The following days were almost a blur, as everyone found their way back home and back to their lives. The Uhma'zarhins departed after spending a bit of time with Sulea and trying to help her recover from her time in Arnet's hands. Auglier left to find his peace in the forest, and Juen'tal traveled with him. A surprising pair, but each seemed amiable to the other's presence.
Graiden dealt gracefully with Byron's death the second time around, burying him and dealing with the much heavier responsibility of carrying all Sahn-Raidar on his shoulders. Arjiah stayed in O'siaris, using the excuse that with Beymor as the new head of Anklestrap, she had no job. She spent her days in the library with Typhon, or chatting with the Uhma'zarhins that came to visit the town. Fykes took his time recovering, at Katerin's insistence, and once again he lounged about the inn with Jon, swapping stories and sharing drinks throughout the day.
Brazen stayed glued to Katerin's side and spoke to her each day, always asking questions and reassuring her. Katerin spent her time recuperating from her injuries. Her arm still pained her, a combination of the old scarring and new injury, but with healing and time, it improved. Only a small thin scar would mark the injury that could have left her dead. Today she walked to finally speak with her mother.
Sulea had outright refused to stay at the inn for no reason anyone could fathom, and Graiden, being the stern but generous man he was, had offered her his rooms at the keep. Katerin could not blame her for wanting someplace quiet. She knew well the twisted methods Byron had employed, and she assumed Arnet to be worse. The atrocities committed upon her mother were things that could not simply be healed. They needed time, peace, and even a little solitude. She knocked quietly on the door and entered after a soft voice replied.
Sulea sat on a stiff couch with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, and she smiled as Katerin entered.
Katerin swallowed back her fear. This is it. The thing she had been searching for, and it was far more terrifying than Byron had ever been. Sulea's expression fell a bit when Katerin said nothing and sat stiffly across from her. She did not know what to say, or how to say it. For the first time in her life, she was not sure if she wanted to know, anymore.
"I suppose you have many questions for me," Sulea said, pouring her a cup of tea.
"I do," Katerin said quietly. She held up the teardrop necklace and handed it out to her mother.
Sulea gave her a brilliant smile "He kept it?"
Katerin nodded." I found it in his old things. After he... passed." The words brought a familiar, sharp pain into her chest and she winced. "He said it was yours. That you'd want me to have it."
Sulea reached down into her boot and pulled something free—a match to the necklace Katerin held. If you looked at them one at a time you would never know the difference. "He was right... but that's not a surprise."
Katerin stared at it, transfixed.
"Do you know what these do?" Sulea asked. "They are dream links. A minor enchantment. I gave that to Igan before you were born." She smiled softly. "They come as a pair. You get small glimpses of whoever wears the other half. It's a small but welcome reassurance."
"That's why I kept seeing you," Katerin said, twirling the necklaces back and forth. "Wait, why buy them before I was born?"
Sulla's expression turned serious. "Why did you try to find me?"
Katerin chewed her lip. Here we go, she thought. "I needed to ask you why. Why you left. Why you never came back." She pulled the letter from her pocket, and handed it to Sulea.
Sulea frowned as she read the letter, then she sighed. "It was the hardest thing I've ever done. Leaving you and your father behind. But... in my line of work... family is a curse, not a blessing. It isn't allowed."
Anger sparked in Katerin, momentarily. "Then why start one?" she asked, more snap in her tone than she intended. "If you knew that you would have to leave, why do that to him?"
Sulea held up a hand, her face softening. "Because love isn't your choice, darling. You never get a say in who you love. It doesn't matter who they are, if they will long outlive you, or vice versa. Nor do you choose when you love them."
Katerin's jaw worked, then she bit her lip and her posture fell, all the anger gone. "Then why not leave your... profession instead?"
Sulea laughed lightly. "I cannot leave what I do behind. For more than one reason."
"Important enough to miss the funeral of the man you loved?" Katerin asked, tears filling her eyes.
Sulea shook her head, sadness finally showing in her eyes. "I did not know... I knew he was sick, but..."
Katerin's expression shifted through different emotions, finally settling on sadness. "He never forgot you, you know." She had never thought this would hurt so much to talk about. "He had a good day before he passed. He told me more about you. Told me to find you. At the time, I thought it was just his fever dreams... but the letter..."
Sulea took her hand. "I'm glad you did," She squeezed her daughter's hand. "I needed the help."
"Do you know what made him sick? No one could figure it out. I spoke to priests, clerics, shamans, everyone that would listen. No one had any idea what it was..."
Sulea kept her features as they were, a spike of pain lancing her chest as Katerin described his illness. A spike of panic. It was information for another time, when things had settled. The girl already had too much involvement with Lodyne there was no need to inspire more. She wanted so badly to tell the girl, but even if she could, she would risk no more lives.
Igan had paid enough for her mistakes. He should never have spoken of those days, not even to his daughter. Old guilt welled back up in Sulea as she sat there with a mask of perfect calm.
The old wound still tore at her heart. She never should have tried it, never should have involved the man she loved. Love was the easiest thing to turn to pain, and it was a pain unlike any other.
"I'm sorry," she said, when Katerin finished her tale. "I cannot fathom a sickness like that." Her own words made her ill, but she did not let it show.
Katerin stayed quiet a moment, sipping her tea. "What kind of job leaves you chasing someone like Arnet to the corner of the world?" she asked. "It's not something I would assume to be on a merchant's to-do list."
Sulea snorted. "I am no merchant. I... gather information and keep an eye on the more unsavory types that try to bring chaos here."
Katerin nodded. She had assumed the merchant guild was only a cover, but it was nice to know for sure. She had seen plenty of merchants in the city, but shady as they were, they tended to abhor actually dangerous situations, or anything that did not have to do strictly with their profits.
"Arnet was involved in a number of nasty things. I was sent to track him and gather information." Sulea shivered.
"I thought you traveled here with a group?"
"They were killed... One by a dragon we met in the mountains, and the other two by Arnet, when we... found him." Her voice shook.
Katerin took her hand. "I'm sorry you had to..." For once in her life there was no right word, so she let her speech falter.
Sulea swallowed, and her composure was back in an instant. "We knew what we were signing up for. I owe you, darling. I doubt I would be very well off if you hadn't come looking." She set her cup aside and patted Katerin's arm. "I don't know how much you know about the Reclaimers, but what you did saved more than my life."
Katerin grimaced. "I know enough to know that whatever that thing can do needs to stay buried with Byron."
"How is your friend? Graiden told me he still hadn't woken up."
Katerin smiled. "He's awake now. Seems okay... he wouldn't tell me what happened."
"He saved the angel that came to help you," Sulea said. "It would've died if not for what he did."
"You saw?" Lines creased Katerin's forehead. "Is he going to be okay?"
Sulea shrugged. "I don't know what he did, exactly. I just know its results."
"How did Byron do that to him? Ho'ryian I mean... it was horrific," Katerin said, suppressing a shiver of her own.
"That wasn't Byron. That was his goddess."
Katerin stared at her curiously.
"Lodyne is the Goddess of pain. Commonly worshiped, though not openly."
"Such a pleasant religion," Katerin said, wincing.
"Isn't it?" Sulea laughed. She sat back in her chair, finally seeming to relax a little. "So what are you going to do now, daughter?"
Katerin thought quietly for a moment. "Well. I had thought about going back to Hearth-Home. Teach at the Tower. But... I don't think I'm going back, now."
"That boy has you too entrapped?" Sulea asked, humor in her tone.
Katerin blushed. "It's not him," she huffed. "Well... mostly not. Graiden gave me this," she held out a thick parchment deed, for a hefty amount of land. "and asked me to build a manor on it..." Her face contorted in confusion, as it had when Graiden had given it to her.
Sulea stared at the parchment before smiling widely.
Graiden was surely cunning, in a very kind way. He had a good eye for capable people and knew how to hook them.
"There's going to be a tournament. They're rebuilding Fort Mayor, and I want to see Ky'lei'mei again," Katerin sighed. "This place just feels right... for now."
"Then you should stay," Sulea said. "You're stronger than you think. You can help these people."
Katerin laughed, "By what? Killing over sized crocodiles? No one here needs my help. And I have no desire to join the ranks of Sahn-Raidar. No matter how many times Graiden wants to ask."
Sulea shook her head."Then don't." She smiled. "The world always has a need for people who put themselves in danger for the greater good. And you're quite good at that. As is the angel-blooded one who follows you around."
Katerin chewed her lip. "How did you know?"
"They never look like the rest of the world says they should. But they're rare enough it's not hard to recognize if you have a trained eye."
"But..." Katerin shifted. "I didn't do any of that for the people. I did it to find you." And for Fykes, she thought.
Sulea scoffed. "That's not true. You could've made a deal, waited it out. You took the most difficult approach, but the one that saved the most people." She looked at Katerin with a stern eye. "You did it to keep the world safe, even if many will never know."
Katerin cringed as Sulea spoke. "Regardless," she said, wanting to change the subject. "What will you do now?"
"I'm going to go home," she said with a small smile. "But I've got to take care of a few things first."
"Where's home?"
"The Faerlands."
Katerin's eyebrows rose. Sulea lived on another plane? An entirely different dimension and world, separate from this one. No wonder she had been so difficult to track.
"My bloodline favors the Faerlands. It feels... more like home," Sulea said. "In fact, your blood probably has more than a little to do with your magic."
Katerin shook her head. "My magic comes from study." Twelve years of it, she thought. "I've never had enough natural talent to light a candle."
Sulea frowned. "Are you sure? It takes a while to awaken."
Katerin bit her tongue, thinking of more than one of her spells that came to her far easier than the rest. "I guess not all," she admitted sheepishly.
Sulea grinned. "I thought not."
Katerin laughed, offering a half shrug. She talked with her mother for hours, and the tension slowly abated. They spoke of all the years they had been apart, swapping stories that might seem dull to anyone else. Sulea told of her travels, of the Faerlands and this world. Katerin talked of her studies and the city, of her friends. To them, it was a rekindling.
A moment and conversation both would dwell on long after it had passed. The comfort and joy of the conversation was offset by something, though. Katerin could not help but think that Sulea was holding something back. She ignored this, attributing it to the terrible things she had endured, and let nothing dissuade her from the quiet--and strange--conversation with a mother she had never gotten to know.
Graiden entered the room hours later with a food-laden tray, and Katerin bid them goodnight.
As she walked from the keep, her thoughts spun. Her talk with her mother had felt like a dream. She held the deed Graiden had gifted to her and stared at it with a frown. She loved it here–the way the air smelled, the wild chaos outside the gates, the way the sunset lingered for so long. She loved the people, too, but they did not need her. Sahn-Raidar had a full complement of their own magically inclined and trained mages arriving any day now.
The Tower had always been her place, or so it seemed. But when she thought about it, the Tower did not need her, either. In all her years of study there, she had probably been more of a nuisance than anything else. Top of her class or not, they had plenty of people who could take her place. She left the keep grounds with her head low. Torn between this new, exciting and gorgeous place and its people, and the old, familiar home she had always known.
She walked straight into someone and heard him laugh. It was a sound that made her heart skip like a stone across a still lake. Startled, she looked up to see Fykes' lavender eyes glowing with humor. Arjiah and Brazen stood beside him, waiting for her at the gates.
Fykes took her hand, and spun her into a hug, as she stared at them. "We've been waiting forever," he whined, smiling his familiar boyish grin.
She laughed. "What are you doing out here?"
Arjiah handed her a mug from the inn that smelled distinctly of rum. Brazen hugged her, picking her up and spinning around. She stared at him in disbelief, waiting for them to answer. She turned a suspicious stare at Fykes, "Should you even be out of bed?"
"We decided it was time to celebrate... but we couldn't start without you," Fykes said.
Brazen set her down and Fykes gave him a small nod of approval. He started without you, Brazen said.
I noticed, she replied with a grin. "What are we celebrating?"
"We stopped the world from being enslaved," Fykes said.
"Or destroyed," Arjiah added. "And you found your mother."
"If that's not celebration worthy, I don't think anything is," Fykes said, leaning an arm over her shoulders.
She returned his smile, taking a deep breath.
"How is your mother?" Arjiah asked, "Is she doing better?"
Katerin frowned, "She's.... coping. I think she'll be okay."
Katerin walked back to the inn, surrounded by the strangest people she would ever meet—the best people she knew.
She could not help her mood. It soared.