his many years, he replied, “I did it to show you that you are not empty after all. You are filled with the Spirit of God, Caleb. And He wants you to fix this place.” He looked around at the land and smiled.
Caleb stayed with him in the cave for seven days. He prayed and asked God for forgiveness. He planted and taught the elder the ways of irrigation, and Caleb’s heart remembered the cries of the land.
He went home to Shondravar on the ninth day. He still loved Willow. Still, his soul longed for her. But he found his passion for God and the land that he thought he had lost. He would give his life to both again. God had put him here for a purpose. He would see it done. Feed the people. Feed the land. He remembered how the moist soil yielded under his feet in the wheat fields, unlike the dry, angry ground beneath him now. He would fix it. He would fix it all
Willow sat at the long mahogany dining table reading her Bible. Her father watched her, opening his mouth to receive a forkful of food from his trusted guard Barat while his broken arms hung suspended from slings against his chest.
Her relationship with her father had all but ceased to exist since Caleb told her that the Catchers belonged to him all along. She had cried for days and would speak to no one, not even Seth. When her father finally got up the courage to go to her room a week later to talk to her about it, she screamed at him. She blamed him for everything, not only for the hell she and countless others went through at the hands of his own monsters, but for ending her relationship with Caleb. She blamed him for the death of Predaria, the suffering of the people in the church, for Martin and his granddaughter, Lizette, for everyone she met there. She told him that Caleb was right, he was nothing but a monster who the Warriors should have killed long ago. That’s right, if he was going to keep her there with him by threatening Caleb and the people of Shondravar then she would make him miserable.
She finally threw a vase at him to get him away from her and out of her room. The days that followed were no better. She hardly spoke to him at all.
“Why won’t you eat, Willomenia?” he tried to talk to her now after he swallowed. She didn’t answer, and her father threw Seth a rueful glance. “All she does is read that book.”
“Willow?” Seth said softly, resting his fork on the table. “I wish you would eat something. You haven’t eaten a proper meal since the Warriors left.”
“I’m not hungry.” Her tone was as flat as the void in her dark eyes.
Seth yanked his napkin off his lap and threw it on the table. “Are you going to go on like this forever, brooding and pining over him? You made your choice, Willow. Do you forget?”
Baltrasard listened quietly, dismissing Barat with a slight thrust of his chin.
“You don’t understand him, Seth.” She closed the book and glared at him, resenting his presence in her life because she didn’t love him, yet she stayed with him. “I told Caleb I wouldn’t go back with him because moments before he asked me to leave, my loving father threatened to destroy Shondravar.” She threw her father a dark stare, and then continued, “I did everything Caleb expected me to do, everything he was afraid of. It’s my fault he left because I couldn’t even tell him how I felt.”
Seth stared at her from across the table, his blue eyes penetrating hers. “And how do you feel, Willow? Tell me.”
She met his gaze head on. “I already did, months ago, in a tiny room that was my prison, Seth. I told you I had given my soul to a man who I loved more than life. I told you my heart called to him, and that my only hope was to see his face again. You knew from the start how deeply I loved him.”
“I thought I could make you forget him, Willow.” Seth rose from his chair and started to go to her.
“Willomenia!” It was her father looking like he wanted to slam his fists on the table. “I have given you everything you ever wanted. I have denied you nothing. But as your father, I refuse to