Chapter 9
“I think she is beginning to mend.” The voice, though I didn’t recognize it, roused me from foggy, half-waking dreams.
I blinked, trying to clear my thoughts of shadowy trees and leaping white deer. Above me, the rose-colored curtains of my bed came into focus. Sitting beside my bed was a gray-haired man I did not know, and behind him my mother hovered, her hands fluttering with worry.
“Mama?” I asked, my throat dry as parchment.
“Oh, my darling!” She rushed forward and bent to kiss my cheek. “We were so worried we’d lost you.”
“What… happened?” I had a dim memory of Sorche coming into my rooms, of me rising to tell her about the Darkwood—and then a blinding sheet of blue fire slamming across all my senses.
Oh, I’d been a fool to test magic I knew nothing about. Once again,
