As soon as he was well enough, he was going to find her, and make her pay for what she did to him.
Looking down at his left paw, he flexed it a few times. It felt…odd. It was fully functional, just like his right paw, but there was a strange fuzzy sensation about it, and it felt curiously weak. He spotted the problem. The manacle on his left wrist was slightly bent, and it was pressing against an artery. He clutched the heavy steel cuff in his other paw and squeezed carefully, bending it back into a more comfortable position.
He stopped and looked at the manacles, his eyes distant. They had bound him with those manacles. Chained him to a wall and taken away his freedom. They represented the one thing that he feared over all others, the physical manifestation of his greatest fear. And it was something that he was terrified that he may forget some day. There was nothing that Tarrin desired more than freedom, nothing that he would not do to keep it, preserve it, or reclaim it. His freedom represented everything that he was, both as a person and as a Were-cat. The manacles represented everything that he could become. He had killed. Killed many people. Not even he knew how many, but he had the feeling that his memories of his actions would indeed slowly return to him. He had become the one thing he had always feared he would become. He had turned into a monster even worse than any Troll that ever lived, and it was all because they had taken away his freedom.
Never again. It would never happen again. And every day, those manacles would be there, on his wrists, their weight reminding him what price his freedom cost him, and they would never let him forget.
Closing his eyes, he leaned his head back against the headboard, feeling his ears bend a bit between his skull and the rough wood.
Never again.
The door opened, and the light from beyond touched his eyes. He opened them and found Allia entering quietly, holding a cup of some steaming liquid. She was alone. She wore a pair of leather breeches and a cottons shirt, and her shaeram hung visible about her neck, resting on the soft gray cloth. She didn't say anything at first, she only smiled at him warmly and sat down at the edge of the roughly made yet solidly constructed bed. She looked directly into his eyes, her own serious and searching, and then she handed the cup to him wordlessly. It smelled of chicken and salt.
"Where is everyone?" he asked weakly.
"Waiting outside," she replied, putting a hand against his forehead. "We thought it best for me to come in first."
"Why?"
"Because we weren't sure who we would find when you woke up," she said gently, but her words were blunt. It wasn't Allia's nature to evade things. "You were completely out of control, my brother. We didn't know if passing out would return your mind to you. But I see it did."
He nodded, taking a sip of the hot broth. It tasted sweeter than the rarest wine to him. "Not too quickly," she warned as he started to gulp it down, ignoring the burning of his tongue and throat.
"What happened?" he asked in a small voice. "I don't really remember anything."
"You fought your way back to us, deshida," she told him, patting his shoulder. "You-" she closed her eyes. "You used Sorcery the likes of which has not been seen in eons. You very nearly killed me with it."
He gave her a stricken look, but she only smiled at him. "There is no blame anywhere, brother," she assured him. "You gave us plenty of warning to get out of the way."
"I don't remember any of it," he said in a frightened tone.
"There wasn't much to remember," she said. "You blew a hole up to the Nave, then you rose up and killed the high priest with Sorcery. I think he had a special meaning to you. Your choice of death for him was…exotic."
"Irvon," he spat, trying to sit up. "He had me thrown in a dungeon cell! He had to pay for that!"
"He paid, brother, he paid dearly," she assured him.
"Where are we, sister? I've never seen a room in the Tower like this." Not even the Novices' rooms were quite that small. It only had room for the bed and a single washstand, which had a tiny chest tucked underneath it. There was just the door, with no windows, and the walls were a featureless, ragged gray stone with no decorations to break up their monotony.
"We are not at the Tower," she hissed. That surprised him. "We will never go back there!"
"What's the matter? Didn't they send the Knights to get me back?"
"No, we arranged that," she said hotly. "The Tower has no honor!"
That was serious. "What happened?" he asked.
"Dolanna discovered a terrible truth about the Tower, my brother. It is something that you may not want to know."
"Allia."
"I would think twice, my brother. In your current condition, it may send you back into a rage."
"Right now, Allia, I couldn't rage myself out of this bed," he told her. "Better get it overwith now, while I can't do anything about it."
She sighed. "Dolanna discovered that it was not your enemies that sent Jesmind to kill you. It was the Tower, and they sent her to infect you. Deshida, the Tower deliberately turned you Were."
Tarrin gaped at her, his heart lurching. But in his weakened condition, it couldn't lurch that much. He felt shock, disbelief, betrayal in that proclomation, but it also followed a twisted logic that had gnawed at him for months. He should not have survived against Jesmind. Now he knew why he did. They had sent her in there to fight, to make it look good, but ultimately only to bite him and then leave him. He added that horrible truth to the great weight looming over his mind, something to work out when he felt more prepared to deal with it.
But it did expand his plans for vengeance. The Keeper wasn't going to get away with ruining his life. He was going to make her pay for it.
"Whoever took you used the same collar the Tower used to control Jesmind," she added. "It was stolen from their vaults some days ago."
"Jula," he hissed, his ears laying back. "It was Jula."
Allia gave him a surprised look. "Jula? But she is your friend!"
"She was lying," he hissed. "She was lying all along. They have to catch her, sister. I don't want to have to chase her across the West to kill her."
"Save that talk for when you are stronger, my brother," she told him. "You need to lay back down and sleep. Dolanna used a weave on you that will allow you to recover your strength much more quickly than usual, but even with that, it will take time. We didn't know if you would survive long enough to get you to safety. I have never seen you so wounded. It hurt me to see it."
"I don't know if I can," he told her in a small voice. "I'm afraid, Allia."
"Lay back," she said in a gentle, matronly voice, taking hold of him by his shoulders and helping him lay back down. "I will sing to you a song of peace, my dear brother, a song of peace and harmony, to soothe the whirling of your mind."
And then she began to sing, her rich, timbred voice raising in sweet melodies, singing a song of happiness and prosperity. Tarrin was captivated by the rich beauty of her voice, a voice that would charm the most savage monster, and he felt his fears and worries dissolve and blow away like sand upon the wind. She held his paw in her hands, and the feel of her touch, the sound of her voice, her spicy scent overpowering the smell of stone and polished wood, they all put him at ease. His every sense was overwhelmed by her closeness, and his utter trust and love he held for his tall, beautiful Selani sister allowed his mind to step down from his worries and fears and find nothing but sweet, rich harmony.