I hadn’t even paid attention to where I was walking, moving solely on instinct. I stood on the balcony. Before me was a breathtaking view of the mountains, the forts illuminated like distant candles, the snowcapped peaks glowing beneath the moonlight.
I felt warmth surround me. Tisaanah leaned against my shoulder. Her touch was a grounding presence, tethering me back to the earth.
“Their lives were worth so much more than the way they ended, Max,” she murmured, softly. “Don’t let their deaths take that away from you. It is the most precious thing you have.”
A lump rose in my throat.
Ascended above, I wished it was that easy. But their deaths had taken so much. From their memories, from their lives. From me.
“I wish you could have known them,” I said. “I wish I was introducing you to them, instead of showing you their empty bedrooms. I wish I was showing you this house when it was a home, not a shrine to the dead. And sometimes…” I let out a breath through my teeth. “Sometimes I wish you had known me, the way I used to be. Sometimes I wish that was the version of myself I could give you. A better version. One that wasn’t so…”
Broken.
I had thought that, when I noticed my feelings for Tisaanah beginning to change. The night I had given her the butterfly necklace, I had spent the rest of the evening trying to ignore the pleasant burn on my knuckles where they had brushed her skin. And when I lay in bed that night, unable to sleep because of this persistent, nagging fantasy that I couldn’t shake, a cold voice had echoed through my mind: Maybe once, long ago, you could have been worthy of her. Maybe before you were a collection of scars.
Tisaanah’s arm wound around mine.
“I do not think I would have liked you then,” she said, so plainly that despite myself a smile tugged at my mouth.
“I had far less crippling disillusionment then.”
“Perhaps I like your crippling disillusionment.”
The remnants of my smile faded. “It was more than that. I had a home. A family. I had… this.” I gestured to the house. “All of this ridiculous excess. I could have given all of that to you. I wish I could give all that to you.”
I looked to Tisaanah. Ascended, she was stunning, the white in her hair glowing in the silver light, her eyes a million miles deep. For a moment I could picture that idealized fantasy — the way she would have looked with them, laughing with Atraclius, chatting with my mother, collecting bugs with Kira. I could picture the way she would have painted the horrible parties here in rainbow colors.
Tisaanah gave me a sad smile.
“You could have tried,” she said, “but that world would not have wanted me, Max. And perhaps I would not have wanted it, either.”
There it was. The truth.
I closed my eyes, and one by one, the images faded.
Because Tisaanah was a former slave, a foreigner with no name and no prospects. I so wanted to believe that my family wouldn’t have seen her that way. Maybe, as individual people, they wouldn’t have. But the roots of the life we lived ran deeper than that, choking out what didn’t belong.
And maybe Tisaanah was too damned good for all of it, anyway.
I had loved my family. I had loved my childhood. But now I turned around and looked at this beautiful house, and thought of how it was built from the riches of career warfare. For the Farliones, it was simply what we did — a game to gain honor and money and respect from other people like us.
But Tisaanah? Tisaanah knew what it was to be one of the pieces on the board. People like us reduced people like her to faceless numbers. Like she was just one of a thousand, an asset to be leveraged or sacrificed, instead of a person.
Grief and anger warred with each other deep in my chest. The conflict I’d suppressed these long weeks, the thing that festered every time I looked at Moth, bubbled up to the surface.
“I don’t know how to reconcile it,” I said. “The bad with the good. The things that I loved with the things that I hate. And there is so fucking much that I hate, now, about what we were. So many things that I didn’t see back then. But despite it, I still—”
I had to stop, abruptly, because I couldn’t say the words without breaking: I still miss them so, so much.
There was a long silence. When Tisaanah spoke, her voice was a low murmur.
“I have known so many people,” she said, “who are willing to do awful things and look away from the consequences. I have learned to live in their world and play by their rules, because I thought it was the only way. But you… you are not willing to compromise. You are not willing to sacrifice. You demand better. When I met you, I had never known anyone like that before.”
Her hand slid into mine.
“You told me once that the world would be simpler if people were all one thing. But we will never live in a world that easy. Your family is a part of you. Of course you will love them. Of course you will miss them. And… of course you will want to make a better world than they did. You will build upon what they gave you. You will draw from their strengths and confront their mistakes. You will make something better, because that is what you do. You dream, Max. And I love that in you.”
Her words dug deep, brushing everything I buried — the old wounds of my family’s deaths, and the fresh ones from these last awful weeks. Brushing everything that smothered me when I would lie alone at night, wondering if any of it would ever be worth anything.
And yet, she made it so easy to believe her. As if her conviction was strong enough to breathe life into everything I dismissed as impossible.
My vision blurred.
In one abrupt movement, I pulled her into an embrace, clutching her with my face buried in her hair. I couldn’t speak, even though I wished I could. I wished I could weave words beautiful enough to capture this — the way that she made the past and the future seem, somehow, reconcilable.
She didn’t pull away, and I was grateful, because I wasn’t ready to let go. Perhaps I never would be.
I had always lived my life with one foot in the past, while Tisaanah relentlessly charged to the future. It was only here, when we were together, that we collided. It was only here that we stood still.
Beautifully, mercifully still.
We stayed there like that, holding each other, for a long, long time.
That night, I slept as if I hadn’t in months. When I was traveling, night was a time of fitful rest and vivid dreams, interspersed with worries. But now, it was easy to fall into a rest so deep it was a vat of darkness. Wonderful. Dreamless. And what felt like a hundred years later, when I rolled over to see Tisaanah’s lightly-snoring face beside me, the awestruck relief just hit me all over again.
Her eyes fluttered open. I watched them blink away sleepy confusion, and then brighten with happiness, and then close again in contentment.
Tisaanah and I had never had the opportunity to wake up together, slow. And we did wake up slowly. We woke up with “Good morning”s murmured into each others’ skin, and sloppy embraces, and little kisses that started playful and quickly drew deeper. We woke up with our bodies intertwined, Tisaanah crawling over me and the two of us moving together, hands roaming over each other lazily. I tried to memorize the way she looked, with the morning light falling over her naked body. I decided I liked her this way.
Eventually, though, the world caught up to us.
By the time we finally dragged ourselves out of bed, my mind was moving on to the next order of business. One that I was sorely dreading.
I turned to Tisaanah as she finished brushing out her hair.
“I made some visits,” I said. “When I was traveling.”
She looked at me through the mirror. “Visits?”
“I tried to get some information about your curse. Whatever Zeryth did, or didn’t do.”
That got her attention. She turned. “And?”
I let out a long breath through my teeth. I couldn’t believe I was about to say this. “I think we need to visit Ilyzath.”
/>
Chapter Thirty-Four
Aefe
That night, I drank.
It was not hard to find alcohol in Yithara — any town so built for travelers, after all, would have it flowing freely. It took very little wandering to find a little pub to stumble into. It wasn’t the shadowy, familiar embrace of my home, but the wine ran just as strong, the darkness just as sweet, the smiles of strangers just as welcoming. Two glasses, and the knot in my stomach was suddenly loosened, my attention transfixed on a handsome-enough man in the chair beside me, our conversations growing softer and closer.
This was good. This was familiar. Soon, I would be entangled in limbs and skin and moans, and a heartbeat that would carry me through the loneliness of the night.
The stranger was whispering softly to me, words that neither of us cared about, our noses nearly touching, when—
A figure in the corner caught my eye. A familiar figure, slumped back in the shadows, his own glass of wine in his hand. There was something about his stance that was unusual and concerning.
“What?” the stranger murmured, his fingers tracing mine, noticing my distraction. He was so close. It would be so easy to disappear into mindless pleasure. So comfortable, compared to the complications of everything else that surrounded us.
And yet, for reasons even I didn’t fully understand, I pulled away. “I have to go,” I said.
When I crossed the room and slid onto the bench beside Caduan, he barely looked at me. He swirled the remaining wine around in his glass.
“You have a bad habit,” he said, “of finding me when I would rather not be found.”
“Do you want me to leave?” I said, and he flicked a heavy-lidded gaze to me. Held it.
“No,” he said. “No, I do not.”
My eyes fell to his mostly-empty glass. Certainly not the first.
“What are we drinking to?”
A barely-visible smile. “A good friend’s birthday. One that he should be drinking to himself.”
“Oh.” I bit my lip. There would be many lonely birthdays for Caduan.
“He would have been a much better king,” he said, looking down to his glass. “It should have been him. It’s laughable, actually, that I am the one who holds the title now. Someone should have made a rule. Once you get past the tenth person in the line of succession, perhaps it’s time to give up.”
“You’re the king now. You could make that rule.”
Caduan blinked. “I suppose I could.”
“See?” I leaned forward. “Innovation, King Caduan.”
Mathira, I was drunk. Too drunk for this. I half expected him to be insulted. Instead, he let out a short laugh.
“Innovation. Yes, maybe. But even that…” His gaze went far away, face lapsing into seriousness. “I just keep thinking of how many more useful people could have lived. I knew some of the most brilliant people that have ever walked this world. When I had that corpse open on my table, all I could think about were all the more intelligent minds that could have been standing in my place, minds who could assemble the pieces I cannot. And yet I was the one who walked away.”
My mouth was dry. I took a long gulp of wine.
I was acutely conscious of the letter in my pocket, and what it forbid. Caduan wanted answers. But he would not be able to get them in Niraja.
I didn’t want to tell him that. Not now.
But when I put my glass down again, he was looking at me with that stare that stripped me bare.
“I assume,” he said, “that you received a letter from your father.”
I stiffened, and silently cursed myself for abandoning the promise of a wordless embrace for this.
My non-answer was answer enough.
“I’ll guess,” Caduan said, leaning back in his chair. “We are not going to Niraja.”
The words were thick and difficult. “We are not.”
“I, for one, am utterly shocked,” he said, and took a long drink of wine.
“I may disagree, but it is not up to me to question his decisions.”
Caduan’s lip twitched. “It’s a coward’s decision,” he muttered, into his glass.
Anger flared. I had to choke back my sharpest words. “You’re drunk,” I said.
“I am. But I’m also right.” He sat up and leaned towards me. The movement was sloppy and imprecise, and he bowed closer than perhaps he would have otherwise, his forehead nearly touching mine. Even in the darkness of the pub, his eyes were the color of light refracting through leaves — as if his anger shone through them.
“Tell me something, Teirness,” he said. “Why do you have such loyalty to him?”
“I am not the Teirness.”
“Yes, you are.”
I scoffed. “No, I’m—”
“Unsuitable? To whom? Your father holds unmatched power in the Pales. Do you think he could not have gotten them to accept you, if he had wanted to?” His voice softened. Where I had just seen anger, now I saw compassion. “Do you think other Houses do not whisper about him, Aefe? That power was never even intended to be his. It is your mother’s. And it is yours.”
I shook my head. But even as I did, a fragmented memory whispered through the back of my mind. A memory of that night, my father’s hands on my throat, the flash of white, my mother’s voice.
“My mother is not well. And I—”
“Are not as easy to control as your sister?”
I stopped breathing. I recoiled, a snarl on my lips.
“Don’t you dare say a word of my sister.”
Regret unfolded across his face immediately. “I—”
“And don’t you dare speak about my family as if you know them better than I do.”
He leaned forward, just slightly. “Aefe—"
He said my name like it was an apology and an explanation and a plea, all at once. No one ever said my name like that. No one ever had extended that sort of tenderness to me, and I liked it better that way.
And so, I didn’t need to think before I stomped it all out.
“I’m sorry that he did not give you the answer you wanted. I’m sorry that you hate him because he’s trying to make you something you don’t want to be. Because he never would let happen to our House what happened to yours.”
I didn’t expect Caduan’s expression to change as it did. He flinched, as if I had struck him. And then his eyes were bright and sharp, and his lips parted, and a certain satisfaction rose up in me — ready for the ugliness of a fight, something familiar and painful, something that I undoubtedly deserved.
But then, a deafening crash rang out.
On the opposite side of the room, where a massive window overlooked the leaves and sky, smashed glass now covered the floor. Patrons leapt up from their seats, swearing drunkenly. Confused murmurs rippled through the pub as we stood.
My eyes were not looking at the window.
Intead they were drawn to what lay on the floor: an arrow, wrapped in cloth. One end was alight with a strange flame and it was only once I stepped closer that I saw blue powder scattered across the ground where it had landed.
“What is—” I started.
I didn’t get to finish my question. Caduan grabbed my arm and yanked me back.
Just as the world went white.
Everything shattered. A bone-rattling sound shook me. My back slammed against the wall. I was on the other side of the room.
I couldn’t see — it was dark, and blue smoke hung in the air. Floorboards were crooked and splintered beneath me. I was looking up at a night sky through a broken ceiling. There was a weight on top of me. Caduan, I realized, bracing himself over my body. There was warmth spilling over my right arm, where he pressed against me. Blood. His.
I wasn’t prepared for the wave of panic that realization brought me. My hands clamped to his side, trying to quell the bleeding.
“You’re hurt—”
But Caduan didn’t seem to care. There was something more urgent than pain etched into his expression.
>
“Humans,” he ground out.
It was the only thing he had time to say before there was a hideous cracking sound, and the floor fell out beneath us.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Tisaanah
I wasn’t sure what, exactly, I was expecting. Perhaps some fortress of iron bars and twisted steel, or a dark tower shrouded in storm clouds. But when Max drew his Stratagram and we landed on a slab of ivory surrounded by a churning sea, my words died in my throat.
The building was made out of polished white stone, so tall that its peak faded into the ocean fog above us. The sides were slightly slanted, and the waves roared against them, like fists to an unyielding door. There were no windows, no openings at all, save for a single tall, narrow black door.
The walls were covered with carvings. As we stepped closer, I realized that they were not images but symbols — a language I had never seen before. As the light hit them, sometimes they would catch sudden flashes of silver or black or a bone-chilling red.
Reshaye recoiled.
{This is a terrible place,} it hissed. {An evil place.}
I winced, pushing back its protests. But it was right — everything here felt unsettling.
“Arans built this?” I asked, as we approached the doors. They loomed above us, two massive panes of darkness against the ivory.
This place was like nothing I had seen in Ara. It seemed… ancient and foreign.
“It wasn’t built so much as it was… discovered. It’s old. Certainly older than the fall of magic.” Max barely touched the door and it swung open seemingly of its own accord. He shuddered and cursed beneath his breath. “I suppose that four hundred years ago, when it was uncovered again, the Orders thought it would be a shame to let such a perfectly torturous place go to waste. Enterprising bastards.”
We stepped through the doors, and they closed swiftly behind us, as if offended by Max’s tone.
Reshaye slammed against my thoughts. {Get out. Get out, get out, get out…}
It was eerily bright in here. The walls and floor were made out of the same smooth white stone as the exterior, adorned with the same decorative carvings. There were no doors, no adornments. No lanterns, just light. And no people, though I felt the heavy gaze of watchful eyes.
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