Nym's Arc

Chapter 30 of 41

Nym left Titus in the library and went to find her mother. A servant said Drasila had gone to the indoor garden. Nym walked there slowly, rehearsing words that never came out right. The book's demand sat in her chest like a stone. Tonight she would set it down. She feared what her mother would do once she knew. The garden lay under pale stone arches wrapped in ivy. Lavender spilled from every bed. A fountain ran soft in the center. Drasila stood beside it, her dark hair streaked with white, her rune-marked hands trailing in the water. She looked calm here, more at peace than Nym had seen her since the tower. That was what made this so hard. The green cat slipped in at Nym's heels and leapt to the fountain's rim. Drasila smiled at it. Then she saw Nym's face and the smile faded. "What is it?" Nym made herself speak. "There's a page in the prophetic book. A hidden one. The unmaking spell that stops Zarool—it burns the one who casts it. It kills them." She swallowed. "The book names me as the caster." Drasila went still. The water dripped from her fingers. "No," she said. "You will not." "There's more," Nym said. Her voice shook. "The power can be shared. Two bearers, so both live. You carry it too. It was made in you and passed to me." She forced out the last of it. "I need you to face him again. With me." For a long moment Drasila did not move. Nym waited for anger, for the flat refusal she had dreaded—that her mother would not carry this burden a second time after three hundred years sealed in the dark. Drasila crossed the stone floor and took Nym's face in her hands. "I hid you on a river I cast a spell to hide you until you were found however long it took, so you would never have to do this," she said. Her pale eyes were wet. "I failed. But I will not let you burn alone." She pressed her forehead to Nym's. "We share it. Whatever it costs, we share it." Nym's breath broke. The fear she had carried for weeks cracked and fell away. Her mother would not run. The cat wound between their feet, and the light steadied warm in Nym's chest. "Then it's decided," Drasila said. She drew back, and something hard came into her face. "But sharing the spell means practice. We must join our power before we face him, or it will tear us both apart." She looked east, past the arches. "And Zarool heals every day we wait." Nym nodded. The secret was gone. In its place stood a harder thing—the two of them, bound to a spell neither had ever cast, with no time left to learn it slowly.