Oracle: The House War: Book Six (95 page)

She wondered now as she examined the knife. Her hands shook; she brought the left to the right, clasped the hilt of the dagger in both hands, and turned its point inward, toward her. This was, in its entirety, an act of faith. She could not
see
the dagger as a magical artifact; she couldn’t see the nimbus of light that surrounded things magical in seer-born vision. By feel, by sight, the knife was a simple knife; it weighed no more or less than the knives the den carried for utility, not defense.

But it caught and held light—more light than a simple candle could shed.

Jewel had never deliberately stabbed herself. She had deliberately cut her palm. She could imagine a time, in future, when she would be willing to do so again. This was different. An act of faith. Stabbing herself—driving unmarked, pristine steel into her own heart—required a blind trust in the Oracle that she simply did not have.

Why, then, was she here? She had never been a person who lived by pure faith. All of her trust, where it was given, was given because of prior experience.

Not true
.

Duster.

Not true.

Avandar.

It wasn’t the same. Neither Duster nor Avandar had had a knife resting an inch from where she assumed her heart was. But . . . they could have. On most days, Duster had probably had to fight to keep a knife away, she pulled them so often. They’d been like punctuation, for her. Better than cursing.

Trust, at times, was a deliberate act of faith.

Her hands shook as she considered this—because considering it was better than acting on it. She wanted the Oracle to enter this room. She wanted the Oracle to speak—even if she wrapped her Oma’s voice around the words she chose. She did not want to be at the foot of this altar, alone.

But there was only one way to leave it. Only one way to return to the world.

She
knew
it.

She closed her eyes. Opened them. Demanded, first silently, and then less so, to know exactly what the knife would
do
. No, that wasn’t true. She demanded to know
how
it worked. She assumed it would hurt. She understood, dimly, that it could kill her—but only carried thus, in her own hands. If she set it aside and walked away, it would remain inert upon the altar; it would do nothing.

All strength here—what little there was of it—was her own. All will. All volition. The knife had no voice.

She had fought her way across the floor to reach the knife, forcing herself to ignore every instinct she had ever unquestioningly obeyed. Ironic, then, that she should at the same time attempt to listen to them. She inhaled and exhaled, examining what she knew.

And what she knew, in the end, was that if the knife did not touch her heart, she would not be able to do what Evayne could now do; she would always be servant to vision; she would never be master.

She had never tried to master the vision. As a child, she had barely been willing to acknowledge its existence. Had her Oma offered her a knife with which to cut out the talent, she would have used it. In her younger years, the talent itself had brought grief and underlined her helplessness, her lack of agency.

That had changed, with Rath. It had changed, with Finch.

It would change now, in ways that were more significant. She could not traverse the hidden paths if she could not see to find them. She opened her eyes and thought of the walk—the crawl—across this floor, in the dark. It was a metaphor. It was the way she walked now, dreading the future and drawn to it. She turned to the candle, knife in hand.

She exhaled.

The candle flame flew perpendicular to the wick that sustained it before it went out.

 • • • 

In the darkness, she could no longer see the knife. She could, of course, feel its hilt—and the hilt was still warmer than her palms, although she had held it for a while. She slid a finger—left hand—across the blade’s edge, exerting almost no pressure; the edge was not sharp. She pressed the pad of her forefinger against what she knew to be edge. It did not cut.

What she held in her hands was not, therefore, what she saw. It was not a knife. That helped. She touched the side of the blade, shifting her grip until blade, not hilt, rested in her hands. The blade was not as warm as the hilt—but it was warm. It was not the warmth that surprised her. It was the consistency; it did not feel like metal, to the touch.

It felt almost like flesh.

She shifted her grip again, looking down at her hands. There were no windows in this room; there was no light. But she could see the knife, now. It was pale, translucent; it seemed a thing of gold and blue, of violet and red, of topaz and emerald. The light bled into her hands as her hands finally stopped shaking.

No promise of safety was offered her; she struggled against the imperative of its opposite. She had fear, yes—but no certainty of anything; all of her instincts were clashing against each other. And yet, even so, as she watched the colors in her hand brighten and strengthen, she struggled to make a choice.

No, she thought, she struggled to act on the only choice she could see.

She pushed the knife—slowly, too slowly—into her chest.

 • • • 

It hurt. It hurt enough that she stopped pushing. But she did not withdraw it, did not, as she wanted to, yank it free and throw it away. She had no confidence that she would find it again, if she did.

The handle of the knife began to melt. Liquid pooled between her fingers; she wondered if it were her blood. Pain always surprised her, no matter how much of it she endured. But there were different kinds of pain.

Cuts—clean cuts—caused pain well after they were taken. Fire caused pain instantly. Both of these, she knew, would pass. They had passed. Sometimes they scarred; sometimes, they didn’t. Loss—of friends, of family—was different. She could not escape it; she lived, always, in its shadow.

All of these, she felt now.

Until she had walked into this room, she would have said there was only one thing that she truly feared—but that was half a lie. She believed it on most days; on most days she was not bleeding, was not inflicting a physical injury on herself. She was not standing with a hand over the fire while her flesh burned and charred.

And she felt fire, now.

Fire. Ice. Sorrow.

She felt only pain, only loss, only fear. She could not remember any single moment in her life that had been worse than this one. No, she thought. No, that wasn’t true. Pain-in-the-moment had its own imperative. But there were worse things, always. She struggled to remember them, and then gave up; she reached for better memories, and better moments instead.

She reached for Finch in her nightgown, running past Taverson’s closed door. She reached for Teller, in the winter snows that had killed his mother. She reached for Arann, and caught Lefty as well, but even that was better than this. She had failed Lefty—and the failure had scarred Arann; she had almost lost him as well.

But Arann was alive. Finch. Teller. Angel. Jester. She had not lost them yet. She had seen dozens of ways in which she could—or would—in the possible futures opened to her inspection by the Oracle—but none of them had happened yet. It was to prevent them that she had come here, in the end. There were no guarantees. She understood, as pain blossomed in her chest, that she would fail—had already failed. But not for lack of trying. Not for lack of commitment.

Not for any weakness of love.

Carver
.

Her shoulders hunched as if to ward off blows, her hands running with liquid that had once been bone or ivory, her face wet, she lifted her chin. She saw Carver. He was not alone.

To her surprise, she recognized one of his companions. Ellerson. Almost, she stopped. Jester’s single word had driven her back to a place she had never fully left, and she did not want to leave it now. She didn’t want to move forward. She didn’t want to see what would, or could, happen, because she had no control at all over what she would see.

She did not want to see Carver die. The knowledge offered no hope, because she could not go to him; could not prevent any death she might witness. And yet—and yet she was unwilling to surrender the glimpse of the two: Carver, Ellerson, seated in front of a fire—a fireplace?—in a darkened room, because in that room, they were alive. Carver spoke; she couldn’t hear his voice. She could see Ellerson’s nod; it was, in spite of the state of his clothing, stiff and reserved.

Hope was painful.

Hope was necessary.

She could see, in this moment, how it could both save a life and destroy it; she was afraid to move. Afraid to stop, and afraid to continue. This—this fleeting image, was for one moment the whole of her desire.

She almost lifted her hands to sign, but she knew that this vision, unlike her odd waking dream, allowed for no communication. And if it had, what then? Would she apologize—again—and beg forgiveness—again—when nothing had changed?

She did not want to be a ruler. She did not want to be The Terafin. She didn’t want to be Sen. What she wanted was to be Jewel Markess again, in the streets of the twenty-fifth holding, scraping by before the demons had come. She wanted the clarity of family and love because nothing had been more important. It had all been so clear.

She had wanted power, then, because power in her experience meant the ability to protect the people she loved. And she
had
power now. She had more power than she had ever daydreamed of having when she’d been cutting purses in desperation in the holdings.

Why
should she
choose the lives of strangers over the life of her kin? Why should she commit to saving the lives of people she would never meet and never speak with when it meant turning her back on someone who had had her back every single day that she had known him?

Why?

Why?

Her throat was raw, her knees bent, her hands now clenched in fists around nothing. She had no answer at all for herself. None. She could think of no reason, no justification.

But she understood, as she fell silent, understood, as she rose, that she had accepted the power she hadn’t wanted. That if she had no answer that would give her peace or ease her guilt, it didn’t matter. She had traded away the luxury of selfishness on the day she had vowed to become Terafin.

And Carver was not dead yet.

 • • • 

The door opened. Jewel’s shoulders stiffened and straightened as she turned toward it. It was ten feet away.

The Oracle stood in its frame. “Come, Jewel.”

“Am I done?” she asked.

“For now, yes.”

“But I don’t—”

“Feel different? No. Nor will you, for some time.”

Jewel looked at her hands. They were empty.

“Yes. I will teach you how to look into your own heart. Understand, Terafin, that that is what the crystal is. You will not be able to see anything if you do not care about the outcome. It is only the things that will hurt you in some fashion that you will be able to touch at all. But not all pain is bad.”

“Is it—is it true of you, as well?”

“What?”

“That it’s only the things that will hurt you . . .”

The Oracle smiled. Jewel met and held her eyes, but it took effort. It took the type of effort one made to bear witness when that was all one could offer. “Even so. Come. You must sleep and you must eat; in three days’ time, you must be prepared to leave. The Winter roads are closing, and if you are to reach the Hidden Court of my sister, you must follow them to the end.”

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