ORIANA

Daughter.

"You would let your own flesh and blood perish just to prove a point?" I asked, incredulous. 

I'd never really had a mother, but I imagined them as kind. Protective, even. The High Priestess was anything but as she lifted her chin, somehow managing to look down on me even though she could not see at all. 

Still, the similarities between mother and daughter were undeniable. Both were bowstrings pulled taut, ready to snap at a moment's notice. The High Priestess clearly hadn't forgiven her daughter for leaving. 

"I need help putting pressure on the wound," I said, still racking my brain for a solution. If Sebastian was here, he could help, but I didn't know if we had time to summon him. We had to act now. 

I jumped as metal creaked, a suit of armour coming to life. No, I realised as it took off it's helmet, shaking free a mane of feathered wheat brushed to a shine. A man.

The sun warrior stepped forward without leave. While the High Priestess pursed her lips, her silence allowed his indiscretion. He marched to my aid, broad shoulders crowding the low ceiling as he took a knee across from me.

I would have to be a fool not to recognise him. "Sol?"

His mouth twitched up in a smile. "Red. It's good to see you."

"Can't you vouch for me?" I whispered, guiding his monstrously large hands onto the wound, pushing them down. His skin was feverishly warm compared to Rana's cold, dying flesh. "You've seen what I can do, but..." I chewed on my bottom lip, almost too afraid to admit it. "I don't know how to fix this."

"I already did," he rumbled, too low for the High Priestess to hear. "She wants to see it for herself."

Shit. Rana's wound was soul-deep; I'd never healed anything like it, and I'd certainly tried on my way here. 

I'd only just figured out how to summon blinding light and force bodies to knit themselves back together in clumsy imitation of Gretchen's earth magic, which advocated for a delicate balance between all elements, including life and death. Maybe she could have taught me, if I hadn't been so stubborn. If I'd learned incrementally, instead of growing frustrated and grabbing power whichever way it came, twisting it into something violent in the process. 

Come to think of it, all my magic was unruly. A flame that caught and conquered, that fed on fear and rage without discrimination. The more potent the emotion, the more devastating the fallout.

But I was able to wield Nya's Grace through the cloak, I thought, frowning fiercely. It wrought a physical change, of course, but that proved I was capable, right? That it wasn't my ability to use Nya's Grace that was in question, but merely my understanding of how?

My head snapped up to the light source in the cavern, a dimly glowing chunk of moonstone that must have come crashing down from the heavens, burning up along the way. Somewhere in the world, there was probably a crater the size of a small kingdom it had once called its bed.

I wondered if it was the same comet from Brollo's stories; the shooting star that Nya sent to earth, a rocky network of caves within which wolves went to sleep and woke up as men.

She was always jealous, I thought, unsure of where that certainty came from. Nya cast down that stone in a tantrum. To make Earth's Children tremble at Her power. To remind Gaia that while She may not have the capacity to create, She can steal and warp and destroy. 

And yet Nya would always be doomed to orbit around Gaia, tantalisingly close but worlds apart. And She would always be a pale reflection of Her burning sister, Rya. 

That's it, I realised abruptly. Moonlight is reflected sunlight!

It was diluted. Flimsy. I couldn't force Nya's Grace; I had to coax it. Weave it. I had to be precise and careful. Like a barber-surgeon. 

You would not make a surgeon of a man with shaking hands.

Gretchen's warning reverberated in my skull as I reached into the curtain of makeshift moonlight, concentrating fiercely. Good thing I'm not a man, I thought, gritting my teeth in determination. This had to work.

My hand came away empty.

"Stop trying so hard," Sol murmured, stilling my trembling fingers. "It will come naturally as breathing."

"Use both hands," I snapped, furious at him for forgetting about Rana, but I took his advice on board. I stared at the curtain of light until my vision softened and went lax, rendering it a single, silvery thread. 

Don't question how, I coached myself, reaching out again. How many times had I watched jealously as my enemies worked their magic with effortless grace? The Queen Weaver, spinning garments from my soul; the orchid mantis, donning glamours as easily as a cloak; the river nymph, plucking magical notes from the air like fruit. 

Don't think. Just do.

I did my best to copy the graceful motion the Queen Weaver had executed, again and again, as she pulled Hunter's artificial mate-bond from my chest, using her spiny foreleg to spool the thread. It was one of the most horrifying experiences of my life, and yet there was an undeniable beauty in all of those monsters' affinity for the supernatural.

This time, I pinched something slippery and sticky all at once, rubbing it between my fingers and rolling it together like spiderwebbing. When I refocused, a beautiful length of silver twine stretched from the moonstone to my hands, pulling free just like it would from a spool.

"Yes," I hissed, gathering more of it into my arms. Heaping it. "And a needle..."

I fished one out of the light as well, though it was alarmingly small, thin as a fish bone. Realising I would have to use my mind to guide it, I asked Sol to remove his hands from Rana's chest and took a deep breath, imagining that I was parting the curtains of the physical plane to glimpse the stuff of souls beneath.

 Rana's life force was a setting sun, red and sullen and gradually diminishing. There was a horrific gash running from her shoulder to her hip, necrotic at the edges. Black veins traced poisonous paths, tainting the veins of power that bore memory and magic through her body.

The flow was dangerously sluggish. She'd bled so much light and heat over the course of our journey, but even so, Rana emanated such power that it was almost painful to look upon her. Her flame was cousin to that which burned in my own veins: white as molten iron, just as painful to carry.

No wonder she is so restless, I thought, glancing over my shoulder. She shows more evidence of Rya's Blessing than the High Priestess herself.

What would it look like when Rana was at her peak? It was almost laughable that she'd been travelling so far in search of the Sun Goddess's Blessing when she'd carried it all along, but the perils of withholding such a violent force were far from amusing. I knew all too well how that fire could eat away at one's soul, driving one to dangerous, reckless acts in an attempt to vent it. 

I closed my eyes and summoned the memory of Sebastian's heartbeat, a methodical lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub, willing my own heart to match its pace. To beat with his as one.

It was in that calm that I found the path, just a series of small, calculated steps that marked the path to my seemingly insurmountable goal: the saving of my friend through the sealing of a soul. First came the threading of moonlight through the eye of my silver needle. Then I pushed together the tattered, ethereal scraps of her life force and willed the needle through.

For an instant, Rana's memories threatened to overwhelm me; I was suddenly drowning in all the years she'd spent studying in the crystal bowels of this labyrinthine temple, yearning for the world beyond. Rana's terror at unlocking her dormant powers was strong enough to taste, a burning acidity that made me flinch. She was not willing to exchange the body she loved for a magic she'd never asked for.

Even harder to witness were the days she spent travelling with her brother, Bannor, and his companion, Valor. Not for their sense of family, but for the tragedy that came after it. It ended differently than she'd told it, but I could not blame her for twisting such a horrible truth. The abduction of her guardians. How they were tortured, debased, driven to insanity. How the golden wyvern, Valor, had attacked without a second thought. Rana's last thought had been one of shame, that she'd allowed herself to be vulnerable. 

I wished I could reassure her. Rana didn't know that Valor was free, now. While she lay bleeding in the heart of the mountain, I'd put him to sleep in the sky, the only mercy I could offer mid-battle. He'd gone crashing to the rocks along with Bradon, a Blood-Moon hunter who had tormented Valor in unspeakable ways. 

In spite of the tidal wave of darkness, there were bright splotches of light in Rana's memories. The days we spent swapping stories. Campfires shared with Gretchen. Poking fun at Sebastian. The pride that stemmed from fighting side by side.

She loved me. Loved all of us despite all of our flaws, despite every reason we'd given her not to.

I had to make this right.

You are wanted, I sent through my fingertips, pushing the tip of the needle through the shimmering fabric of her soul. You are needed. You are loved.

One row at a time, I pulled the scintillating scraps of Rana's soul back together, reversing the insidious whispers of the Moonfyre calling her weak, useless, stupid.

You are stronger than the bones of this mountain. 

More than your mother's dreams. 

The sister your brother deserves. 

The friend who lights our way in the dark.

Home is where you want it to be, I finished, pulling the final thread tight. And you owe these people nothing.

I sat back on my haunches, feeling dizzy as my energy gurgled down the drain of our psychic joining. Blood ran down the High Priestess's palms as she heard the steady rhythm of Rana's heart, now beating in time with mine. Tears slipped down my face as the colour returned her cheeks, and I realised the wound had finally stopped bleeding. Closed up altogether.

The scar was horrific, evidence of my inexperience, but the wound was sealed, along with her soul.

"She's going to live," Sol said, grabbing my hands in excitement. Squeezing them tight. I wished furiously and abruptly Sebastian was here to share my victory. 

Nonetheless, it was probably good that someone was there to catch me when the room pitched sideways and I promptly passed out.