Regeneration by Stacey Berg

Author:Stacey Berg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

Echo hovered by Khyn and Dalto long enough to assure herself that Khyn was still, at least for now, cooperative. Then she sat beside the Saint, watching her as Lia used to watch the cityens she cared for when they slept, or cityens watched over their children. That made her think of Fury and her brother. No one had watched over them. They had survived a long time on their own in the desert before she found them. It was marginally to Echo’s credit that she had thought it best to deliver them to the Church. The boy seemed to be doing well enough with the priests. But Fury . . . Perhaps, if they decided she was no hunter, they might not bother to cull her. Simply turning her out would be sufficient. What would happen to her then, a child with no place among Church or cityens . . . It would not matter at all, when that end came, that Echo had meant well by bringing her here. Lia had said it a long time ago: what you do matters more than what you think.

Echo stared at the expressionless mask that was the Saint’s face. Lia had never looked like that in life. Maybe it was only because the eyes were closed, those luminous golden eyes that had always held a hint of sorrow, even when Lia smiled, or laughed, or looked up from the circle of Echo’s arm, contented as if she could have lain there forever . . .

Light filtered down from the rose window above the loft. A haze hung in the air, dust, perhaps, blown in from the yard outside. She blinked hard; it didn’t help.

A footstep sounded behind her, so soft that a cityen would not have heard it. “What do you see when you sit here?” Gem asked. She had known Lia, briefly, had hunted her and Echo into the desert and brought them to the Church, when Echo in her weakness sought to flee. To the rest of the hunters—the rest of the Church—she had always been the Saint. It made the figure on the altar seem all the lonelier.

In Echo’s silence Gem continued, “I asked the Patri the same thing once. He had no answer either. By then he had become quite weak; he hardly spoke at all, and sometimes when he did, his mind wandered. Once he even called me Echo.” Her lips twitched. “He came here often. He seemed comforted when he looked on her.” Echo felt a faint surprise that Gem even recognized the feeling; it was impossible to imagine her ever needing comfort. But the line between her brows was there again. “I was here the last time, watching. He may not have been aware.”

“You spied on the Patri?” It was outrageous, even for Gem.

The young hunter lifted a shoulder without embarrassment. “I assisted him to the altar, then withdrew. I thought he forgot I was there. But I have wondered, since. He spoke to the Saint, but I am not certain his words were directed only at her.

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