implied that this book and its inexplicable contents were a threat.
Reaching out, she touched the page. It felt like dry paper; dry and slightly brittle. It looked new. Her hand shook as she turned the page. It froze in the act of turning, the page on which Adam was painted curled but not yet flattened. Beneath the leaf which contained his image was another painted figure.
Carver.
Just Carver.
Avandar was by her side before she could move. She heard two words leave his lips; she understood neither. They were a curse in a dialect that she had never heard him speak. Nor did she ask.
Carver crouched, back against a wall, his face slightly lifted. He was gaunt, and she could see a small trail of blood from the corner of lips that looked cracked. His eyes were ringed with darkness, although she could only see one; his hair covered the other. His hands were streaked red, and in one, he held a dagger.
It was not a familiar dagger. It was not a Terafin dagger.
Beyond the edge of the wall she could see white, some hint of snow—but the wall implied city; it looked like an exterior wall.
“Carver.” The word was barely a whisper. She had drawn no breath to utter it, and she choked as she tried to say more—or tried to stop herself from saying more. She was The Terafin; she could not lose control here.
But she didn’t know how to keep it. She wanted to scream at the book. To scream at the person who had delivered it. She wanted to scream at Teller for hiding it in his study for six weeks, because she had no idea when this had happened.
Breathe. Breathe. She had no idea if this had happened. It was a painting of Carver. Carver, with his patrician nose, its line less perfect than it had been the first night she’d laid eyes on it. His hair was still a drape across one eye. He didn’t look any older to Jewel than he had the last time she’d seen him; he looked exhausted.
But he would be. He was nowhere near any of the homes he had known. Were there streets, where he crouched, hidden? Was there food? She whispered his name again, and this time, as the page trembled in her nerveless fingers, the image shifted. Carver looked up. He looked up, out of the page, and his eyes rounded as they met hers.
She was transfixed. She saw nothing, heard nothing, beneath the amethyst skies; not Avandar, not Meralonne, not the Chosen. She reached out to touch him and felt paper. Paper. Her hand could not dip below the surface to reach Carver.
But Carver could see her gesture. He didn’t speak. He didn’t try. Instead, he lifted a hand in den-sign, his lips curved in a tired, steady smile. He forced exhaustion from his face as he met and held her gaze.
Can’t speak, he signed. Need silence.
She lifted her hands. She didn’t know if he could hear a word she spoke, but he could see her. Where are you? How long?
He shrugged. Two hours. Maybe. Two hours. It had been four days, here. She needed no further proof that Carver was lost on the wild roads.
They had no gesture in den-sign that meant Ellerson. They had small signs for each other, but none for the domicis. She wanted to ask. She mouthed the old man’s name.
Carver shook his head. She couldn’t read his expression—but she tried. She tried harder than she’d ever tried to read written language. Where are you?
Don’t know.
You’re lying.
He grimaced. Jay, don’t come. Don’t follow.
She bent the whole of her will, the whole of her desire, toward her den-kin. It had been more than a decade since she had tried to deliberately invoke her stubborn, intermittent gift. She tried now. She tried, straining against every failure she’d ever had before. It didn’t help. She did not know where Carver was, and she could not see it.
But she knew it was Carver. She knew. He was still alive. He was somewhere cold, somewhere dangerous; he was in the shadows and on the run—but he was alive. She wanted to know where he was. She wanted to find him. He was, in that moment, the only thing she cared about.
She reached. She reached with both of her hands, letting the picture of Adam fall flat, face down, to one side. Carver’s eyes widened in utter silence. He gestured in frantic den-sign, but she couldn’t read it,