“That sounds…”
“Unbelievable?”
“If I didn’t know you were an awful liar, I’d assume that you were… embellishing.”
I let out a rough laugh. “That’s our lives these days, isn’t it?”
Sammerin shrugged, as if conceding. Then he leaned forward, suddenly serious. “Gone.”
“So it would appear.”
“It may be too early to make that determination. If Tisaanah is as depleted as you are, it could just be—”
“Could be. But Tisaanah is certain.”
“If it’s true,” Sammerin muttered, “then I’ll never be so happy to see something die.”
“Me too.”
And yet, I couldn’t shake the sensation that this was… incomplete. Like I was eyeing all the pages that still remained before the end of the book.
“But this…” Sammerin’s eyes drifted back down. He picked up my arm and I felt the unpleasant sensation of my muscles twitching, far beneath the skin. I let out a wordless noise of disapproval, even though I couldn’t bring myself to be actually annoyed. Sammerin was using his magic to speak to the tissue, searching for whatever lay beneath. That was how, for example, he would find a broken bone or a cut tendon, pinpoint the source of an injury. Uncomfortable, but effective.
He frowned.
“What?” I asked.
“It does feel like A’Maril. But I only saw it when I started looking. It’s a strange variant, nothing I’ve ever seen before. It feels more like…an infection…like there’s something foreign…” He trailed off, mouth thinned, brow furrowed. Then he said, “Don’t use that magic for awhile.”
“That’s no great sacrifice. I’d love to never use it again.”
Sammerin just gave me a hard stare.
“I mean it. Something is…” He frowned and shook his head. “Just don’t.”
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Tisaanah
My body was broken.
I stood in front of the mirror. For what felt like the first time in months, I was not wearing a military uniform. Instead, I wore a crimson shirt that wrapped around my body and tied with black fabric around my waist, a pair of close-fitting, black trousers, and boots that laced up to my knees. Ordinary clothes.
And yet, I looked so far from ordinary.
My arms were covered in scars where I had rotted those tattoos off. The wound that Esmaris’s whip had torn across my chest, when I had barely managed to shield myself, was visible beneath the deep neckline of my blouse. And of course, my hands… my hands were still black and blue, dark veins extending up my forearms.
Sammerin had mentioned that he might be able to heal some of the scarring. Maybe one day I’d take him up on his offer, though I wasn’t sure what I’d be hiding.
Still, I found myself grieving something that went deeper than vanity. Perhaps I was mourning an unmarked body. But then again, before these scars, I had the ones on my back. Before those, I had the ones on my thighs. And before all of that, I had my Fragmented skin, skin that marked me neither Valtain nor non-Wielder. Even before I lost my mother, or my home, or my country, I was lingering in the space between things, belonging to all and none.
I had never had an unmarked body. Not truly.
I sighed and rolled my gloves up my arms, all the way to my elbows.
“You ready to go?”
I jumped.
Gods, I wasn’t used to this — this silence inside of me. It made all other noises feel so much louder. I turned to see Max at the door, one eyebrow quirked.
“You need to work on that awareness, soldier,” he said.
“I knew you were there,” I sniffed. “I was just humbling you.”
His mouth thinned with a suppressed smile. “Humbling? Or humoring?”
I gave him a look of exaggerated determination. “Humbling. I always mean what I say.”
Fine, I meant humoring. But I blamed Aran, for being a ridiculous language with many words that sounded almost exactly the same, even when many of them that meant multiple different unrelated things. No matter how long I stayed here, I would never entirely get used to it.
“I suppose you humble me sometimes, too, so I’ll allow it.” Max wandered closer. His arms were casually tucked into his pockets, but I did not miss the deliberate force of his gaze assessing me, lingering on the tremor of my hands and slightly-unsteady stance. I did the same to him. I almost laughed at the thought of what the two of us must look like together. A couple of walking corpses.
“Let’s go home,” he said, and his voice was thick with longing. Longing that I shared, too
But…
“One thing first,” I said.
There were children laughing in the street. My gaze kept wandering to them stumbling after each other on the cobblestones outside, locked in what looked to be a particularly spirited game of…tag, perhaps? Two of the windowpanes had finally been replaced, leaving just one with a single crack from corner to corner.
Still, Riasha’s apartment was tidy, orderly, warm. I sat at a wooden table adorned with three modest candlesticks and a bouquet of wildflowers. Filias was across from me, stretched out in his chair like a cat. Behind him, Riasha paced the length of the kitchen. And Serel sat at the other end of the table, watching quietly.
Max’s gaze wandered across the living space. I wondered if he was having the same realization that I was.
I wasn’t sure when this had happened — when Riasha’s apartment, and the other refugee apartments, had begun to finally look like homes. It was modest, yes, but it was also homey, adorned with trinkets and flowers and simple decorations. There was food in the oven, dishes to be washed. So many little markers of a life being lived.
Filias was watching me carefully. He leaned forward, hazel eyes glinting. “I hope that what you’re telling me means what I think it does, Tisaanah.”
I inclined my chin. “The Arans’ war is over. Now it is our turn.”
Riasha uttered an amazed curse under her breath. A crooked smile spread across Filias’s face as he shook his head.
“I’ll be honest, I doubted you.”
“Always a mistake,” Serel said, giving me a proud smile that I couldn’t bring myself to return. I thought of Vos. He had trusted me, and it had been the biggest mistake of his life. Now he would likely spend the rest of his life locked up in an Aran jail.
Despite all he had done, I still had pulled for him. Pleaded for leniency. It didn’t feel like justice.
“We live a lifetime of disappointments,” I said. “Doubting me was only smart.”
“Apparently not as smart as I thought it was. I was beginning to think the day would never come that we could pay back those Threllian pricks.”
“It won’t be so simple,” Riasha said. “The Threllians were powerful enough to conquer seven nations at the height of their military prowess. Even with the Arans’ army…”
“You’ve seen what she can do.” Filias nodded at me, and a stone fell through my stomach.
What could I do, now? Nothing? Was I anything without Reshaye?
No. There was something else inside of me. I knew it — I could feel it. Reshaye’s presence had left an imprint on Max’s magic, one just as powerful as what I Wielded. Surely it had done the same to mine.
If it didn’t…
There is no “if,” I told myself. There is something, and you will find it.
“Riasha is right,” I said, carefully hiding my trepidation. “I need to do further negotiations with Nura, and work out the logistics. No matter what power we have, in a head-to-head battle with the Threllian military, we will lose. But the Threllians’ greatest weakness is their hubris. Even worse now, after fifteen years of comfort. They may have fine armor, but everything inside has gotten soft.”
“And who knows their inner workings better than we do?” Serel said, and Filias let out a short laugh, as if overwhelmed by what he was hearing.
“Gods below. I never fucking thought we would
be saying any of this.”
“Let’s not get too hasty,” Riasha started, but before she could finish, there was a mighty crash as a small figure burst into the room, moving so fast it was little more than a smear.
“Thio!” she exclaimed, though the little boy paid no attention. “You little monster, how many times have I—”
Thio let out a laugh and then, with no hesitation, wriggled onto Max’s lap. He waved to me. “Hello.”
“Hello,” I replied.
“Excuse you,” Max muttered, in Aran, to the child, but seemed fully unbothered as he shifted to hold the boy securely. Easily, as if it were second nature. I raised an eyebrow at him, and he shrugged.
“Five younger siblings, Tisaanah,” he said, and I chuckled.
Riasha looked from Max to me apologetically. “I’m sorry, my grandson is a terror.”
“No need to apologize,” I started.
Max waved away Riasha’s apologies. “Is fine. He can stay.”
He said it in Thereni.
My eyes went round. Max made a show of looking very casual, though he gave me a sly, too-pleased-with-himself look out of the corner of his eye.
Serel, Riasha, and Filias shot each other confused glances. Filias in particular seemed as if he was frantically trying to recall whether he had said anything offensive.
“When did you learn Thereni?” I hissed, in Aran.
“I had a lot of alone time when I was out on the front. Not how I wanted to show you, but…” His gaze flicked away, slightly bashful. Then he cleared his throat and looked to Filias.
“Tisaanah is correct,” he said, in broken Thereni. “In direct fight, we lose. But only if is…ah…” He struggled to find the right word, releasing Thio just long enough to spread his hands out. “All. Together. So, we do not do that.” A satisfied smile spread over his lips, barely suppressed. “We fight them separated.”
His word choice was clumsy, but I understood his meaning. “It isn’t hard to turn the Threllian Lords against each other,” I said. “Especially now. They’ve gone so long without a collective enemy that their main concern is wrestling power from each other. We use that.”
I did not look at Max, but I could feel his gaze — could feel the spark of admiration. Riasha was nodding, thinking to herself, and Filias put his hands behind his head.
“Don’t care how we do it,” he said. “As long as we win.”
We will, I wanted to say. I swear it to you. But that promise caught in my throat, leaden with uncertainty.
There was another crash and flurry of clumsy footsteps, and two more children flew into the room with chaotic shouts. Thio immediately leapt from Max’s grasp, kicking him in the stomach in the process, and joined the two other children in the center of the room.
“Not fair!” Thio shouted. “It was my turn to Wield next!”
It took me a moment to realize what I was looking at:
One of the children, a little girl, had smeared dirt on one side of her face. She was throwing paper playfully at Thio. Not just paper, I realized. Paper butterflies.
She was pretending to be me.
A lump rose in my throat. When I looked back at Filias, he was watching me carefully.
“What a silly game,” I said, but my voice sounded choked, and Filias’s gaze softened.
“Silly as hells,” he said. “But I’ll admit that you did good, Tisaanah.”
I gave him a weak smile.
I hoped good was enough.
It was nearly sundown. I pulled my jacket closer around me — Ara was getting cold. After Filias and Riasha, there were others to visit, more refugees who wanted to speak to me. “One more thing,” I kept saying to Max. And eventually, he just responded with a deadpan stare.
“You can barely stand. Hell, I can barely stand. Let’s go.”
“But there’s just—”
“Has anyone ever told you that you have a one-track mind?” He tilted my chin towards him. “You can’t save the world just yet. But we’ll be back. Hey. Look at them.” He nodded towards the people in the streets. The buildings, while run down, were slowly being repaired and decorated. Before, this place had been tense and empty. Now, children played outside. Old women sipped tea at little tables. People tended potted gardens.
“They’re living their lives,” he said, quietly. “And they still will be when you get back.”
I wasn’t sure why my eyes were stinging, but I nodded silently, and took Max’s hand. Then I paused, giving him a sidelong glance.
“What?” he said.
“You learned Thereni.”
He looked away, a shade of embarrassed. “Poorly. Mostly in books. I’m sure my pronunciation is a mess. I just thought…” His gaze slid back to me. When he spoke next, it was in fractured, heavily accented Thereni. “Always, you listen to words that are not belonging of you. I want…” He stumbled, struggling. “I want to give you, to speak of you, in your words. Your… voice.”
I closed my eyes, suddenly finding it difficult to speak. Yes, he was right. His Thereni was terrible, the accent so thick it was difficult to understand. And yet, the sound of my mother tongue rendered in his voice felt like the collision of two songs sung deep in my soul, now intertwined in perfect harmony. It sounded like home.
Home.
I squeezed his hand.
“Let’s go home,” I choked out.
Max Stratagrammed us away.
It was the smell that hit me first — Gods, there were a thousand memories in that smell of sunlight and flowers. I opened my eyes, and the sight of it took my breath away. The little stone cottage was nestled in a sea of wildflowers, now hopelessly overgrown, as if nature itself sought to wrap it in an embrace.
Fitting. That’s what it felt like, too. An embrace.
“Ascended above,” Max muttered. “I did miss this place.”
I did, too. I had missed it so much that it wasn’t even so very hard to shed my guilt like a bloodstained jacket, take Max’s hand, and let myself fall.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Aefe
I couldn’t breathe.
My father was leaning over me. Hot blood was spilling down my collarbone. His hands were covered in it. I knew that, even though I could not see it, because his fingers were wrapped around my throat.
Please, please, I was trying to say, but the word was smothered beneath my father’s hatred, hatred that for so long I didn’t understand.
I did now.
He hated me because I was never his at all. Hated me because my cursed power, in my blood and in my title, undermined his.
All this time, I had thought there would be some way I could earn my place among them again. But the truth was, the position I had so desperately wanted didn’t exist at all.
“Who do you think you are?” he spat, so close to me that I could feel his breath and flecks of spittle on my face. “What do you think you have left to win?”
Everything, I wanted to say. And I knew this time it was the truth — there was so much I could do with this power within me, the power of my mother’s blood, the power of my tainted, hideous magic.
I can do so much, I tried to tell him. Give me a chance. I have so much to do.
But I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t breathe.
The last thing I saw before my death were the scattered dead bodies around me. The bodies of Caduan’s kin, of the Reedsborn, of the people of Yithara. Orscheid, my mother. And closest of all, Caduan, his hand still reaching for me.
I opened my mouth and screamed, but released only the sound of shattered glass.
Shattered glass.
My eyes snapped open. A face leaned over me. For a moment, I thought it was my father’s. Then I blinked away sleep, and the features rearranged — a face just as hard and hateful, but different.
Klein.
All at once, I was awake. Caduan’s arms were no longer around me. I pushed myself up, only for Klein’s boot to come stomping down on my chest, pushing me back to the fl
oor.
“You,” he hissed, “have made a very grave mistake.”
I snarled at him, my teeth sharpening of their own volition.
I pushed his foot away enough to twist around, craning my neck to see the light of near-sunrise spilling through Caduan’s smashed-open bedroom window. Hazy smoke hung in the air. A few feet away, Caduan was crumpled on the ground, unmoving. I couldn’t see his face, but I could see blood seeping through the fabric of his shirt, a sight that sent fire tearing through me.
It became difficult to breathe.
“What did you do?” I snarled. “What did you to do him?”
Klein tried to grab me by my hair, but I tore away from his grasp and stumbled to Caduan. I got just close enough to see his eyes open, slowly, through streams of blood when one of Klein’s men dragged me back. I whirled around, grabbing his hand and twisting until I heard a crack and the man let out a roar of pain. It was worth it, even though two others pulled me away before I could to the same to his neck.
“What are you doing here?” I spat at Klein. “You are jeopardizing a crown mission and you’ve done harm against an allied king, and—”
“Me?” Klein sneered. “Look around us. We are in the home of an enemy.”
“They had information about the humans,” I shot back. “I made the decision to come here. I couldn’t afford not to.”
“You made the decision to come here against your father’s command.” Klein jerked his chin up, looking at me down the bridge of his nose. “Of course you would come here, of all places. There are some stains you cannot clean.”
I felt as if a rock fell through my stomach. But before I could shoot back a scathing retort — or murder him — I heard a groan. Caduan shifted, slowly pushing himself upright. Then his head snapped up, looking around wildly, and stopping only when his gaze settled on me.
I heard the sound of a struggle, and the door that connected Caduan’s room to the rest of our suites flew open. Another of Klein’s men dragged Siobhan into the room, who, despite the soldiers wrenching her hands behind her back, walked elegantly and obediently even though a sneer curled over her nose. Ashraia was next, though it took four men to drag him in, and all of them — including him — were significantly bloodied.
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