“Are you sure about this?” I ask him. “Me walking through Null carrying weapons like this could invite conflict.”
“Our conflict already exists,” he says. “I understand their anger, but I won’t tolerate it.”
My stomach growls loudly. I take hold of Nathaniel’s hand to keep him safe from the glitter bulbs as he pulls me toward the door.
Shaking off his anger, he gives me a smile. “Let’s go steal some food.”
“What should we do about the bulbs?” I ask before we reach the door. “We can’t leave them floating around outside.”
“We could bring them inside,” he suggests. “That way, they’ll be contained.”
“Okay.” I laugh, picturing him chasing them across the porch. “But I’ll be holding one of your hands to keep you safe, and I can’t use my right arm. Will you be able to catch them all by yourself?”
He shrugs. “It will be like chasing bubbles.” His free hand darts out in demonstration toward the nearest one, taking hold of it in a firm grip. “See? Easy as—”
A shock of light passes across his hand, shooting down his arm and across his chest so quickly that it bites my side where I’m pressed against him.
“Nathaniel!”
He freezes where he stands, his inhalation interrupted, his breath held as he stares at the bulb.
He exhales with a sharp question. “What is this?”
Inside the bulb, images swirl and shift.
The white light blazing across the bulb’s surface clears, turning into steam that rises from a firehorse’s nostrils. The animal’s body is slick with sweat and fear. The saddle on its back is empty other than the gleaming halberd attached to the harness that rests around the horse’s belly. As its full body comes into view, the weight of a man drags across the moonlit ground beside it, his booted foot caught in the stirrups.
“This is the night my father died. Why is it showing me this?” Nathaniel grips the bulb so tightly that his fingers are becoming bloodless, so tightly, he might crush it.
Sliding my hand along his arm, I try to pry his fingers loose, worried about the destructive power inside the bulb. More worried about the effect of the painful memory on him.
“Don’t…” I whisper. “Don’t watch it.”
His father’s body bumps across the stones leading up to the outer wall of the Fell castle, lit by the firelight flickering from lamps along the path. A shout rises up from the battlements, so loud in the silence of the hut that I jolt.
Inside the bulb, the castle gate’s large, iron spikes rise. A boy runs through the opening, darting to the man’s side while the shouting continues above him. The boy has to be Nathaniel. I recognize his dark hair and eyes.
He’s carrying a dagger that he uses to cut through the stirrups in one deft move before he drops to his father’s side with a shout. “Where are you hurt?” His dark eyes are wild with fear. “Tell me!”
His father grabs Nathaniel’s shoulders and draws him closer. The older man’s voice is a bare rasp, fading with every breath. “Nathaniel… remember… when I die… it is up to you to keep the light.”
Young Nathaniel’s eyes widen. His shout breaks my heart. “No! You can’t die!”
He struggles against his father’s hold, but the older man grips him with bloody hands, his voice becoming stronger. An order that only a king can give. “Nathaniel! You will promise to carry out my final wishes.”
Nathaniel’s eyes fill with tears as he grabs his father’s arms, but Nathaniel becomes still, no longer fighting. “Tell me what you ask. I will do it.”
His father exhales slowly, his strength visibly failing. “Find the girl… with hair whiter than bone… Give this… back to her. Tell her… she doesn’t belong to them.”
“I don’t understand. What girl? Why?”
“She has the power to turn the war. She has the power…”
Dark light washes across young Nathaniel’s body, casting him into shadow. Mathilda appears behind him, her arms outstretched, her skirt swishing around her legs as if she just arrived in time to hear the king’s last words.
“No! Tobias!” She bends to Nathaniel’s father, but the older man’s eyes are already vacant.
The tumult of sound inside the bulb stops and the image fades.
I stare at the glittering emptiness it leaves behind. “Nathaniel… I’m sorry.”
His gaze is bleak. “That was the day our paths first crossed. Yours and mine.”
Suddenly agitated, he turns to the other bulbs, his eyes narrowed as he snatches another orb out of the air. There’s a flash of color inside the bulb, another set of images, these ones disappearing so quickly that I can’t catch them, but Nathaniel seems to recognize them immediately. He grabs another bulb with the same effect, dropping it just as fast.
“All of these are painful memories,” he says. “All of them are moments in time that brought me to you. The ripples of my life keeping me on the path to find you.”
He releases the last bulb, dropping it to the floor as his gaze burns mine. “These bulbs aren’t here because of you. They’re here for me, to remind me what I need to do, to keep me on my path.”
He steps away from the bulbs so that I can safely release his arm. The bulbs he touched are all piled in the corner of the room now, except for one, which has floated toward the table. Cautiously, I reach for it, closing my fingers around it. Rather than bursting into images, the surface softens, transforming at my touch into a living daisy with pure white petals and a bright golden center.
I crush it slowly in my fist.
The day Nathaniel’s father—Tobias—died was the day I woke up. Nathaniel’s future was determined by his father’s final words while my future was spent trying to understand my past.
Dropping the broken flower onto the table, I turn to press my hand against Nathaniel’s heart, hoping to remind him that his heart is still beating, that he is not alone.
He’s tense beside me. “I handed you the stone yesterday, but I was supposed to make sure you took it. My father told me to give it back to you.”
Taking a deep breath, Nathaniel draws away from me, crosses to the mantelpiece, and returns with the small wooden box he showed me yesterday. I refused to touch it and we left it here when we went to find Christiana.
My response is sharp. “I don’t want it.”
He pauses, his arm half-outstretched toward me before he lowers it, the box gripped in his fist.
He studies my face. “I saw your fear of this stone yesterday, Aura. Why are you afraid of it?”
“I don’t know,” I whisper, taking a step back. I shake my head, trying to verbalize my feelings. “Because it feels like staring into an abyss. Like the nothing that I remember before I woke up for the first time at the burn site.”
When I took Nathaniel to the burn site where my first memories began, I told him that I was born on that spot, a fully-formed seven-year-old girl. I remembered nothing from my life before I first woke up that night, but the nothing I remember is a vast, endless space. The same nothing that surrounds me when I sleep.
“I felt your nothing,” Nathaniel says, surprising me. “This morning while I lay in the arena.”