House of Sand and Secrets (Books of Oreyn #2)(91)

I walk for miles. My feet are burned raw by the sand, my skin peeling and red. Why is it that in Jannik’s world I am always relegated to this flimsiest of shifts, with no protection? Damn him. I shade my eyes and scan the rolling horizon. Still no sign of my husband. I grow tired, thirsty, and my shift is stuck damply to my body. I wonder how much time I have left.

Behind me my tracks zig-zag in a lonely meander. Tears rise again. “Jannik,” I say to the empty air. “I swear when I find you, I will bloody kill you.” My voice cracks on the last. I raise my hand, and let my cramped fingers part. The feather sticks to the pad of my index finger for just a moment, and then the wind takes it. “So much for you,” I say. The wind changes direction, and spits the feather against my face, where it catches against my cheek, stuck to the drying tears I have wasted.



I’m an idiot. This is a scene I should have remembered; I had to learn it by heart. And I know Jannik knows it, better even than I do. If he was going to cling to anything, it would be those small things that gave him comfort. My poet-mathematician.

This is Jannik’s world. “I hate that poem,” I say, and sit down cross-legged in the sand. “What do you want me to do – quote it at you?” It feels strangely soothing to talk to him like this, even if I don’t know if he can hear me. “So. Traget’s Melancholy Raven.” I pluck the feather off my cheek and stare at it, then shake my head in something that is caught between amusement, relief, and a kind of mild disgust. “Do you know how many times our House Crake had me memorize that rubbish?” I suck in a shivery breath.

The wind sighs against my cheek.

“‘It’s a cold wind that blows over The Lamb,’ Gris, really? All that melodrama over one girl who wouldn’t love him. And I can see why, because he was a whining pathetic little toad. I wouldn’t have had time for him.” My voice is steady, but the tears are running freely now. Who cares? I have no one left to hide myself from. I talk to the empty air, to the last of Jannik’s dying thoughts.

I push the feather against the golden sand, then press the back of one hand against my eyes, and sniff. “And of course he gets her anyway.”

The edges of the tiny black feather stir.

“You’re not like him, you know. I don’t think you’re pathetic. Or a toad,” I add for good measure. “However, you and I will both be very much closer to dead unless you pull yourself together and help me out.” I lower my voice. “Please, Jannik. I’ll get us out of this. I just need you to come back to me.”

With a soft shh; a ridge of sand rises around me, circling. It’s barely a wall, more like a child’s sand castle. The feather grows in solidity, becoming a small black stone, sharp as glass. I stand and step back as it grows. “And Traget only finally got Anna because she was a fool, and he wore her down with all his endless monologuing. You’ve at least spared me that, and I am only a fool sometimes.”

The stone shimmers then it is gone. In its place Jannik sits curled up, his arms crossed around his knees. He coughs into his fist, then smears his bloodied hand against the sand and winces. “Anna only agreed to marry Traget because she saw her finances failing and knew he was her best chance.”

“So romantic,” I say. “And that’s not why I married you.”

He squints. “What do Traget and Anna have to do with us?”

“I hate you,” I say as he grins at me. “Stand up and help me kill Eline.” I hold out my hand for him and he takes it hesitantly. His palm is sticky and hot.

He gets to his feet and stares at me, his expression almost quizzical. “We can stay here,” he says. “It’ll be … .”

“What?”

Jannik shrugs. “We’ll live longer. Make time stretch.” He half-smiles. “We go back out there, and I know what’s waiting for us.” He has his left hand pressed against his stomach, where there is not even a memory of a wound. Jannik looks down at his hand, seems to laugh, and then looks back up at me. “What are you going to do?”

“Why can’t I use your magic out there?”

“Presumably because I’m not conscious.”

“And we change that how?”

“I – I can’t. I don’t know how.” He closes his eyes as if he is trying to sense something beyond his skin. When he opens them again to look at me I can already tell from the small weak smile that he gives that I’m not going to like what he has to say. “It’s just darkness outside me. I shouldn’t even be here now – talking to you.” He surveys the empty desert that is all that is left of his mental defences. “I didn’t even know it was possible for this to happen, and still live through it.”

I hold on to that. “It means something.” I crouch down to pick up a handful of sand, let it trickle through my fingers. The stream falls, time running out. And it occurs to me that there is nothing left here to keep Jannik anchored. That what he’s hanging on for is not a house of sand and secrets, but me. I’m the anchor. The wind whips my hem around my legs, tearing my hair loose and spitting hard sand against my face. It’s rising, a final scouring storm.

“Jannik?”

He looks at me in silence, the edges of his form already dissolving under the growing wind.

“Take my hand,” I say, and reach out for him. The fingers that close around mine are barely real. I can see my own skin though the ghosting memory. “Hold fast.”