Free Shadows Before the Sun by Kelly Gay

Brell and Trahern Lightwater, and then invited us into her private study beyond the massive doors.
    “I can’t tell you how delighted I am to see you, oracle. It has been too long, much too long. And to come with this one! A surprise to be sure. Tell me,Charlie Madigan,” she said as she sat down behind a low marble desk, “how do you feel?”
    I was halfway down to one of the chairs opposite the desk when the odd question made me pause for a second. “I’m fine. How is it you know me exactly?”
    “Hard not to know the person who called primordial darkness from one world to another.” She leaned against the high back of her chair and steepled her fingers under her chin, her shrewd bright blue eyes intent and curious. “It’s quite a feat, what you did. Some claimed impossible until you proved them wrong.”
    I thought of Emma; I’d move mountains for her if I could. I ended up moving darkness. “It could’ve been anyone,” I said. “I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.”
    “Dead, I hear, when you were given gifts of the noble and Adonai. Not what I would call the right time, eh?”
    As nice as Edainnué Lightwater seemed, I hadn’t come to Ithonia to be interviewed or to chat about all the things that had happened to me. I’d come for my partner. “I survived. I see that as being in the right.”
    Lightwater laughed and said to Sandra, “She does have spirit, you’re right.”
    Sandra leaned over the arm of her chair toward me. “Just so you know, spirited is not the word I used to describe you.”
    This made Lightwater laugh again, and my impatience rose. “I don’t mean to be rude, Ms. Lightwater, but—”
    “Right, right. Fiallan, I know. Reclusive, the sirens of Fiallan, even from their own kind. Quite cut off from the rest of the world. Though, they choose to be that way. I will have Trahern and Brell take you both, but first you will need a few things for your journey and I would beg an audience with the oracle in return.”
    “Accepted,” Sandra said, not giving me a chance to speak.
    My cheeks grew warm and I squeezed my fists tightly. How long was an audience? Hank could be in trouble, hurt, dying for all we knew and they wanted to hang out and chat about the future?
    “Charlie.” Sandra’s voice pulled me out of my internal tirade. Lightwater was eyeing me with interest, and her nephews stared at me with concern. “Your hand.”
    I glanced down and saw the symbols on my right fist were beginning to glow. Shit. I pulled my hand back into the sleeve of my jacket and drew in a steadying breath. “It . . . does that sometimes,” I tried to explain, but it just sounded lame. “It’s just that . . . time is crucial, and I have to get to Fiallan as soon as possible.”
    “You have the right of it, to want to move quickly. I understand. Your delegates came through a few days ago, and I believe they were attempting to free a siren who was wrongly accused, though the specifics were not told to me.” Lightwater studied me with ancient eyes, wise and knowing. “You will need a few things, of course.”
    She stood, pushed her chair aside, and then bent to root in the large cabinet behind her. “First,” she said over her shoulder, “a cloak of the apprentice, and then . . . ah, there it is.” Lightwater gathered her finds and came around her massive desk, setting them on the corner. “Here, put this on.” She handed me a dark blue robe. “Fiallan doesn’t get many foreigners, but the occasional human student of the arcane isn’t unheard of.”
    I stood and took the robe, grateful and suspicious at the same time. There was no reason for her to help me. True, the Adonai had no love for the sirens of Fiallan—even sirens from other cities had no care for their brothers and sisters—but to offer all this. Was it because of Sandra or some other reason?
    “And this.” Lightwater presented an amulet.
    I took it and examined the tear-shaped milky blue stone