Starsinger

Downpour

The winter rains began with enthusiasm not long after they crossed the River Volos. Heavy grey clouds had been gathering for days when sheets of water at last poured forth from the sky, boring into the soft muddy trails until their only road was swamped and miserable. Jace hastily set his team back the way they'd come, to take shelter in an abandoned barn they'd spotted an hour's walk back.

Rain beat against the high wood roof late into the evening. They stoked a fire in a pit of the packed earth floor and the smoke drifted up towards the ceiling, slipping out into the wet through a tiny window opposite the loft where the team had stored their packs. Delia had crawled up there to relax while the rest of them cooked dinner.

Aaron sat far from the flames, letting the shadows shroud his anxiety. Jace and Raelyn chatted as they took turns stirring the soup pot propped over the flames, but Aaron kept his eyes fixed on Sapphire while she steadily chipped away at a lump of wood with her knife. It had been nearly a week since the incident with the moon temple, but Aaron could not rest easy.

She's dangerous. He must have known it all along, ever since he'd seen her shatter the iron bars of Delia's prison, or maybe even before that. Now he couldn't shake it. His mind kept returning to the hideous spasm of her face when he'd touched her, when she'd slashed him. If he'd dodged a moment later, she might have stuck him between the ribs.

And then with a strength no human should possess, she brought the whole temple crashing down.

There had been a moment when their eyes met, Sapphire's clouded with that strange, implacable rage, and for a moment Aaron saw her as she had appeared in his hallucination, firing a crossbow bolt through Raelyn's heart, unflinching.

That was a void magic fever dream, he reminded himself. Sapphire had risked her life to save the princess more times than he could count. Even before, when her strange abilities had spiraled out of control, it had always been to help Raelyn, not hurt her. They were no Ilara and Lizar, sent out onto a battlefield to destroy each other. Protecting the princess was Sapphire's mission, handed down from Queen Tatiana herself. That was a trust she would not break.

She's lied to us before. There was the doubt, snaking through him. Aaron clenched his fists. He wasn't so disturbed that she had lied about their mission, anymore, so much as the fact that she had lied so well. He had trusted her enough to keep her secrets from Jace, his kyrleader and closest friend, never suspecting that trust was not returned.

I was a fool. Aaron watched Sapphire's hands as they slid expertly along the wood, feeling for harsh edges and nicking them off in tiny fluid motions. Hands that had cut him, twice. Hands that had wrenched iron and reduced the azurite pillar to dust. Yet even now he felt drawn to her.

My judgment is compromised. The realization terrified Aaron more than anything else. If I can't trust my own instincts, I am lost.

He should tell Jace. Whatever this was, he was not equipped to handle it alone.

But I promised her. He knew the words had been hard, but Sapphire had forced herself to say them. The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed that she had never shared so much with anyone else. To break her confidence now would be an outright betrayal.

Aaron glanced at Jace, who was gesticulating wildly at Raelyn to emphasize his point. How would he react? With Delia, Jace was learning to see through the fog of his superstitions. But Sapphire was no mage, and her bizarre abilities didn't follow any of the rules that Jace was beginning to understand. Even Delia couldn't explain them.

Jace trusts Sapphire, too. We're a team now. Could he still cast her out? Or worse?

Maybe trust was irrelevant. Whether or not Sapphire meant any harm to the princess or their mission, she was still a threat. The unnamed force inside her was destructive and volatile. She'd hurt Aaron without meaning to, destroyed the temple without thinking. When the fear and rage took hold of her, she wasn't their scout anymore. She became something else.