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CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER TWO

Sophia stared at the city beyond the door, beyond the normal spaces of the world. Sienne pressed up against her leg, while Lucas and Kate flanked her to either side. Sophia didn’t know what to make of the city that lay there, even though she had seen it before in visions. The city was radiant, rainbow colored in parts and golden in others. People, tall and elegant, walked through the streets, dressed in radiant gowns and golden suits of clothes.

It was all beautiful, but none of it was what Sophia had come to the city to find. None of it was the reason she had left her daughter, her husband, and her kingdom to trek across the sea and the desert, past the city of Morgassa and out into the wastelands. She’d done that to find her parents.

And then, there they were.

They stood on the street in a clear space between the others, looking up at the doorway Sophia and the others had just passed through. They were older than they looked in her memories, but so much time had passed since then, could it really be any other way? More importantly, they still looked like

them

. Her father leaned on a stick now, but he was still tall and strong looking. Her mother still had the same red hair, although it was shot through with gray now, and she still looked like the most beautiful woman in the world to Sophia.

She ran forward without even thinking about it, and wasn’t surprised to find Kate and Lucas running with her. Her arms closed around her mother and father, and the others joined the hug, until it felt as though they were all one big mass in the middle of the street there.

“We found you,” she said, barely able to believe it. “We actually found you.”

“You did, darling,” her mother said, holding her close. “And you had to go through such a lot to do it.”

“You know about that?” Sophia said, stepping back.

“You aren’t the only one in the family who sees things,” her mother said with a smile. “It is why we left the path as we did for you.”

Sophia could feel how worried that made Kate feel.

“You saw all of it, but you weren’t there?” Kate asked.

“Kate—” Sophia began, but her father answered before she could go on.

“We would have been there if we could, Kate,” he said. “You have suffered, all of you, and we would have stopped every moment of that suffering if we could have. We would have brought you with us… we would have given you a perfect life if we could have.”

“Why couldn’t you?” Sophia asked. She thought of the orphanage, and of everything that had happened in the wake of the attack on their home. “Why

didn’t

you?”

“We do owe you an explanation,” their mother said, “and there are things that we have to tell you, but not here, in the street. Come with us, all of you.”

She and their father led the way off the street, the crowds parting as if in respect, or perhaps the way a crowd might have kept back from someone sick. Sophia and the others followed them to a large house with carvings on the outside that seemed to ripple in the sunlight. There was no door, as if people here didn’t fear the possibility of thieves, only a kind of curtain to keep out the wind.

Inside, their parents led the way to a room whose floor seemed to be a larger metal version of the disc map that Sophia and the others had followed to get there. Its lines glowed with every step they took upon the floor. A large, low table sat at the center of the room, with chairs set around it. There was a divan on which their mother and father sat together, a camp chair that Kate took without pause, an odd-looking carved stool that Lucas smiled at for a moment before sitting on it cross-legged, and a deep, comfortable-looking chair with a rug in front of it that Sienne curled up on, waiting for Sophia to sit down too.

She did so, and a large woman in the same radiant clothes came out from a side door, bringing food and water. Again, Sophia had the feeling that the food had been prepared specifically for each of them. Lucas got a kind of fish dish, Kate a hearty stew, Sophia a delicate dish that reminded her of the things prepared in the palace of Ashton.

“It’s like you know us better than we know ourselves,” Sophia said. A horrible thought came to her. “This is real, isn’t it? It isn’t some fever dream while we’re all dying in the desert? It isn’t some new kind of test?”

“It isn’t any of that,” their mother assured her. “We wouldn’t even have subjected you to the first test, except that the door requires it. We live here, but we do not control this place.”

“We had to pass through that damn door just the same way,” their father said. “For me, the guardian sounded just like my old tutor, Valensis.”

“It made us choose who would die,” Kate said.

Their father nodded. “The lost city does not admit those who will not put love first.”

“At least not through that door,” their mother said. “And you’ll note that your father does not say quite how long we were in those blasted prisons before we made our choices. But that is not what you want to hear from us. We should tell you why we did not come for you.”

“We couldn’t,” their father said.

“Because the Dowager would have killed you if you had been in one place?” Lucas asked.

“Yes,” their mother said, “but not in the way you think. That night… she had so many people killed, but she did something worse with us. She tried to break the connection that makes us who we are. She tried to poison our connection to the land. She tried to destroy the thing that makes us who we are.”

“I’ve felt it,” Sophia admitted. “It’s like… everything in the land is there for me to touch, and I can draw power from it if I need to.”

Kate chimed in then. “Siobhan had an old sorcerer teach me that all magic is about moving power. He taught me to heal by giving people power, and to kill by stealing it. I’ve felt that connection too. It’s the same thing on a huge scale.”

“It’s the same, and not the same,” their father said. “Some of those with magic understand it, and some of them use it to prolong their lives. An old creature like Siobhan had power because of it. A thing like the Master of Crows

has

power because of it. They have their connections: Siobhan to her fountain, the Master to his crows. For us, it is different: we are connected to our land and our people. We balance it and we touch upon it, but we must be careful not to take too much from it, not to damage it.”

Sophia had felt that when she had been connected to the land: she had felt the fragility of those connections, and how easy it might be to do damage to them.

“I don’t understand,” Lucas said. “How could the Dowager poison that link when she had no magic? And why doesn’t it affect

us

?”

“She got another to do it,” their father said. “It took a lot of time and effort to hunt him down and try to make him undo what he did. As for why it does not affect you, I think it was just aimed at us. I am grateful to all the old gods that it hasn’t touched any of you.”

“That still doesn’t explain why you didn’t come to get us,” Kate said.

“Oh, Kate, my darling child,” their mother said, standing and going across to Kate so that she could hug her. “We couldn’t take you with us, and then we lost you for so long. Even we didn’t know where you were hidden, not after you and your nurse didn’t make it to the friends who were to smuggle you out.”

“After that, we couldn’t come back to look,” their father said. “The further we stayed from our land, the more slowly the poison progressed. It gave us time to look for an antidote, but it meant we couldn’t come back for you.”

“And there was more. You have seen the future, Sophia. So have you, Lucas.” She made a statement of it, not a question. “You have seen things that will happen, could happen, might happen.”

“Siobhan talked about possibilities,” Kate said.

Sophia saw their mother nod.

“Possibilities, affected by the barest touch,” their mother said. “When Alfred and I argued about going back for you, I saw… I saw the world in ruins, land after land in flames. I saw us dying before we ever found you. When we decided to hold back, I saw the potential for a return to beauty and to peace. I saw you, Sophia, and I saw beyond you…”

Sophia swallowed as she thought about her daughter, Violet, and the visions she’d had of her. She’d seen the possibility of an age of unparalleled peace, and the possibility of something far darker. She’d changed the name she might have given to her daughter just to avoid the second. Could she blame her parents for their own hand on the scales of fate?

“So you left us?” Kate demanded, obviously not as willing to forgive it.

“I wish I could have been there with you,” their mother said. “I wish I could have taught you about magic instead of…

her

. We had so little time, though, and we did not dare to leave the city…”

“So that the Dowager wouldn’t find you?” Kate asked.

It isn’t cowardice to want to avoid a fight, Kate,

Sophia sent over to her.

It feels like it to me,

Kate shot back.

“It wasn’t cowardice, Kate,” their mother said, and Sophia smiled at the thought that of course their mother would share their talents. “It was the only way that we would get to see you all. The disc… the waiting… do you think I

wanted

to do that, instead of just reaching out to you and bringing you to us?”

“Then why didn’t you come when Sophia sent out messengers looking for you?” Kate asked. “

Lucas

came to us.”

“We couldn’t,” their father said. “We couldn’t leave this city.”

“Why not?” Sophia asked.

“The poison,” he said. “Being in a place like this, cut off from the world, was the only way to slow the effects enough to see you. It was the only way to get to tell you all the things you needed to know.”

Sophia swallowed at the thought of that, of her parents having to run not just from the kingdom but from the world to survive. Then one of her father’s words caught in her mind.

“Wait, you said that it slowed the poison being here. Not stopped it?”

“No, my darling,” their mother said. “The poison is still in us, and still working to kill us. Even the brief moment of connection to the world through the doorway sped it up. I wish… I wish for so many things, but there is no time for any of them. Your father and I… we are dying.”

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