Lightholde was as big and as wondrous as she remembered it to be. As she watched the sun setting in the Bay of Halcyon from atop a hill in the city, she marvelled at how expansive the water was. It seemed endless, yet she knew that it did end. Peoples, cultures, lives she could never dream of existed across the vast expanse of blue. For a second, and only a split second, she dreamed of crossing the water and exploring the wide world beyond. Reality sunk in, quickly squashing any dreams, and she sighed.

The spirit inside her flashed her memories of his own travels, the way he would become a local animal to traverse the landscape invisibly, skirting villages, towns, encampments. Sometimes not seeing humans for years as he ran and flew. His freedom was finite, the time he had spent wandering so short as to seem merely a tease to him.

There was joy and then there was being free. He said as she turned from the sparkling sun on the waves.

She was early to meet Therin and had spent a few hours wandering the city after taking a room for a few days at the Ugly Duckling using the medallion Therin had given her and stabling the mare. She set off to watch people, listening to the accents and voices that made up the babble of humanity. Entranced by how many kinds of languages she could hear, she thought she could sometimes make out the language that Therin had spoken in when he had taken her to eat.

As the lanterns were lit, she made her way to the tavern she had promised to meet Therin. She would go there every night until he showed up. The rushing crush of people, bodies dressed in various things, pushed her to and fro. Men in gemstone coloured suits embroidered in glittering patterns avoided her as she passed. Small children stared at her, pulled closer by their mothers.

As she spotted the tavern, she cut across the foot traffic, nearly tripping on a long red train of a woman’s gown. The woman cursed at her in a beautiful sing-song language and waved a tattooed arm at her, her stacks of golden bangles ringing as she gestured angrily but she cut herself off as she looked into Alira’s eyes. Alira merely ducked her head and dodged inside the tavern.

He was there.

Sitting alone at a corner table, surveying the room with an unreadable expression.

Light seemed to pour from him, his hair gilt under a lit lantern. He had cleaned up since the blades had shown him to her. His face was freshly shaven, his hair clean. His tunic was pale blue, exactly the shade of his eyes, and as he sipped from a mug, a ring sparkled on one of his hands. She stood there staring at him, watching him. Something about the time spent apart had dulled him to her and seeing him again, in person, was like seeing daylight again after days in the dark.

His eyes roamed the tavern, landing on person after person, his expression never changing. He seemed bored but expectant, as though he was quietly trying to dampen some hope that he had. She watched his eyes go from dull to brilliantly illuminated as they landed on her face. He had paused with his tankard halfway to his mouth and he slowly lowered it as he saw her.

She knew that she looked different. How could she not? Her hair was shades lighter, tangled into a dirty braid. Her skin was so pale now it practically glowed in the gloom. Her clothes were bloody, filthy, unkempt. With her improved eyesight, she watched his pupils dilate as he looked her up and down slowly, taking in each change. His gaze landed on her daggers. She had not left them behind when she had gone wandering.

She crossed the common room to him and paused at his table before sitting down, her back to the room, and taking his drink. She downed the beer in a single breath and set it down.

“Therin,” she said but her voice broke and she lowered her eyes to the table top, noticing all the gouges and scratches in the dark wood.

“What happened?” His coldness made her look up, blinking. She met his eyes and saw the wary apprehension there.

“A lot,” she admitted. “I brought you a gift.”

She pulled out the small book she had taken from Galyvn’s resting place and set it gently on the table between them. He brushed the book aside and grabbed her hand in both of his, drawing her attention to him again.

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“What happened?” he asked again.

Tears fell from her eyes before she could begin talking and he stood, releasing her hand and striding to the bar. He spoke to the server quickly in the same language he had before and brought back two more tankards.

“She’ll bring food,” he murmured as he put both drinks in front of her. “Talk.”

And she did. She found that once she opened her mouth to speak, it all came out in a torrent. Sometimes so quickly and jumbled that he slowed her, made her take a drink and breathe. When she told him about Galvyn, how he had been sustained by witchcraft, reanimated, and finally laid to rest she saw the tears in his eyes.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I should have been there…”

“No,” she cut him off. “This was necessary for me to do alone. Well,” she stopped herself. “Not alone, exactly. I learned his true name when…” she stopped and swallowed. It felt so long ago, so much to tell. She sighed and shook her head.

She finished telling him about Shadesorrow being freed, how she had subsequently lost the dark goddess, allowing her to find a new host.

“Therin,” she said slowly. “There’s something I think you need to know.” She swallowed and her mouth was still dry so she took another drink, finishing the first of the two tankards. “Mara…” She cleared her throat again. “She was in the Temple.”

“What? When did you go to the Temple?” He frowned in confusion. Realising she was skipping around in her story, she backtracked, telling him about using her blades to find the soulstones that Erin had put her own soul into.

“Noran carries the main stone,” she said. The angry pain that danced across his face was enough to make her take caution when she continued. “He was there, too. He followed me. Shadesorrow sent him to tell the Morinn to be ready for her.” She held off telling him that he, too, carried a soulstone. It felt…accusatory.

His stoic silence was icy and she waited, drinking from the second mug before beginning again.

“And I saw him and Mara in the Temple. She was…” she shook her head. “I didn’t understand what I was seeing. She had him strapped to a chair, much like at the monastery. But he was sweating, fighting something, and at his hip was his dagger. The pommel of it was my mother’s stone.”

“She was there? Truly there, not a vision or an image?” She frowned in response.

“I’m fairly certain she was actually there. She slapped a hand over the stone and I felt myself being forced back to my body.”

Their food arrived and he began eating. The spiced stew felt thick and heavy and she put down her spoon after only a few bites. He watched her push her plate away with concern. He rubbed his chin with a broad hand, the back scarred. The ring he now wore glinted in the light.

“Devan must be told,” he said finally. “If she’s in the Temple, it means she’s double crossed us. Noran was supposed to be our mole. Mara was meant to keep him in line, from falling too far.” Anger stole across his face and Alira thought of the pained love that Noran had born for him. Did he know how Noran felt? Is that what the angry tension was about?

For some reason, and she didn’t care to think about why, she didn’t tell Therin about her attack on the camp of slavers. Something inside her told her he would not understand, that his propensity for justice and retribution might not extend to the cold way in which she had dispatched those men.

She watched him looking at her out of the corner of his eye as he drank and she picked at the flat bread that had come with the stew.

“Not hungry?”

“No,” she said simply, inspecting the blood under her nails again. He caught her hand, looking for himself. He set his mouth in a grim line and nodded once. Her stomach dropped, taking her further from hunger, as she watched him guess at what she was hiding.

“It doesn’t get much easier, I’ve heard,” he said cryptically as he set her hand back down and patted it once. “But, if you unburdened your soul, you might feel better.”

“To you?” She asked with a wry half smile.

“To anyone.”

“I’ve already talked about it with Hrulinar.” His name slipped from her with a whispered reverence, a sad breath of air. He had been quiet since she had seen Therin, keeping himself and his thoughts separate from her.

“And how does he fare?” the monk asked politely, pulling her plate toward himself.

She put a piece of the bread in her mouth and chewed slowly, thinking.

“If you’d like to talk to him, we can go up to the room I hired for the next few nights. Since Shadesorrow, it’s been a lot easier to have him separate from myself.”

The monk chewed, the spoon halfway to his mouth again. He swallowed, took the bite that was waiting and nodded.

“Fine,” he said around the bite of meat and potato. “I have things to tell you, too.”