From the Ashes (The Elder Blood Chronicles, #3)(78)
Death is part of the cycle, Jala. When something dies it isn’t meant to come back. Why can’t you Immortals accept that? You live longer than anything else in existence and yet it still isn’t enough for your kind. You don’t age. You don’t know illness. Life is filled with more bounty for your people than any other creature and yet it is never enough. Death is natural and must be accepted. This is a wound like any other, Jala. It will heal and you will not go mad. There is no guilt in this for you. You did more than any other would have done to bring him back and you didn’t fail. Death cheated. Marrow’s voice was gentle but firm in her mind.
“I’d rather suffer a thousand bodily wounds than one more like this one,” Jala whispered into his coat.
Wipe your nose on me and I’ll start on those thousand wounds for you, Marrow warned her.
Half laughing, half sobbing, Jala rolled away and onto her back once more. “I almost tried to use the family magic to hold onto him,” Jala confessed in a hoarse whisper. Holding her hand up between them she pinched her fingers together to show only the barest stretch of light between them. “I came this close.” She dropped her hand back to the blankets and bit back another sob. “It was the memory of that black cloud of destruction washing over my home that stopped me. If that is the price of wishes, I will earn everything the hard way. I don’t see the value of a gift that has such a harsh price.”
Perhaps it is all in what you wish for that determines the price, Jala. They wished for suffering and pestilence. I wonder what would happen if you wished for peace and good fortune? Marrow countered softly.
“The Elder Blood would all die and it would be peaceful and the few creatures that survived would consider it good fortune,” Jala replied dryly.
You need sleep, Jala. You are exhausted and heart sick and it is darkening your thoughts. Let me give you something to think on and perhaps you can find enough peace in my words to sleep, Marrow said softly and raised his head to look at her. Finn Sovaesh lived a self-professed life of personal indulgence. He was a killer, a womanizer, and utterly selfish by his own words. In just a few months of knowing you, he died a hero’s death to save thousands of people from tyranny. Had he not brought the barrier down on that city, Morcaillo would have won this war. That city holds too much leverage to your kind. If you can change a man like that so dramatically in such a short time, what can you do in a lifetime for a country of people who aren’t nearly so dark? He died a good death doing a wonderful thing, Jala, and he did it so you would have a chance to do for Merro what you did for him. Finn gave you the opportunity for your dream. If you are smothered by grief and clouded by guilt, then you are going to waste the opportunity that Finn sacrificed himself to give you. Would you throw that away?
Jala turned her head and stared at Marrow as he laid his head back down once more. The tightness in her throat eased a bit and she felt the rush of tears slowing. “Right now, I’m more worried about someone taking it away, than I am throwing it away myself. We are so weak and we have so many enemies,” she whispered.
Never pick a fight with a Dazzi. On some things the Arovan are wise. Now sleep, Jala. We have a lot of work ahead of us before spring and it starts tomorrow, Marrow said softly, his eyes already closed and his breathing slowing as he began to drift off.
With a frustrated groan, Jala tossed another dress into the rapidly growing pile of clothes near her feet. Wrapping her robe back around her tightly she stared into the mirror, her eyes locked on her huge midsection. She had thought at first that her spell urging her son’s growth had failed. Its success however was marked clearly in the size of her stomach as well as the size of the pile of clothes beside her. No matter what style she chose, she couldn’t seem to fashion a dress that suited her current frame. The last had made her look like a grape with its color and shape.
Her eyes traveled up the mirror slowly to her face and she let out another sigh. She didn’t have the will to bother with fixing her hair today. So it was tied back in a clumsy knot with curls protruding at odd intervals. Her violet eyes were so bloodshot there didn’t seem to be any white to them, and the dark circles under her eyes looked more like bruises than marks of sleeplessness.
“I look twenty years older than I am,” Jala said softly as she smoothed a wine colored curl back from her forehead.
You look like the village nutter with your hair like that and the wool robe, Marrow observed helpfully from his perch on the foot of the bed.
“The village nutter,” Jala repeated with a slight nod. “I bet that is a stress-free life.” Turning, she moved away from the mirror and the pile of clothes and sat down by the window. It had been three days since her trip to Glis and beyond a mind link with Micah informing him of the runes she had done nothing other than sit at the window or sleep. Marrow had said their work would begin days ago, and yet she still didn’t have the will to face it. She knew she should go downstairs and at least attempt to help her friends, but so far she hadn’t successfully made it past dressing.
Leaning back in her seat she rested a hand on the top of her stomach and stared down at the street below. Everywhere she looked, the city thrummed with life. Workers bustling by on errands. Knights at their drills. Children playing in the street. Despite the chilly damp weather outside, Merro continued on without pause. “And I can’t even find the energy to dress,” Jala sighed.