“Sometimes I wonder if it matters,” he muttered. “Sometimes I wonder if it all just runs too fucking deep.”
I opened my mouth, but he said, abruptly, “You’re dismissed. Go.”
I hesitated, then rose and went to the door.
Frankly, I didn’t have it in me to argue. Not when there was someone I so desperately needed to see.
Chapter Thirty
Aefe
Waiting for my father’s reply was agonizing.
I would not be able to receive his response until we arrived at our next scheduled stop, Yithara. It was a trading post independent of the Houses that was nestled deep in the forest. There, we could receive letters back from home — impossible, otherwise, while we were on the road and untraceable.
I eagerly looked forward to our arrival. The silence of our rides, combined with my growing anxiety, was beginning to eat me up. I craved the sight and sound of other people, the familiar comfort of being surrounded by other, more lighthearted lives. It wouldn’t be the soul-deep connection of the Pales, but it would be something.
And yes, when we arrived at Yithara, it was everything I’d been told it was. Fey wearing the clothing of every House, or no House at all, mingled with each other, bartering at stalls that packed the roads. The streets wound between massive trees with trunks that were bigger than some of the buildings, which were all designed to fit so perfectly that they seemed to be an extension of the forest itself. Structures straddled the space between smooth-barked trees, rising up and up until they disappeared into the canopy of leaves. Above our heads, a series of bridges connected the upper levels. Yithara was not a large city in surface area, but its overall size was four or five times larger than the space it occupied on the woodland floor. It built up.
Beautiful. Yet another monument of all that the Fey could create and become.
I had so hoped that seeing all of this activity, all of this living, would ease my fears. But when we actually arrived, I looked around and all I could think about was the House of Stone and the House of Reeds. Their cities had been majestic too. And how easily, still, they fell.
“I need a drink,” I muttered to Siobhan, as we dismounted our horses at a stable on the lower levels — horses, after all, would be of little use to us in most of Yithara, seeing as they often weren’t particularly fond of climbing trees.
Siobhan shot me a wordless look that made me roll my eyes.
“I will behave,” I said. “No need.”
“I didn’t say anything. You’re my commander here. You can do whatever you please.”
I scoffed, and she gave me a barely suppressed smirk.
Commander. It didn’t matter who my father technically chose to lead this expedition. I would never be Siobhan’s commander, and she didn’t even have to speak to scold me.
Accommodations for us had already been arranged. The inn was on the seventh level of Yithara, far enough up to be buried in the green tapestry of the leaves. The walkways that connected the city up here were beautiful creations of polished wood and lightweight bronze, the handrails decorated with swirling designs covered with vines.
As we climbed up, level by level, through wide staircases that spiraled up the length of the trees, I noticed Caduan peering uneasily over the edge.
“Dislike heights?” I asked.
He let out a low laugh, embarrassed. “It does seem unnatural to be so far above the ground.”
I recalled the time I had visited the House of Stone, when I was a child. While many Fey houses built towering structures, the House of Stone’s architecture was flat and sprawling, the tallest of their buildings no more than three stories high — and safely encased in stone shale, besides.
I shrugged and gestured to the upper levels of the city. “Unnatural, perhaps. But isn’t this that innovation you keep talking about?”
Caduan gave me a stare so flat and unamused that I couldn’t help but laugh.
The inn was clean and spacious but nothing particularly fancy — it was chosen merely out of convenience, certainly not out of desire for luxury. That was perfectly fine with me. All I wanted was a drink and a proper bath.
But, that would have to wait. The first order of business was for Ishqa and I to get any correspondence from home. And I wondered if it was obvious, as Ishqa and I wound down the hallways to the lobby, that I was so nervous about what those letters would contain.
Two letters were waiting for me. One was from my father — or rather, my father in the official capacity as the Teirna of the Sidnee, the outside marked with his seal and title rather than his name. The other, to my delight, was from Orscheid.
Ishqa and I sat around a wooden table beneath a shadowy set of timber rafters. Ishqa had three letters. One bore the seal of Queen Shadya. Another had flawless inked script on the envelope, perhaps from his sister. I thought back to the pristine woman that had presented to us at the Pales. She seemed like the type to have that sort of handwriting. The third, though — the ink was scrawled across the front of that one, and it was bent, as if it’d had a particularly difficult journey. When Ishqa picked it up, a smile brushed his face that seemed at odds with his typical noble poise.
“Who is that from?” I asked. As always, I spoke before I could stop myself.
He glanced at me, and simply replied, “My son.”
“You have a son?”
I blurted this out with abject disbelief that made his brow furrow.
“Yes. Is that worthy of such surprise?”
Yes.
“No,” I said. “Of course not.”
The truth was, I found it nearly impossible to imagine Ishqa dealing with children. Children loved shouting and pretending and rolling around in the dirt and having wild outbursts about the slightest inconveniences. These were all things that I could not picture Ishqa having much tolerance for.
Ishqa turned the letter over. There were ink stains all over the back, too, wild slashes of it. He frowned at his hands, which were now smudged.
“How old is he?” I asked.
“Six summers.”
Despite myself, I smiled. “A good age.”
“One might say so.”
He opened the letter. I glimpsed two scrawled lines of large, messy writing, then what appeared to be a half-finished drawing of… a horse? A cow? A horse cow?
Ishqa looked at this letter very seriously, a line of concentration over his brow.
I couldn’t help it. I laughed.
He shot me a sharp look. “What?”
“You look as if you’re decoding military operations.”
He stared at me as if this answer meant nothing to him.
“No one should look so serious when reading a letter from a child,” I clarified.
“Why not?” Ishqa put the letter down. “He lost interest after two lines.”
“And?”
He gave me a stony stare. “Do the Sidnee not value education?”
“Of course we do. But he’s six summers.”
“At six summers, my father had me writing pages of Wyshraj history.”
I almost scoffed. Mine had wanted me to write pages of history, too. I just had never been any good at it. From the looks of it, Ishqa had been better than me at such things.
I shrugged. “He is a child.”
“He is flighty and distracted,” he huffed, in a way that reminded me all too much of how my father used to click his tongue and shake his head at my own sloppy, half-finished essays.
“Perhaps he’s a dreamer,” I said.
“A dreamer is a hard thing to be. I fear so now more than ever.” He looked down at the letter, and the disapproval on his face softened. “I only hope that I’m raising him to be strong enough to survive such a world.”
A bittersweet ache twinged in my chest.
Did my father ever wear that expression when he talked about me, I wondered? Was there ever any fragment of his disappointment in me that was secretly love in disguise?
I looked back d
own at the table, at the letter waiting there, written in my father’s unmistakable hand. A lump of nervousness curled in my stomach.
“That’s all any of us can hope,” I said, then picked up the letters and excused myself back to my room.
I read my father’s letter four times.
The response was brief:
Aefe —
The word sent by you and by your companions is deeply troubling to all of us. There is no hope left in denying that the humans want anything less than war.
But this does not change the fact that what you propose is forbidden.
I do not know what made you think that exile could be violated.
Niraja is a sickened place. You have never respected our traditions, but I will not see them destroyed by such degradation.
Keep your eyes open. Watch the Wyshraj, for they are still not our allies.
Do not raise such a question again.
Do not make me regret choosing you for this.
— Teirna
Chapter Thirty-One
Tisaanah
Tisaanah.
My name was a whisper.
I squinted into the setting sun over an endless expanse of rolling gold. Threll, now. But once Nyzerene. Once my home.
No wonder it seemed to call to me so.
Tisaaaaaanaaah.
The sun was low, brushing kisses along the horizon line, running its fingers through the swaying grass. I lifted my chin to the sky and basked in it.
In the distance, a figure turned around and reached for me. I could not see them — the light was so, so bright, flattening their form to a blurry silhouette. They called another name, a name I did not recognize but knew belonged to me.
Sweat dripped down my neck.
I stepped forward, but the sun blinded me. And suddenly it was so hot, too hot, my skin burning. I blinked and opened my eyes to a sea of fire — blue, like the flames that had consumed the Mikov estate, like the ones that I had inhaled into myself when I fought Reshaye in the deepest levels of magic.
Those golden plains withered to decay.
I looked down to see black rot crawling over my palms. Light spilled from my fingertips.
{You saw me.}
And this time, I recognized the voice. I watched my flesh wither, no more tongue to speak, no more throat to scream. My hands were only the stark ivory of bone, fractured with cracks of crimson light.
{And when you look into a mirror,} Reshaye whispered, {you know what stares back.}
But still, all of that power spilled from me.
Surged and consumed, until I saw nothing but white and white and white.
My eyes snapped open, even though I didn’t remember closing them. Nura stood over me, holding a rapier that nearly nicked the tip of my nose. Her pale cheeks were flushed with exertion, silver hairs forming a halo around her head.
“Where were you?” she demanded.
I was unable to even answer that question. A second ago — no, less than a second ago — I had been on my feet, dodging one of Nura’s strikes, Il'Sahaj halfway to closing the space between us.
And yet, now... I was lying on my back in the sand floor of the sparring arena.
A full two seconds. Three, even. Gone. Just…
{Lost,} Reshaye whispered. {Like so many other things.}
“We don’t have time for daydreams, Tisaanah.” Nura nudged Il'Sahaj’s hilt with her toe, pushing it back towards me, then resumed position with two long, gliding steps. “Get up. One more.”
I came back to my feet, ignoring the pain that throbbed behind my eyes. I refused to let my movements betray any hint of it. Certainly not after she just got me to the ground.
Three paces away from her. I took my stance, sweaty palms gripped tight around Il'Sahaj’s hilt.
We both coiled, waiting, watching each other. When Nura and I sparred, we never announced the start of the match. We’d wait, every muscle ready, watch for any twitch of movement.
Fitting. With Nura, one never really knew when the battle began.
Five seconds. Ten. And then—
Nura moved first this time, and I liked it better that way, because it gave me something to respond to. Her rapier came at me from the left and I rolled right, meeting her strike with my own, steel and gold glinting violent pangs beneath the waning sun.
Lunge — and pull back, fast fast fast, before she could answer, before she could adjust—
She lifted her arm. Danced backwards. I snaked out with Il'Sahaj’s blade, caught the edge of her shoulder, opening a trail of crimson over her white jacket.
She winced, but didn’t take her eyes off of me. A little smile tugged at one corner of her mouth.
She lunged. I swept to the side, capitalizing on that one off-balance second.
Strike, strike, strike—
Our weapons met where she didn’t expect them too, her rapier so light and flexible that Il'Sahaj nearly barreled right through it. She turned with her body to grab my wrist. But I knew she would — knew she wouldn’t stop.
I went for her other hand. Twisted until I felt it, felt the click of machinery beneath her sleeve.
And shoved her own hand to her throat — so that the blade she’d hidden there was poised against her alabaster skin.
Maybe if I’d looked at her, I might have seen some variation of pride. But instead my eyes couldn’t tear away from the steel against her throat. Behind my skull, Reshaye hissed, a sensation that twisted arousal and hate. It drank up the imagined image of red spilling over her skin.
I froze, distracted, trying to yank Reshaye to the back of my thoughts. But that moment of hesitation was all it took. Nura seized it. Pain shocked up my other wrist as she twisted, then my knees as she kicked my feet out, and then I was on the ground again, my breath coming in gasps.
Nura smirked down at me.
“Good,” she said. “But not good enough.”
“One might argue,” a voice said, from across the arena, “that the match had already been won when there was a blade against your throat, Nura.”
My heart stopped.
I barely noticed when Nura cocked an eyebrow at me and said, “Really? Doesn’t look like it was won to me.”
I scrambled to my feet, spinning around to see Max standing at the door, leaning against the frame with his arms crossed.
Max. Max.
I couldn’t move. I wanted to run to him and yank him into an embrace, but all I could do was stare. I didn’t realize until my cheeks started to ache that my face had split into a grin.
He wore a black military jacket that looked a bit worse for wear, the silver accents revealing the stains that the black fabric hid. He’d loosened several buttons so that the double-breasted coat hung down on one side, making him look especially disheveled — not that the mess of his hair and the shadows beneath his eyes didn’t do that already.
“Took you long enough to get back,” Nura said. Twip, as her blade retracted back up her sleeve.
Max shrugged. His eyes didn’t move from mine, a smile twitching at the left side of his mouth.
“Hello, you.”
“Hello, you.” I could barely get the words out, breathless from more than exertion.
Nura rolled her eyes.
Far in the back of my mind, I felt Reshaye stir. I reached into that web, found it where it perched. It was weak, as it so often was, these days — still exhausted from our fight days ago. Carefully, I coaxed it back into the shadows. Draped a blanket of darkness over it, the same way I shielded my thoughts from other Wielders.
I wanted privacy.
I crossed the room to join Max at the door. I slid my hand into his — for a moment, the solidness of his touch overwhelmed me. I couldn’t tear my eyes away. “Let’s go,” I murmured.
“We’re not done,” Nura said.
I didn’t bother looking back. “We are, actually.” Max gave me a little, sidelong smile. I returned it and shrugged.
What would she do? They needed me.
And there was nothing that could pull me from this.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Tisaanah
We didn’t even make it to my room. The minute we found ourselves in an empty hallway, we were on each other, my back against the wall, Max’s mouth against mine, kisses desperate and searching. He tasted like soot and smelled like smoke and lilacs, that familiar scent that hit me like the heady seduction of wine.
Oh gods, I missed you, I missed you, I missed you.
My mouth was too busy doing much more important things to form those words, but they pulsed through me with every heartbeat. It was almost embarrassing, to feel so incomplete without another person. I’d spent my whole life learning how to gracefully swallow loss. And yet, these weeks away from him had withered me.
We didn’t stop until we made it to my room, sacrificing seconds for a kiss here, a touch there. When we finally found ourselves at my door, I shoved the key into the lock and threw it open, the two of us staggering inside in an ungraceful tangle of limbs. The door closed. It was silent, save for the wonderful sound of us — beautiful, ragged cadence of Max’s demanding breaths, the rustle of our fingers pulling at clothing, the slide of flesh against flesh.
“I missed you,” I choked out, between kisses.
“Me too.” Two words that vibrated against the skin of my neck, lifting a groan to my throat. “You have no idea.”
Gods.
I pushed against him until he met the wall. My mouth found his again, hands reaching for the already half undone buttons of his jacket. I wanted to touch him everywhere, reacquaint myself with all of his planes and angles, drown in the hot warmth of his skin.
I buried my face against his throat. Licked and kissed and nibbled, tasting salt and the faintest hint of iron, as my hands worked first at the final jacket buttons, then those of the plain cotton shirt beneath. He let out a groan, his grip around me tightening as my hand flattened against his abdomen, relishing the way his muscles twitched at my touch.
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