Chapter 171 Chapter 171

Chapter 171 Chapter 171

Amara's POV

I do not sleep well.
Not badly in the sense of distress — no nightmares, no waking in the second hour with the specific fear-quality that marked some of the earlier months in this palace. I simply do not go fully down. I stay in the upper layer, the layer where thought continues, and I think about Miriam.
I think about her hands.
She had a specific quality in her hands when she was making a decision she had already made. Not a tell exactly — not something someone outside the coven would notice. But I knew it because I had watched her hands for years. A stillness that was different from her ordinary stillness. The stillness of someone who has arrived somewhere and is holding the position.
I think about her receiving Essa’s warning.
Reading it.
Convening the council.
Making the decision.
Her hands with that particular stillness.
I think about the thirty-seven names and I think about whether Miriam chose wrong and I do not arrive at an answer, which is the same place Essa has been for thirty years, which is perhaps the only honest place to be.

In the morning I tell Alaric.
Not at breakfast. Not when Caian is present and requiring management. After breakfast, when the nurse has taken Caian and the room is quiet and Alaric is still at the table with his morning correspondence.
I say: I need to tell you something. I do not need you to do anything about it. I just need to say it.
He sets down the letter he is reading.
He says: all right.
I tell him.
I tell him everything Essa told me: the warning, the courier, Miriam receiving it, the council, the decision to hold. The covenant’s protection being designed for external threats and the witch already inside the territory. The thirty years of Essa asking herself whether Miriam was right.
He listens without speaking.
When I finish he is quiet.
He says: what do you need from me right now.
I say: I need you to not try to fix it.
He says: all right.
He says it simply. Not with the specific quality of someone managing their instinct to fix things. With the quality of someone who has already made the internal adjustment and is simply present.
I say: I do not know if she was right. I do not know if the evacuation would have saved them. I do not know if Miriam knew the specific nature of the threat and held anyway or if she did not fully see it.
He says: yes.
I say: that is going to be the answer for as long as I am alive. I am not going to know.
He says: yes.
I say: and it changes the shape of her in my mind. The Miriam I knew was certain in the right ways and wrong in specific ways and I trusted her completely. This is one of the specific ways she may have been wrong. The specific way with the most cost.
He says: yes.
I say: I am not angry at her. I want to be clear about that. I am not — there is not a clean feeling here. It is more like the shape of her has become larger and more complicated. She made a decision that I would not have made. That the decision was made with love does not make the outcome different.
He says: no.
I say: and I am trying to hold both of those things at once and I cannot always. Sometimes the shape of her is complete and sometimes it is the thirty-seven names and I cannot hold both at the same time.
He says: you do not have to.
I say: I know. I am telling you what it is like, not asking you to solve it.
He says: I know.
I say: the reason I am telling you is that carrying things alone is a habit I am trying to change. Essa said it is the Oris way. You said it does not have to be.
He says: yes.
I say: so I am not carrying this one alone. That is what this is.
He looks at me.
He says: I am glad you told me.
I say: I am glad I told you too.
We sit for a while.
The morning light is in the room. Caian’s voice is audible from the nursery — the nurse has apparently produced something interesting and he is registering his opinion about it.
Alaric says: what do you do with it now.
I say: I hold it the way I hold the thirty-seven names. Present but not consuming. It becomes part of who she was, not the whole of it.
He says: can you do that.
I say: I have been doing it with the thirty-seven names for two years. It is not easy. It becomes possible.
He says: and Essa.
I say: Essa has been doing it for thirty years longer than I have. She carried the warning and the knowledge of what happened afterward for thirty years before she could say it to anyone.
He says: that is a long time to carry something alone.
I say: yes. It is the Oris way.
He says: it does not have to be.
I say: I told her that.
He says: good.
The morning continues.
I go back to the second book’s third section.
I write a paragraph about Miriam.
Not about the decision. About her hands when she had already decided. How they looked. What they felt like to hold. The specific quality of her certainty that made her the best teacher I have ever had and the most stubborn person I have ever known.
Both true.
Both hers.