Regardless, one thing was certain: Rasmin was not giving up on her so easily.
Imari dropped the poker and crossed the room, passed through the screen door, and stepped onto her veranda. Cold air shocked her skin through her thin nightdress; the velvety black sky had brightened to a woolen gray with the oncoming dawn.
“You’re right,” she said, searching the clouds for him. “I will practice. So that if you—or anyone else—tries to use me again, I will be ready. And I will fight back.”
And she would. Somehow.
A knock sounded upon her door, which surprised her, considering the early hour.
“One moment.” Imari stepped out of the cold and shut the veranda doors. She shoved her flute into a drawer, threw on a silk shawl, and said, “Come in.”
The door opened and her papa stepped through.
Wards, she didn’t think she’d ever grow used to seeing him again.
He was fully dressed this morning, his long hair tied neatly back in contrast to his unruly beard, but the weariness in his eyes betrayed him. “I thought you might be awake.”
She gave him a slight smile. Her papa had always been an early riser, but looking at him, at the fatigue in his face, she couldn’t tell if he’d risen early or simply never slept.
His gaze snagged on her unused four-poster bed, plush with silk sheets and a mountain of fluffy pillows. He then spotted the blankets heaped upon the floor beside it.
Imari couldn’t tell him that it had been too much. She didn’t want to explain how she’d felt like a foreigner in her old room, with its luxury and soft textures and warmth. She couldn’t explain how the cold had become familiar. Surviving had become familiar. And she couldn’t really explain how struggle had fortified her bones, and that she didn’t want comfort to make her frail again.
Her papa looked at her then, and she suspected he saw it all anyway.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get the opportunity to visit last night,” he said, breaking the awkward quiet. Weariness stole the bass from his tone. “But I imagine you and your brothers probably enjoyed some conversation without a father’s input.” He gave a small, knowing grin, which Imari returned.
Sar Branón had said he’d join Imari and her brothers later, after he spoke to his wife, but then later had become early morning, and he’d never arrived. Out of all the inevitable reunions, Anja had been the one Imari had dreaded most. For both herself, and her papa.
“We did,” Imari answered, then, “How…is Anja?”
“As good as can be expected, I suppose.” His gaze slid to the door she had just closed, as if he could see the city beyond. “She went to Jadarr first thing this morning to fast and pray.”
Jadarr was the largest of Istraa’s temples, located at the city’s center.
“I’m sorry, Papa,” Imari said quietly.
His gaze settled back on her. “Do not apologize for my mistakes, Imari.”
He was speaking about so much more than his wife.
His mustache twitched, and then he turned abruptly, and said, “You three were up late.” He gestured at the nazzat as he rounded the divan and sat.
Eager to change the subject.
Truthfully, Imari was too. Anja was never an easy one to discuss.
“Well, we had a lot to talk about,” Imari replied, joining him on the divan.
She looked at him, and he looked at her, and the quiet expanded, all tangled with the past. The years had altered them both, and not just on the outside. Time and experience had set them on different trajectories. Or, rather, it had set Imari on a completely different trajectory. She was Istraan, but The Wilds now flowed in her veins, and her papa gazed at her as if she’d been seasoned with a new herb he couldn’t quite place.
And then, suddenly, he smiled. “I still can’t believe you’re here.”
The quiet might have been awkward, but his smile was real, and in that moment, Imari felt that everything might just be all right. That no matter what happened—no matter what obstacles lay ahead—at least she wasn’t alone. She had a family who loved her, and no one could take that precious gift away.
Imari sighed and sagged back upon the divan. “I still can’t believe it either,” she admitted, glancing about her room. It still felt like a dream, being back in this once-so-familiar place.
“Tell me how you were found,” Sar Branón asked. “Ricón told me a little, but I’d like to hear your perspective.”
So Imari explained while her papa listened. She held nothing back, and he asked questions here and there for clarification, but remained otherwise quiet while his posture grew heavier and heavier as if each of her confessions were another stone hefted upon his shoulders. He seemed particularly interested in Jeric, as Ricón had been, and there she did hold back. It struck her that the moments that mattered most to her were the very ones she could not share, not comfortably anyhow—not yet—and so she tucked those deep and locked them away for her sole enjoyment.
When she finished, Sar Branón sighed and leaned back, one finger tapping absently upon his knee. “Saints, I’d hoped he’d been exaggerating.” And then he sat forward, looked at her, his expression full of regret. “I’m so sorry I sent you away, Imari. That you endured all of that on your own.”
She held his gaze, searched his face. “Then why did you?” Of course, she’d drawn her own conclusions; she’d had ten years to think about it, and the reasons she’d constructed spanned a wide spectrum from because he hated her to he believed The Wilds her best chance at survival.
But like he’d asked of her, she wanted to hear his perspective.
Her papa rested both elbows upon his knees, threading his fingers together. He still wore the engraved gold ring on his index finger—his sar’s ring—and the wide band upon his thumb, but she did not see the ring Anja had given him.
“Because we could not know how or when your power would manifest,” her papa answered at last. His brow furrowed. “Ten years. One day. And who could we ask for help without giving you away? Had you been unable to hide your power, my rois and roiesses would’ve demanded your execution. Kourana Vidéa would not have hesitated. She was already asking for trial—Saád’s crimes were still too recent, you remember, and his followers had just gone into hiding. If we hadn’t given you a trial, we would have faced the wrath of the Five Provinces. King Tommad was already breathing fire down my neck.”
Imari studied her papa, because in everything he had said, her thoughts snagged on one word. “You said we.”
She wondered if he’d meant mama. Her real mama.
Sar Branón tapped his thumbs together. “It was Gamla’s idea.”
Imari sat forward, surprised. “Uki…?” Her uncle? And then another thought struck her. “Stars… Uki knew Tolya, didn’t he?”
Her papa’s expression was answer enough.
Of course her uncle would’ve known Tolya. Why hadn’t she considered this before? Healers knew other healers. Especially someone like her uki, renowned throughout the Five Provinces for his unparalleled healing abilities.
“Gamla orchestrated your death, and your transport,” her papa continued. “He made the tonic that put you to sleep. He swore Tolya would be enough to keep you safe, and I trusted him implicitly.” On this point, her papa’s voice took an edge.