found far too many books and finally, in a corner, her own belongings carelessly packed in together.

The first thing she took out was her folder of notes from the University. To her great horror, it had obviously been searched for evidence of black magic, and in the process the searcher had mixed her chemistry formulas with complicated diagrams of attack patterns for Warrior Skills and thrown in a list of medicines for good measure. She groaned. If her notes were any scale, unpacking the rest of their things would be an utter delight.

She willed a chair to move close enough to the table to act as a desk and began the long and painful process of making order out of chaos. Although her robes indicated that she would not have to finish her University education, she did not have the slightest inclination to just close that chapter. She had endured almost three years and she would not allow that to have been in vain. The least she could do was get her things in order.

When she was done with that, Sonea moved on to a pile of books and discovered that they, too, had been jumbled and mixed and with a sigh, she prepared herself for a very long day.

Suddenly, there were hands on her shoulders, their warmth penetrating the fabric of her robes and startling her so badly she almost dropped the inkwell she had been holding.

"How does our little household look?" Akkarin asked quietly, so close to her that she could feel his breath on her neck.

She decided to pretend nothing had happened and fought a little smile to her lips. "Terrible. I found A History of the Magicians Guild of Kyralia between two volumes of Elyne poetry."

Strangely enough, a curse escaped him. "It's worse than I thought."

"Well," she said lightly, "It seems we have found a way to pass the time for the next, I'd say two years."

"I sincerely hope it will not take that long. But that is not what I wanted to talk about."

Turning, she looked at him. He, too, had changed into his robes, and now resembled his past self to an almost scary extent. There still were shadows under his eyes but they were much less prominent now than they had been in the morning. Sonea did not know how much time had passed since then but it seemed to be around late afternoon.

"I want to apologise," he continued and his eyes were fixed on hers so intently that she could not have looked away had she wanted to. "I cannot imagine anything I could say that would even start to excuse my behaviour."

She sighed. "Then don't say anything. It's alright, really; if anything, it was my fault."

"Don't do that," he said.

"What?"

"Don't blame yourself for my mistakes. I want to… make amends, so to say."

Sonea resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Had he always been this ridiculous? "There's nothing to make up for. I asked something of you although I knew it would be hard for you and if anything, I should be apologising for that. But if you insist, how about you go about and find us some food?"

Under different circumstances, he might have laughed. Now he only nodded, kept his grasp on her shoulders for just a moment longer, and left.

~ So! That took longer than expected. In case you're wondering, I chose not to give you too many details about the parts Sonea doesn't remember because I want this to concentrate on the future rather than the past (*cough*) but I hope you're satisfied anyway. Tell me what you think!

Love, Jojo