“Let it be so. Let us make it so.” A tear welled from Mór’s left eye and raced down her cheek. She had not known there was a danger of this. She wiped at it, embarrassed, flooded with memories she rarely allowed to surface. Yoen, the nearest thing to a father she had ever known—more than that, he was father and mother both, and a balm for the loss of a brother. Life was cruel and cruel again, to take everything from her as a child and make her relearn herself under this man’s care. And then, later, to ask her to be whole unto herself when he escaped to join the elders in the Westlands, on the Sky Isle. It was too much to bear.

The thing was, she knew that the eyes looking at her, though they appeared to be Yoen’s, were not his. They were the messenger’s, and it was he who was seeing enough to be able to take part in this conversation. Yoen himself did not see her. He had instilled himself and his words inside this man at least a fortnight ago. They had lived in him, and now the vessel let them out. More than that, he shaped them. He spoke and reacted with Yoen’s voice and mind, even though Yoen himself was not part of it. Mór had never understood the process. And she had never liked it.

“What do the elders wish of me?” Mór asked.

“Tell me of the Akaran.”

She could tell him things, but whatever responses he made to what she said had to have been embedded in the vessel weeks ago. It made little sense, but few of the things the People had learned from the Lothan Aklun did. She answered as fully as she could, telling Yoen everything that seemed important. She did leave out how she had reacted during her first encounter with Dariel, but that was a detail, not the substance he needed.

“Do you believe he speaks truly?”

With more bitterness than she intended, Mór said, “I don’t know what truth means to Acacians.”

Yoen’s eyes stared at her. Waited.

“He seems to believe himself. He is earnest, but that doesn’t mean he’s truthful. He may just be foolish.”

“We must be careful with him,” Yoen’s voice said, after considering this for a long moment. “If he is the living prophecy, he must be allowed to find it himself. We cannot thrust it upon him. We can, however, take certain steps. This is what you will do: test him further. Find a true test.”

Mór’s eyes widened. A true test meant a task to be accomplished in the real world, with real danger. “And if he dies?”

“Then he is not the Rhuin Fá. Mór, my dearest, go with the—”