“What are you doing?” He felt along the Bond, but her thoughts and moods were slippery like eels in the darkest part of the river, and he could not get ahold of them. That scared him more than anything else. Her blue eyes were too bright, her smile too fixed for him to like it.
As Sorcha took in his stormy expression, the façade and the smile faded. She had finally taken a cloak, declaring that all could choose which color they would rather wear. Merrick found he preferred the thick fur one Raed had given him. Sorcha found a black one in the abandoned buildings of Waikein. Many of their colleagues had simply ripped the colors from their old cloaks and wore the reverse side of brown or black. It had been her first action as leader of the Enlightened, but he could hardly tell if it was a good one.
The collar of the dark cloak that Sorcha had taken up obscured her eyes from him as she turned away. Merrick could only see her in profile. “I am protecting the people of Arkaym as I was taught to since childhood—just like we were all taught in the Order.”
Merrick shook his head slowly. “But not as we were taught. Sorcha, you were inside the geists. You were almost part of them rather than destroying them.” He paused, took a deep breath and said the words that had been haunting him since he’d seen the display in the town square. “The rest did not see, but I felt it; you were like one of them.”
“But I did destroy them.” Sorcha’s reply was so distant that he had to strain his ears to catch it. “You were right—this was the place we needed to be.”
Another chill went up his spine. The curious double nature of the event, the way it had been twisted by the runes Masa and Sielu, set his teeth on edge. He disliked everything about it, and yet his partner seemed immune to his concerns.
Sorcha should have been able to sense how much time he had lost and the walking dream he’d been tangled in. Obviously, she had not.
The Bond that had carried them through so much was unraveling and could no longer be trusted. Merrick felt afloat in a dark sea, and he did the only thing he could: he reached out and took Sorcha’s hand. Maybe the physical connection would reignite the Bond.
Her fingers were chill, and she looked up at him with the kind of expression he had seen many times on the faces of those who had escaped possession by a geist: shock and distance. Sorcha was coming back to the world, but she was not the Deacon she had been. When she glanced down at his hand holding hers, it was with the detachment of someone who did not fully comprehend her own body.
Merrick squeezed her fingers, as if by that he could pull her back. “Yes, you destroyed them. Yes, you made the population believe—but at what cost to yourself?”
Sorcha swallowed, and her blue eyes, for the first time since her demonstration of power, met his. “They are inside me, Merrick. The Wrayth made me, and I was foolish to think that they would let me go so easily.” Her voice making this confession was that of a frightened child, and the flood of her memory ran along the Bond. For a moment he was swept away by it.
Sorcha stood at the gates to the Mother Abbey in Delmaire, the warmth of the summer sun on her back. Her hands were pressed against the ironbound wood, and they were the chubby, soft ones of a child who could be no more than two. To her eyes the cantrips and runes carved there were complex scribblings that meant nothing. However, there was someone whispering to her; a voice, faint and far off. The child could discern no words, but there was an infinite kindness to the voice that promised cuddles and love.
“Sorcha!” Another voice, this one much closer and louder, caught the girl’s attention. She looked up into a beautiful face with a smile on it; a familiar face. The Presbyter of the Young, Pareth, with deep gray eyes, and a fine spider’s web of lines around her eyes and lips. She always smiled and always hugged Sorcha when not so many of her fellow Deacons did.
Sorcha didn’t see it as a child, but Merrick discerned concern in those eyes. Even secondhand, he noticed how her gaze lifted quickly left and right, trying to see if anyone was observing them. “Let’s go back to the garden, sweetling.”
Her hand on the girl’s shoulder guided her around, away from the door that had so raptly held her attention. The voices faded somewhat when in the presence of the Presbyter, and Sorcha lost interest in them, instead staring up at Pareth in adoration. She had a love in her that she needed to expend on a mother.
“Mother,” Pareth said, squeezing Sorcha’s little hand just a fraction. “Yes, your mother.” She paused and looked down at the girl at her side. “She was a good friend to me, your mother. We grew up in Jhou together, though I don’t suppose you can understand that yet.” Her frown made Sorcha fear that all was not well.
Pareth bent and kissed her face. “I risked much to get you into the Order, but you are worth it, sweetling.” Merrick understood then, how Sorcha had passed the deep search the Order had done into her past—the one that should have rooted out any taint of geist. As Presbyter of the Young, Pareth must have conducted such an investigation and distracted others from looking deeply.
Sorcha’s mouth puckered up, and she would have cried if Pareth had not swept her up hastily into her arms. The Presbyter bounced Sorcha high into the air, making her cry transform into a giggle of delight. The blue sky above seemed full of infinite possibilities—and all of them happy ones.
Pareth held the girl aloft there for a moment in her outstretched arms. Sorcha felt like she was flying, and she stared down at the Presbyter, full of love and joy.
“You are so like her,” Pareth whispered to her friend’s daughter. “Please hold on to that for as long as you can. By all the small gods, may none of your father ever touch you . . .”
With a jerk and a gasp, Merrick pulled free of the Bond. Sorcha’s blue eyes still bored into his.
“You see,” she murmured to her partner, “I could not remember anything from my childhood when you met me, but since I went into the Wrayth hive, everything has been coming back. They shook something free inside of me, and worse, I think they want me to know what I am. They want me to fear it.”
If he had not been her partner, Merrick would have attempted a lie—it would have been the kindest thing. He swallowed hard. “Yet, Sorcha, you would never be able to do what you just did without your Wrayth heritage.”
He observed her flinch and understood. The concept that a Deacon would have anything to do with being geist was an anathema—they had both been taught that. In the Order of the Eye and the Fist, such a Deacon would have been at best locked away in the infirmary, but it was far more likely they would have been given a swift death.
Merrick locked his hand around her elbow, holding her face-to-face with him when she might have turned away. “You are still yourself, and you can use what they have given you.”
She shook her head. “You don’t understand, dear Merrick.” Sorcha had never called him such a thing before, and it terrified him to hear her use it in this bleak moment. “I’ve been listening to their voices, and I understand now. The Wrayth were looking for a weapon—one that would link all geists together and then pull them into the mind of the hive. They realized that the powers that the Deacons control could be the bridge—that is why they started their damn breeding program.”
Now along the Bond Merrick saw the many despairing faces of the female Deacons who the Wrayth had taken and forced to be brood mares for their experiment. He was glad not to have seen that firsthand, but tasting Sorcha’s horror now gave the memory a particular sting.
“Never fear,” Sorcha whispered, placing her hand on his shoulder, “I have you as my anchor. We have done great things before, and I trust you.”