She paused. “If you stay here, good intentions notwithstanding, you will be wasting your life. You will try to find a way to make your mother love you again, but that’s a small victory even if it happens. And while talking with Arling will make you feel better about yourself, it isn’t what she wanted for you. If she were still your sister and not the Ellcrys, you wouldn’t think twice about coming back to Paranor. And you would bring her with you the moment she finished her term as a Chosen. You’ve already told me this is what she wanted. It was what you wanted, too. It can’t happen for her, but that doesn’t mean you should abandon your place in the order. It doesn’t excuse you from carrying out your obligation to see it continue. Arling would want that, and you know it. She would tell you to go back. Come to Arborlon to see her when you can, but don’t make that your legacy.”
The words were blunt and hurtful, though Aphen couldn’t say exactly why. But she was used to Seersha speaking her mind, and she knew that what her friend was saying wasn’t meant as a reprimand.
“I’ve thought about all that,” she replied, though in fact she hadn’t thought about it in those exact terms. “I just think staying here is the best choice.”
Seersha gave a small smile. “Will you think about it some more?” she asked. “Can we talk about it another time?”
Aphenglow smiled back. “I don’t see why not.”
They visited for a while longer, and then Seersha grew tired and fell asleep. Aphen watched over her for several long minutes, thinking of what she had said. Sound advice from a good friend, but not the advice she wanted. She rose and left the room, closing the door quietly behind her.
Outside the healing center she stood blinking in the bright afternoon sunlight, deciding what to do next. She chose to go to Ellich, hoping he might find time to speak with her. She was troubled by what Seersha had said, suddenly uncertain about her decision to stay in Arborlon. She thought she knew what her uncle would tell her, but she wanted to hear him say it. If he reaffirmed what he had been telling her for months about coming home, she might find it easier to dismiss Seersha’s arguments.
She found Ellich ready and willing to speak with her, which was something of a relief. Although he was elbows-deep in his newly minted role as King—a role she still believed should have gone to him in the first place—he put everything aside immediately and walked out into the palace gardens to speak privately with her.
“I’m still coming to terms with things,” he told her. “Very much the same as I suspect you are. Discovering the truth about Jera was heartbreaking. I won’t ever know for certain how long that creature was playing at being my wife. I won’t ever know how long she had been dead. It’s very difficul t to believe, any of it.”
“We were all deceived, Ellich. It was cruel and evil; it took someone like Edinja to conceive of such a plan.”
“It cost us both people we loved. It cost me the ability to trust my own senses.”
She looked at him carefully, noting how worn and haggard he looked and the haunted glint in his eyes. He would never be the same, she knew. He would rule the Elves wisely, but he would not again be as strong a man in himself.
She pushed back against her sadness. “I need to ask you something about my own life, if you will consider listening. I have a difficult choice to make.”
What he advised was pretty much what she had expected. She belonged in Arborlon with the Elves. She needed to be close to her mother and to her people. Her time with the Druids was over. The order was decimated in any case, all of its members dead save for Seersha and herself, and there was no firm guarantee that Seersha would recover. It was a grim thing to say, but he believed Aphenglow should be realistic about how matters stood.
When he had finished, he told her again how sorry he was about both Arling and Cymrian. She knew what he was feeling. With Jera and his brother gone, he was left with Aphen and her mother as his only family, and quite naturally he wanted to keep both with him. He was uncertain, at this point, how he would do as King, and it would help to have Aphen, in particular, there to advise him.
In fact, he confided, he had been thinking of asking her to consider becoming a member of the High Council.
She left him more convinced than ever that staying in Arborlon was the right thing to do. But when she returned to her cottage—the one that once had seemed so welcoming and safe, filled with Arling’s presence and the warmth and closeness the sisters had shared during the year she had been researching the Elven histories—she encountered an oppressive emptiness and silence, and wondered how she would ever manage to fill it again.
She was just about to fix herself something to eat when there was a knock on the door. When she opened it, Woostra was standing there.
“Seersha told me you don’t intend to come back to Paranor,” the scribe announced without preamble. He was nervous and fidgety, and his white hair was a wild tangle. “I wanted to hear it from you.”
“Come in,” she said, stepping back. “We can discuss it.”
They sat at the little table where she and Arling had discussed things so often in the past. It was the first time she had spoken to Woostra alone since her return, and it felt immediately uncomfortable.
Perhaps he sensed it, too. “I want you to know I am sorry about Arling. Even if it had to happen, even if there was no choice, it is still a terrible tragedy. I wish it hadn’t happened.”
“Thank you for saying that.”
He nodded curtly. “That said, if you are thinking of leaving Paranor and the Druid order, you are making a terrible mistake.” His face was stern. “Have you thought this through?”
“I think so.”
“Then you must realize you are betraying every vow and breaking every promise you made when you joined the order. You were never meant to take those promises and vows lightly, and I don’t think you did when you took them. Now you seem to have decided otherwise, in spite of the fact that your sister did for your people exactly the same as she would expect you to do. She sacrificed herself for the greater good. Is it possible you don’t understand that this is what’s being asked of you?”
“I don’t know that anything is being asked of me. I’m doing what I believe to be the right thing.”
His mouth tightened into a knot. “Right for you, perhaps, but not for everyone else. It is certainly not the path Arlingfant would have followed. It is not the path Khyber Elessedil would have taken. It is the path of least resistance, and a nod to the self-pity you are feeling and the effort you are making to avoid having to deal with a much harder reality than you’ve had to face up to before.”
“Which is?” she said.
“That, without you, the order will fail and the Druids will vanish. Perhaps not forever, but long enough that everything that’s been accomplished since the time of Walker Boh will be lost. You think I exaggerate. You think I am an old fool, rambling on about the good old days. But I’m talking about the future, Aphenglow. The future the Druids can either help to shape or leave to its own miserable fate. Khyber chose the former; she gave her life to that effort. She would have expected you to do the same—even though your sister is gone, even though your life is in upheaval, and even though it may prove to be difficult and perhaps even costly beyond any price you’ve paid up until now.”
“You make it sound so inviting,” she snapped, suddenly irritated.
“I’m making it sound like the truth. It isn’t up to me to persuade you that Druids in the future will have an easy time of it or that things will improve now that the Forbidding is restored and those creatures are locked away again. None of that is up to me. You should be making these arguments yourself. But you’re not, so I have to say what I think.”