Still, she hated the sight of it. It seemed like an ill omen. She looked at the rune on her right hand, her mother’s rune, the loops and swirls of it unmarred. Compared to her father’s rune . . .

Yenni froze. Was it . . . no. She stared hard, willing it not to be, but it was plain in front of her eyes, and as her gaze flitted between her palms she let out a small noise of distress.

Her father’s rune had faded.

21

It was almost imperceptible, and she may not have noticed had she not been comparing it against her mother’s rune, but she couldn’t deny that the swirling white lines on her palm were not as vibrant as they had once been. She wasn’t sure if her light-headedness was due to her injury or the terrible truth painted right in front of her. A wild panic took hold of her mind, sending her thoughts racing. What was he doing? Could he walk? Speak? Why was she here, leagues away when she should be by his side? What had possessed her to come here to Cresh on this fool’s mission? Was it truly the will of the Sha? Was it truly to help her father? Or . . .

For the first time she acknowledged it, that guilty selfish feeling deep down. Was it because, just for a while, she had wanted to escape? She had wanted to be someone, something other than Princess Yenni Aja-Nifemi ka Yirba? Chieftain’s daughter? Future prince’s wife?

Yenni bowed her head and closed her eyes. “Almighty Sha,” she whispered in her native tongue. “If this is your reprimand for my selfishness, then I throw myself on your mercy. Do not punish my father for my mistakes.”

Someone cleared their throat. Yenni’s eyes snapped open, and her eyebrows flew up when she saw who stood in the doorway.

“Professor Mainard?”

He came in, his boots clicking on the tile floor of the infirmary.

“They’ve stitched you up I see. Good, that.”

“What are you doing here, Professor?”

He had the audacity to look affronted. “What do you mean, ‘what am I doing here’? I came to inquire as to your well being of course.”

“My being is well, thank you.”

He grunted. “As it should be. Nothing but the best at Prevan, and that includes our healing practitioners. Yes, the pinnacle of magical science.”

A sudden thought occurred to Yenni. “Professor,” she said. “What was the nature of the blade that cut me? Was it something that can”—oh, what was the word she was looking for?—“something that can cancel magic?”

Perhaps the fading of the rune was not due to her father’s health, but whatever magical device had injured her.

But Mainard shook his head. “It was a tool, part of an experimental device it would take far too long to explain. But in and of itself it has no magical properties.”