Nym's Arc

Chapter 16 of 41

Two weeks passed. Drasila lay on the table by the fire and did not wake. Her chest still rose and fell, but each day her skin turned grayer. Nym pressed a cup of water to her mother's lips every morning. Most of it ran down her chin. The white streak in Drasila's dark hair had spread wider, as if the color was draining from her body. Magnus never left her side. He sat in a hard chair with his rune books open on his knees. His silver hair hung loose now. His golden robe was creased from sleeping in it. He read the same pages over and over, hunting for a cure he could not find. "You have to eat," Nym said each night. She set a plate on the books. Bread, cheese, whatever the tower held. Magnus would stare at the food, then at Drasila. Then he ate, only because Nym watched until he did. One night Nym found him weeping. He wiped his face fast when she came in. "I read the runes that Made her," he said. "Three hundred years ago. I helped shape her hands." He looked at the rune marks on Drasila's still fingers. "She is not my daughter. But I have no other word for what she is to me." Nym knelt beside him. She understood then. Magnus had waited three centuries for this woman. He would not lose her twice. "There must be something the books do not have," Nym said. "Something in her, not on the page." She thought of the door at the stone ring. Fire had failed. Earth had failed. Blood magic had opened it. And once, when she despaired, a white light had risen from her without warning. Nym took her mother's cold hand. She closed her eyes and reached for that light. Not with anger. Not with sorrow. She thought only of the years she had wanted this woman awake. Warmth built in her chest. It spread down her arm. White light poured from Nym's palm into Drasila's fingers. The rune marks on Drasila's hands glowed. The gray in her skin pulled back like a tide. Magnus stood so fast his chair fell. Drasila's eyes opened. Pale blue, clear, fixed on Nym. "You," Drasila whispered. Her voice cracked from three hundred years of silence. "You should not have opened that door." Nym's hand went still. "Mother?" Drasila barely made the words out but she did "The seal held me and held Zarool both. He will be healing now, it will take time but you freed him child” then she shut her eyes again Magnus stepped back from the table. His face had gone white as Drasila's hair. “Magnus we must wake her permanently please” Nym begged.