Page 10 of Guardian of Exile

“Lift the receiver, enter the sequence of numbers you left.”

She’d popped into Dead Earth yesterday and bought a prepaid phone so she could give the number to Griff. The cell phone didn’t work for calls when she was inside the Station, but if he needed to reach her while she was gone, he could. “And if I don’t answer⁠—”

“Leave a message after the tone,” he finished for her. “The method is not terribly complex,” he added gently.

“Right.” Her hand tightened on the plastic handle of her suitcase. “And you’ll call if you hear anything?”

After Alihana had thoroughly worried her regarding the dire possibilities that might be keeping Jevryn away from Earth, she’d gone to Griff looking for reassurance. While he hadn’t brushed off the possibility like she’d hoped he might, he had, in his calming, measured voice, said, “Bear in mind that the councilors have a relationship with each other that cannot be replicated. They and they alone bear the knowledge of the connected universe’s origins. They are bound by the secrets they keep, by the battles they have fought, by the experiences and memories they share.

“They may not like each other—they may even hate each other—but they are more attached to that dislike than most will ever be even to those they love, because they have been forged in the same crucible. Do you understand?”

She’d thought she did. Because even if instead of loving Seth she’d hated him, and he had hated her, there would have been an understanding between them that no one else could ever have. Their histories were so intertwined that no other person could come close to being what they were to the other.

“That is why, though Jevryn may be under scrutiny, it is unlikely he will come to fatal harm. The Council has already lost two of their original number. They will not want to lose another.”

Nyx wanted to believe that. Wanted to believe there was a sentimentality between the councilors that would keep Jevryn safe. But she wasn’t so sure. Because Kiev had had no such sentimentality, and given what she’d seen of the other two councilors who’d come to the Station with him after the Arkadian breach, she didn’t think sentimental was likely to define any of the councilors overmuch.

“But you will call if anything happens?” she pressed.

“I will call,” he promised. “Please be safe.”

“I will.” She hugged him, careful not to squeeze so tightly she pulled out feathers, then turned and rubbed Temerex’s forehead to either side of the wicked horn protruding from it. “We’ll be back before you know it,” she promised the mare. Temerex gave a little huff and bumped Nyx’s shoulder with her muzzle.

Nyx crossed the boundary, the others on her heels, and settled her hand on Alihana’s hilt.

Let us see how much you are Jevryn Sahdi’s daughter, Alihana said, a wisp of portal magic sliding from them to her palm. She still found it odd that they just made it—that one moment there was nothing, and the next there was portal magic.

I wish you and Lethe didn’t insist on saying things like that, she thought back at them. I’m defined by more than being his daughter, you know.

Are you? they asked. You wanted for so long to have a father, and now you quibble at being reminded of it.

Yes, I wanted a father. It may surprise you to learn I was a whole entire person before I found him, since every time you talk to me it’s all Nyx A-Morridahn and Daughter of Jevryn.

Can you blame me? Alihana asked. Now that Kiev is gone, Jevryn is all that remains of my legacy. And you, should you prove worthy of it.

I hate to break this to you, Nyx said icily, but you not approving of me doesn’t mean that I’m not still Salyrian.

Half Salyrian, Alihana rebutted.

What?

Half, they repeated. The other half of you belongs to that woman.

Half. It was something about the way they said it, as if she was less than. But then, that was what half meant, wasn’t it? Less than a whole?

She suddenly thought of all the times she’d thought of Morgen as being half Siren. She couldn’t remember if she’d ever said it that way out loud—had certainly never meant he was less than anything by framing it that way—but she did remember him saying once, ruefully, I’m only half Siren. As if he felt lacking in some way. As if he’d been taught at some point to feel lacking. As if someone had once said he was half Siren with the same disdain with which Alihana was now saying Nyx was only half Salyrian.

Language was such a slippery thing, and how a person used it—how they intoned or implied—could be as cutting as any knife. People were biologically programmed to care what others thought of them. It was a necessity, born from evolving from a time when survival depended on being accepted by—or at least allowed to remain with—a societal group in order to have access to food and shelter. Modernity might allow a person more leeway to exist in solitude, but it didn’t change the sting that came from rejection.

She didn’t answer Alihana’s statement. She didn’t know if they were needling her on purpose, trying only to see what her reaction would be, or if they really believed what they were saying to her. Either way, she didn’t care to engage with it further. She didn’t have to. She took the portal magic they’d given her and summoned the map she’d grown so familiar with, glowing dots representing all the planets she could travel to.

The problem was, she didn’t need that map. That map showed the universe—all the places she could go, all the possibilities surrounding her. But she needed something closer. Something she wasn’t surprised she’d never found before, because she’d never opened the portal map with any intention of portaling elsewhere on Earth. She needed to scale down.

She might have had more practice at this had any of the time during her six months of living with Jevryn been spent on portal navigation, but he’d been too afraid to let her near portal magic, for fear she would go and do exactly what she’d gone and done. He’d told her that she saw a map when she used her magic because she was accustomed to navigating by maps—which really made her wonder what she would see if she’d grown up more accustomed to letting an automated system guide her everywhere—and that meant she was looking at the larger scale map, so to speak.

Her instinct was to stop looking at the map and focus on her feet—where they met the ground—and pull the energy of the portal magic toward it. The response was sluggish. The universe map didn’t want to fade away, because that map was endless possibility, and the purpose of portal magic was to explore that possibility. Earth felt known, as if there was nothing new here to be discovered.

She gently coaxed the magic, whispering to it that while Earth might be known, that didn’t mean there weren’t things to discover. Didn’t mean that one of the most important discoveries of all couldn’t be here—the freedom of the Stations, of Griff. And if the Stations were no more, then the magic of portaling would become more important. There would need to be a resurrection of the ability, of the training for it to be used as it was always intended.