Darkness Risen (The Ava'Lonan Herstories Book 4) by Ako Emanuel Read Free Book Online Page A

presence and successful retrieval to the High Queen.
    Jeliya, alone in her obin’tu in the middle of the
field of grain, lay in a haze of exhaustion, depressed. Two more turns had been
lost since they had escaped from the place of the av’tun traps.
    But for Jeliya, there was no relief in the knowledge
that she was so close to home. For, besides the tiredness from all the heated
trials that she had faced, there was within her a cold, numb grief that she had
all too many explanations for. For if the link had been an endless abyss that
vanished to a point before, now it was a slender capillary and almost as vital
as that most delicate of blood vessels, carrying life between the two
soul-mates; and it was as thin as spider’s silk vibrating in the breeze, and
yet somehow as strong. Or stronger, yet, for nothing save the power of the
Goddesses would break it. She no longer tried to travel down the link - she
would have to force it open to traverse it, and that would take more energy
than she had life, for she was already dangerously overtaxed from moving the
egwae sweeping distances, even with all of the members helping her.
    Jeliya was numbly grateful for the reprieve from
others being constantly around her, for now she could wallow in her loss until
it was time to span the final distance to T’Av’li and stretch the precious,
tenuous link to its ultimate limit. Now she could grieve, for she seemed truly
without him and he without her. Now she could reconcile herself with his
absence, and pull herself together. She performed the pay’ta’ri, and saw that
all levels of her being were guinned into the link. In a way they were surely
inseparable. Then she touched the velvet edge of the Jur’Av’chi, no longer a
gaping, draining hole in her existence, but a softly sustaining tether that did
not draw essence away from her. Instead, it imparted - something. Was that a
whisper of him just below the conscious plane? Would she taste him in her
dreams?
    Then in shocked realization, Jeliya looked at
herself. When and how did I become so dependent upon his nearness? Does that
make me weak in the worst possible way? Jeliya stared at the wall, looking
seriously at herself and the changes wrought within her by her experience. She
had never depended so on another in her short life for completeness. Is it
wrong? Will it cripple me in the moment that I most need strength?
    She did not want to believe that. But she could not
afford to discount that possibility. And she wished fervently for a wiser head
to talk to, for reassurance that what had been done would not be her downfall.
    But, she realized, her fear and worry and sorrow
would have to wait. She was almost home, with all of its own perils. Whether
she was crippled or uplifted by the Jur’Av’chi, she had to at least appear to be whole and well. She had to have control over herself until she could
consult with someone how best to deal with the Jur’Av’chi, short of breaking
it, or deal with it herself. She had to give every appearance of normalcy and
fitness to rule.
    So she pulled in all of her discipline and training
as Heir to the High Throne. She stilled her quaking soul and took the fear
apart piece by piece, worried the worry shred from shred, and buried the sorrow
under layer after layer of mantra. And regretfully, she plastered discipline
and tempered will over the link, covering it with opalescent sheaths until it
was only evident on the subconscious level. She purged herself of emotion, of
affectivity and disquiet until she did not even feel regret. She closed her
eyes as Jeliya, after turns of hardship, torn between the love of her land and
the love of her soul, exhausted and hurt and wilting inside, and opened them as
High Heir, returned stronger for the trials she suffered to save what was hers
and bearing tidings that could affect the fate of all those around her. It was
not quite a lie and almost the truth, a compress for a wounded soul to be sent
back into