.:Chapter 19:.

<— Chapter 18

He’d hurt her. Not just in the way an invoker hurts an indelfy, but the way a man could hurt a woman. Perhaps if he’d been a little more careful, handled her a little differently, she’d have enough trust left in him to travel back through the inner-gates.

But he couldn’t do anything about that now. He needed to focus on getting back the trust he had once had—and figuring out why Amy was leaking magic. The threads of power that snapped around her tattoo every time she received a shock shouldn’t have been there, they should have been feeding the spell hidden inside the ink that marked her.

Amy wouldn’t look at him. She stared at the trampled snow beneath her, locked in some complicated set of thoughts he would never get to hear. She sighed after a moment, so quietly that he would never have noticed without the glint of light from the coins around her neck.

“The best I can give you,” she said, her voice shaking, “Is maybe.”

He nodded, trying hard for it to be enough. Words that had to be said, could never be said, piled in his throat. She would understand when all was said and done. Maybe she wouldn’t thank him, but every indelfy in Outer-Kaluna, and all those not yet born would.

Bernard ran his finger down the course wool sleeve of Amy’s green and black sweater. “Where are you going?” he asked.

Amy pulled away from him, shrinking in on herself as if he’d asked her something far more personal. She opened her mouth to say something, stopped, and then opened it again. “Away.”

“Because of me?”

Amy fingered the coin on the loop around her neck, the only gold one he’d seen in her possession. “I’m sorry. I can deal with my problems. What I can’t do is deal with yours.”

The honesty in her confession rocked him deeper than the angry words she usually spat in his face. “Please,” he said, fearing what chance he had of finishing his quest was slipping away. “At least let me tell you what’s going on. There’s more to this than just the wall.”

It was almost the truth, and he hoped she believed him.

Amy dipped her head in a kind of nod, and he responded by standing up and gesturing for his horse and carriage to come around to the front. “We’ll talk inside.”

<— Chapter 18