Page 98 of Heart’s Rescue

Arryn

Time to Go Home

“Arryn?”

Somewhere, someone is calling my name. It’s a distant, dreamlike voice, and I try to ignore it. I’m warm right now, warm and comfortable, and I don’t want to wake up.

“Rowan? Arryn?”

The voice is closer. I’m dimly aware of my own body, aching and stiff. My chest throbs like I’ve just run the length of the Kingdom of the Summer.

“It’s over,” a man says. “It’s time to wake up.”

Someone sighs in my ear. I blink open my eyes and a room comes into bleary focus. It’s an odd sort of room, filled with windows and shelves and really quite a crowd of men and women. Who are all staring at me with strange smiles, like they’re proud. Like I’ve done something to be proud of.

“Ach, get the poor dear a blanket,” a woman says, and I realize I’m shivering.

I’m shivering, and I’m in someone’s arms. I turn to see Rowan, his eyes shut tight, his arms holding me against his chest as though he’s worried someone’s going to try to rip me away.

“Rowan?” I whisper.

Slowly, his eyes open. Tears have left shimmering tracks down his cheeks.

“Did it work?” he asks, and his voice rasps against the air like sandpaper on stone.

I open my mouth, although I’m not sure what words will fall out, and someone shouts behind me. It sounds like a name. It sounds like Elanerill.

The princess, I think disjointedly. Elanerill is Princess of the Kingdom of the Summer. Someone wraps a blanket around my shoulders and then drapes one over Rowan. I swallow thickly. The air feels like magic, heavy and prickly, like a summer thunderstorm.

“Where is she?” the voice demands.

I turn. There’s a bed in this room. Of course there’s a bed; that’s where Prince Orryen was sleeping when we came in.

He’s not sleeping any longer. Prince Orryen is sitting up in the bed and staring around the room frantically. There’s something strange in the air between me and that bed, something wavering and rippling like the air above a sun-baked stretch of road.

“I need to go back for her,” Orryen declares.

He kicks his feet out of the bed, then blinks and sways as if that much movement has drained him.

“No.” King Galan steps forward and puts his hand on Orryen’s shoulder. “You’ve done enough, my son.”

Orryen’s eyes are wide and frantic. “But—”

“We’ve opened a connection,” the king explains. “It was enough to complete the spell. For both of you.”

Rowan runs his hand up my spine, and some part of me realizes that I’ve stopped shivering. Orryen looks around the room, his eyes lingering over me and Rowan, and then coming back to that strange shimmering place in the air, that heat mirage in the middle of the room.

“I should go through,” Orryen says. “She might need me.”

“If she needs you,” Lythienne says, gently, “you’ll know. You can still feel her, Orryen, can you not?”

The room is quiet for a long time, a heavy sort of silence, and I realize that I can feel Rowan, his void magic and his humor and his wild joy, all deep inside my heart.

“Yes,” Orryen finally says. His voice is soft and ragged, as though the admission cost him something.

“This connection should open both ways,” King Galan says, waving his hand at the heat mirage. “She can come through, Orryen.”

There’s another heavy silence, and my heart pinches in my chest. Not with my own pain, I realize. With Rowan's. Rowan is in pain.