Luminous by Mara Rutherford

Author:Mara Rutherford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inkyard Press
Published: 2021-08-24T18:15:15+00:00

* * *

The next thing I remembered was a cool embrace.

I was lying on the floor, my eyes closed, naked and shivering. I felt something slip away, like a shadow passing over me, and opened my eyes.

The floor beneath me was bare wood. That was all I saw before the morning light streaming in the window seared my sensitive eyes and I had to close them again. I was not dead. I was no longer in the tapestry. This was Margana’s attic.

I sat up, cracking my eyes open just enough to see. “Where’s Evran?”

“I’m here.”

Someone laid a blanket over my shoulders. I gathered the soft wool around myself and opened my eyes a little more.

Evran was crouched a few feet away from me. “How do you feel?” he asked gently.

“Sore,” I said, taking stock of all my limbs. “And confused. What happened?”

“You burned your way out of the tapestry.” Margana stood above me. She was as imposing as ever, her arms crossed over her chest, her fiery hair flowing over her shoulders. “You would have burned yourself along with it if it weren’t for Evran.”

I turned back to him. “What is she talking about?”

“I’ll explain later,” he said gently. “The important thing is that you’re all right.”

I pushed to my feet and turned to see Adelle standing behind me. She held her arms out to me as tears streamed down her cheeks, and I walked into her embrace, knowing she was too overwhelmed to speak. Somehow, her vulnerability gave me strength. “I’m okay, Adelle. Really.”

She shook against me as she sobbed. “When the rope came back, and you weren’t there, I thought you were gone. I thought I’d never see you again.”

“But I’m here now. We’re okay. It’s over.”

“It is not over,” Margana said, with a sigh too full of regret for a woman who’d just been reunited with her son.

“Mother.” Evran went to stand beside her, squinting against the bright light. I could see him now, all of him. He looked like a drifter with his tangled hair and rumpled clothing, not like the gentle young man who called me a star. I blushed at the memory of the kiss we’d just shared in the tapestry. My first kiss.

The tapestry was behind them, or what was left of it anyway. It hung in tatters, a gaping hole burned right through the center. It looked ruined beyond repair. I had done the hard work for Margana, twice now. So why did she look so miserable?

“You let Lusiri into our world,” she said. “Two of them. For all we know they were a male and a female.”

The heat had left me by now, and even with the blanket a chill ran over my skin. “What do you mean? How did I—”

“They came through the hole you made, right after Evran and you.” I followed her gaze across the room. There were holes punched into the wooden floorboards. The attic door was hanging by one hinge.

“They came through here?”

“They tore out of the house like demons and fled into the woods.

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