But he kept his eyes closed, wrapped in the comforting darkness that not seeing her afforded, unwilling to let that last shred of hope fall away. He moved his damaged hand beneath him, feeling with his good fingers for the ones that were missing, finding the stumps healed over and the pain gone. It wasn’t so bad, he supposed, losing parts of two fingers. Not for what he had been given in turn. Not for what it meant to his efforts at finding his aunt. Not for what it meant to the future of the Four Lands. It wasn’t so bad.

But losing Cinnaminson was.

“Why did you do it?” he asked finally, his voice so soft that he could barely hear his own words.

Silence greeted his query, a long and empty sweep of time in which the voices grew quiet and the sounds of the forest slowly filled the void their departure created.

“Why, Cinnaminson?”

Still no answer. Suddenly fearful that he had lost her completely, he lifted his head and looked around. He was alone, sprawled on the grassy patch on which he had fallen asleep the night before, the darkwand resting on the ground beside him, its glossy length shimmering, its carved runes dark and mysterious.

“Cinnaminson?” he called.

–It was a chance for me to be something I couldn’t otherwise be– She spoke to him from out of the air. –I am free from my body, Pen. Free from my blindness. Free in a way I could never be otherwise. I can fly everywhere. I can see what I could never see before. Not in the way I do now. I am not alone anymore. I have found a family. I have sisters. I have a mother and father–

He didn’t know what to say. She sounded so happy, but her happiness made him feel miserable. He hated himself for his reaction, but he couldn’t find a way to change it.

“It was your choice to do this?” he demanded, his words sounding woeful and plaintive, even to him.

–Of course, Penderrin. Did you think I was forced to become one of them? It was my choice to shed my body–

“But you knew I wouldn’t be given the tanequil’s branch any other way, didn’t you?”

–I knew it was the right thing to do. Just as you did, when you agreed to come here to find the tree and to seek help in freeing your aunt–

“But you knew,” he persisted, desperate to wring from her one small concession. “You knew that becoming an aeriad would help me. You knew that giving yourself to the tanequil was what it would take for the tanequil to give me its limb.”

Her hesitation was momentary. –I knew–