The Promised Queen (Forgotten Empires #3)- Jeffe Kennedy Page 0,21
and not like a part of myself. I’d never been a person to dwell on death. I’d certainly never longed for death until those last moments on the wizards’ sacrificial altar, but when I’d resigned myself to the inevitability of it, when I’d actively embraced death and welcomed Her in … I couldn’t seem to stop. There might be no coming back from that.
It could be that was one invitation I couldn’t rescind, and those final thoughts clung to everything else I tried to consider, a cobwebbing of death that cast a shroud over my soul. Perhaps my body had only seemed to come back to life—animated by a ghost of my former self.
Unable to summon the will to fight it, I succumbed to the drugging sleep—and the nightmares that awaited me.
* * *
“What’s wrong with Lia?” I demanded.
Ambrose raised an eyebrow. He wore the robes that Lia had given him as court wizard of Calanthe, the dark velvety material studded with constellations of jeweled stars. “Drink your tea, Con, and consider phrasing your questions better. Cookie?”
“No,” I bit out, but I drained the teacup and set it aside. Ambrose never could be rushed along. I fed a cookie to Vesno who’d lifted his tufted ears at the invitation. Sondra stood at the open window, gazing out at something, unflinching though cold rain spattered her face and the fierce wind tore at her clothing. Ambrose reclined on a wine-red sofa with gold tassels. That was new. In fact, everything was new since we’d unwillingly stayed in that tower, the room much larger than seemed possible. It had been divided into work areas, some screened off, others openly cluttered, some I couldn’t seem to get my eyes to focus on. A large bed poked out from behind a curtain, while chairs and more fancy sofas clustered in conversational groupings like a ladies’ salon.
How Ambrose had gotten everything in there defied rational explanation. Which shouldn’t surprise me, as everything about Ambrose defied rational explanation. I raked my hands through my hair, digging my fingers into my scalp. It didn’t help dredge up better questions, whatever the fuck that meant.
“Sondra,” Ambrose called, “would you like a cookie? They’re excellent.”
She waved a hand in dismissal without turning. Ambrose sighed, then fed a cookie to Vesno, who took it with delicate precision, munching happily.
“She’s locked me out,” I said. Not a question, but it helped to think it through. “Literally, by having Ibolya bar my way, but effectively before that. At first she seemed to be talking to me—” Pretending to care, but maybe she’d been trying to say goodbye? “—but all along she was edging me out the door. She’s messed up, not like she was before. I mean, I don’t expect her to be magically better, but…” But that would be useful magic. I lifted my head to stare at Ambrose. “I think she’s dying. Or not fully alive. I don’t know. What can I do to help her?”
“Ah. That’s a better question.” He wagged a cookie at me, then popped it in his mouth, munching thoughtfully. I waited while he chewed, swallowed. When he reached for another cookie, my hand shot out of its own accord to seize the wizard’s wrist.
“And the answer?” I prompted.
He smiled sadly, then was no longer in my grasp, instead sitting back some distance, cookie in hand. “A better question helps to elicit a useful answer, but is no guarantee of one,” he remarked. “I might return the question to you. What can you do to help Lia?”
Sondra might have made a snorting sound, but she didn’t turn around. No help there. I set my teeth. “This is what I’m trying to find out.”
“Or, to put it another way, can you give Her what She needs?”
“Yes.” I’d give Lia anything, whatever she needed. “If I know what it is,” I amended.
“Ah, and that can be the sticking point. Very often we need the people who love us to give us what we need before we know what that is ourselves.”
“Which means those of us with no one to love us are pretty much fucked,” Sondra muttered darkly.
“How do I figure out what Lia needs if she can’t tell me herself?” I asked. I agreed with Sondra, in theory, but I couldn’t dwell just then on the painful truth that Lia didn’t love me in return. I’d gone over half my life with no one loving me—I could hardly start dwelling on it now.