“Oh,” Ev said. Alizhan still had her eyes closed, but from Ev’s voice, she knew they’d come into the room. And then from somewhere equally close, Thiyo said, “Of course” as though he were acceding to some polite request. Had he been listening?
“I love you too,” Ev said. “Both of you.”
“You… want me to stay?” Thiyo asked. Alizhan had misinterpreted his earlier behavior. She’d thought he was teasing her with his question, but he really had wanted to hear her say aloud that he was invited. Then, clearly speaking to Ev, Thiyo added, “You don’t mind what she said about me fucking other people?”
“I suppose it depends on the people,” Ev said. “I don’t think I’d want you to sleep with Aniyat again, knowing what I know about her. And my feelings about Ilyr are complicated. But in theory, if you met someone nice that you couldn’t live without…” She paused, and Alizhan guessed she was shrugging.
“Even if they were a man? Or another woman? Or—”
“None of that would bother me,” Ev said. “If they made you happy.”
Alizhan shrugged, making the bathwater slosh. “What she said.”
“And even if… well, would it bother you if I wanted to wear dresses? Or make-up? Or grow my hair long? Not all the time. Just some of the time. But not for any purpose like sneaking into Ilyr’s wedding. Not to deceive anyone… more like the opposite.”
Alizhan had never heard Thiyo sound so uncertain.
“Of course not,” Ev said.
“And sometimes I won’t want to do those things,” Thiyo said, like he was laying down a challenge.
“We know,” Alizhan said gently. “It’s something I like about you, the way you express yourself.”
“And I want to write. And publish. Under my name and no one else’s.”
“Is this a list of demands?” Alizhan asked. “Does Ev get one too?”
“I already have everything I want,” Ev said. There were soft sounds in the room, the rustling of clothes and hair, and Alizhan assumed the two of them were cuddling.
“Make some demands anyway,” Thiyo encouraged Ev, which was good, because it saved Alizhan the trouble of pointing out that Ev was lying.
Alizhan didn’t have to open her eyes to know Ev was addressing her. “You have power now. A different kind of power, I mean. You used it when you stopped Kasrik and Mar’s argument. I know you don’t want to live in Varenx House, or live your life the way Iriyat and her parents did, and I don’t want to make you do those things. But you have power now, and you should use it. So does Thiyo, for that matter. I hope you write about what the islanders know. We can’t let this happen again.”
“I will,” Thiyo said.
Alizhan let out a breath. “You’re right.”
Ev laughed softly in surprise. “I thought you would argue. You looked so unhappy when I told you earlier that you had a place on the Council.”
“I was unhappy about that. I still am. You’re right that I don’t want this. But maybe we can figure out a way to do something good with it.”
There was little time for reflection after that conversation, and Ev tried not to feel guilty about stopping to eat and wash and sleep when so many people couldn’t. The next week was a blur of non-stop work. The staff who remained at Varenx House accepted the story that Iriyat had died in the wave, and that they were to host people in need for the next few weeks, with surprising grace. Some of them even cried at the news of Iriyat’s death, which made Ev a little ill. But she said nothing, not wanting to be the one to shatter their last illusion. If they went out into the city, they’d hear soon enough what people were saying about Iriyat.
The staff accepted that Alizhan was Iriyat’s daughter with difficulty, and it was only a visit from Mar that mollified them. He carried a letter signed by the rest of the Council attesting Alizhan’s place in the ranks. Alizhan suffered through that altercation only because she was keeping her promise to Ev.
The three of them did ultimately move into Varenx House. It made things easier with the staff. Henny and Ket came with them, delighted to continue their tour of Laalvuri mansions. Obin stayed briefly to marvel and grumble at the excess of it all, then he prepared to return home to Orzatvur to see Neiran and the children.
“The children,” Alizhan said after he mentioned it. He’d come to say goodbye while the five of them were gathered in the garden. The house was filled with guests, all sleeping during different shifts, and it was impossible to have a conversation inside without waking someone. There was never any peace and the pantry was constantly empty, but Alizhan had given Yiran and everyone else in the kitchen permission to spend as much as necessary to keep everyone fed. Varenx House was full of living people rather than ghosts. “That’s it. They should live here.”
“It’s been long enough that some of them might not want to leave the homes Eliyan found for them,” Ev said.
“We’ve, ah, grown rather attached to Zilal and Orilan,” Obin said.
“Of course. I wouldn’t want to force them. They don’t have to live here,” Alizhan said, giving up.
“Right. They don’t have to live here,” Ev said. Alizhan’s impulse had been good, and it had reminded her of one of Kasrik’s pamphlets. “But what if they came here and met people like Alizhan and Ket, who know how to control their abilities?”
“A school,” Thiyo said. “It’s a good idea. Even I had to be taught, after all.”
“I like it,” Alizhan said. “And what if it was for everyone? Not just children with abilities. Everyone needs to know how to shield their thoughts. Ev could teach them.”
“Yes, for everyone! Like in Adappyr. Kasrik wrote about that,” Ev said. “But I’m not sure I could—”
“You could,” Alizhan said. “I could. We’d figure it out.”
“It would be a good use for this place,” Obin agreed. “I’ll ask Zilal and Orilan if they’d like to visit.”
Ev embraced him and let him go on his way, then came back to her place on the bench in the garden between Alizhan and Thiyo.
“You could stay,” Alizhan said to Henny and Ket. “There’s room. We could use your help.”
“We’ll stay for a little while,” Henny said. “I’d like to see what you do here, so maybe we can go home with ideas of our own.”
Ket nodded his assent. “It’s nice here.”
Ev didn’t think Ket was talking about their immediate surroundings, but Alizhan looked at the lush garden as if noticing it for the first time. “This garden is the only good thing Iriyat ever did in her life. I felt foolish, bringing up her flowers at the trial. She shouldn’t have been punished for that.”
“It wasn’t foolish. It was clever,” Thiyo said. “You had to surprise her somehow.”
“She was so secretive even about that—she had to be, I suppose,” Ev said. “It’s a lesson, I think, to be as open and honest as we can, going forward.”
“And maybe to plant something else,” Alizhan said, a smile playing over her lips.
Ev twined one hand with Alizhan’s and the other with Thiyo’s, careful to hold Thiyo’s left hand rather than his right, which would probably always trouble him. Her own hands still carried the blackened scars from their encounter with the medusa, and the rest of her body was covered in reminders, temporary and permanent, of what they’d survived. She’d spent so much of the past week digging bodies and objects out of the watery mud. Putting something back into the earth, something that would sprout underneath the warm and constant sun, would bring her a nice sense of balance. The symbolic gesture—turning over the earth, starting something new—appealed to her. It was a grand and dangerous project, changing the world, but they could start small.
“I’d like to see what we can grow,” Ev said, and Alizhan and Thiyo both squeezed her hands.
Read on for an excerpt…
Wondering what happened to Ilyr?
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His Royal Highness the Crown Prince of Nalitzva Ilyr Yendelinsk Arsenyetz woke up half an ocean away from his palace, naked and hungover in his ex-lover’s bed.
“You’ve outstayed your welcome.”
As if he didn’t know that already. He didn’t need his ex-lover’s mother to loom over him and survey how he received the news. Like her son, Tayihe was tall and slender and ferociously unsympathetic to Ilyr’s plight.
Ilyr wouldn’t find pity in Tayihe’s dark gaze, so he didn’t bother lifting his cheek from the sheet. Instead, he moved his neck the smallest possible amount, dragging the great weight of his head to the edge of the mattress, and aimed his mouth down at the floor. Even this minuscule amount of movement stirred up a whirl of nasty feelings in his gut, and he squeezed his eyes shut.
Tayihe clamped her hand down on his shoulder and yanked him upright.
“You will not,” she ordered, as if she could control his mutinous stomach with her voice alone.
Ilyr pressed his lips together, and miraculously, his nausea subsided. If Tayihe really could bring his body to order, he had a few requests. She could get rid of the taste he’d developed for wai liquor made from medusa venom, for one, and next, she could make it so that the prospect of returning home to a life of pretending—and sleeping with the bride he’d abandoned in Nalitzva—didn’t fill him with dread.
And maybe, if Tayihe were really powerful, she could fix his broken heart.
No. Tayihe couldn’t do that. No magic existed that could cure Ilyr completely.
“You might be the first mainlander to come to Hoi, but you’re not the first person to have their heart broken by my son,” Tayihe said. She let go of his shoulder, and Ilyr touched the place where her hand had been. He rubbed his skin absently. “You won’t drink yourself to death under my roof.”
“So outside’s fine, then?”
Tayihe crossed her arms over her chest, shifting the long curtains of black hair that covered her breasts. She wasn’t naked. She was wearing a floor-length skirt woven with brilliant colors in interlocking patterns and three elaborately styled necklaces of different lengths that were heavy with gems, shells, and carved bone. But she had no shirt on, and if the whim had taken her to go without a skirt, her neighbors wouldn’t have minded.
When Ilyr had first come to the islands years ago, the nudity had bothered him. Even a week ago, at the beginning of his second voyage here, he hadn’t been at ease. But as the islanders often said, venom cures all pains. Now Ilyr only cared about things when he was sober, and he poured all his efforts into making sure that never happened.
“You’re weak, but not that weak. Your heart will heal. But not here. And not with venom. You know our stories, Ilyr, you should know already. Venom cures all pains but the heart’s pain.”
Tayihe didn’t soften her voice. She was scolding him for getting drunk and behaving shamefully in her household. But for Tayihe, an islander from generations of islanders, the shame had nothing to do with Ilyr’s preferences in bed. And Tayihe didn’t care that Ilyr was naked—although if he were sober, and not so pale and greenish from nausea, Ilyr would be blushing head to toe.
Tayihe had never liked Ilyr, and he’d recently made things a lot worse by telling her that her only child was dead. In his defense, he hadn’t known it was a lie when he’d said it. He wouldn’t have gotten so godsdamned drunk in the first place if he’d known Thiyo was still alive, but it was too late now.
Her personal feelings aside, Tayihe had followed the rules of hospitality and sheltered him in her home. For a time.
“You are a heartsick fool,” she said. “Go home, Ilyr. A man has come to take you.”
“I can’t,” he said. Her words didn’t make sense. No one had come for him.
“Then don’t go home. I don’t care where you go, as long as it isn’t here. Get on your ship.”
“I sent my ship back to Nalitzva, you know that. I didn’t let any of my crew set foot on your shores. I respect the law.”
He’d told his crew that he could find his own way home, but he’d never intended to. He’d planned to deliver the ashes—whose had they been, since Thiyo was alive?—and collect some intelligence, then catch a ship to Ndija and disappear. What was waiting for him in Nalitzva? A sham. If he ever told anyone the truth about himself—about who he loved—he’d be disowned, disavowed, and disposed of.
But Ilyr also didn’t want to stay in Hoi without Thiyo, or go anywhere else without Thiyo. And Thiyo didn’t love him, so what Ilyr really wanted was to be nowhere at all.
So instead of finding his way home, he’d found his way to the bottom of a bottle. And another, and another, and another. The only important measure of time was that he’d outstayed his welcome in Tayihe’s house.
“I don’t care if you don’t have a ship,” Tayihe said. She took hold of him again and pulled until he stood up. Tayihe showed no strain—it was as if he weighed nothing, even though he was taller than her, and far broader. The feeling of being insubstantial didn’t last. When she let go of him, he wobbled on his feet. Standing was hard work. “I don’t care if you have to swim to the Dayward Coast or sprout wings and learn to fly. You go down to the harbor, you get that foreigner, and the both of you get out.”
Nes was not enjoying his place in history as the second Nalitzvan to set foot on the shores on Hoi in hundreds of years. He crossed his arms over his chest and tapped his foot in the sand. He was trying to be respectful of the Hoi laws against outsiders. He’d asked a messenger to go further into the island to retrieve the prince.
It had been hours. Nes was as patient as a stone, normally, but he didn’t want to be here in the first place. He couldn’t wait to take the prince home, slip away from Honz Rehyor’s watchful eyes, collect Liyet, and then run as far as they could.
Liyet would be happy enough to go with him. Nes wasn’t sure where they’d go, exactly. Where would a deserter and his dead lover’s daughter be welcome? Nalitzva was their birthplace, but the city had never wanted either of them. Nes couldn’t wait to be free of it.
The water lapped at his boots. As soon as the prince showed up, Nes would get them into the little rowboat and take them back out to the deep water, where Loyalty was anchored.
It was some kind of cosmic joke that Nes had been forced to sail here on a ship with that name. He wasn’t laughing.
A naked drunk came stumbling down the beach toward Nes, startling him.
Surely this red-eyed, scruffy wretch wasn’t the legendarily beautiful and poised Prince Ilyr of Nalitzva?
But he was too white and too blond to be an islander. On the distant rise behind the man, Nes could see the young Hoi boy who’d met him at the shore when he first arrived, and who’d gone inland as a messenger. The boy nodded at Nes, and then disappeared. He’d fulfilled his duties.
The drunk—Ilyr, it had to be Ilyr—arrived, his unsteady gait pocking the beach with deep footprints. He took a swing at Nes’s head, which Nes knocked away before it even came close. Ilyr tried again with his other arm, aiming for Nes’s midsection this time, and Nes sighed and grabbed hold of his arm.
“Strong,” Ilyr mumbled in Hoi, his stupefied gaze on Nes’s hand.
Nes had known, distantly, that Ilyr spoke Hoi. The prince had lived on the island for a year. But Nes hadn’t been prepared to hear his dead mother’s sweet language on Ilyr’s tongue. Ilyr, who represented the regime that had taken everything from Nes. Ilyr, who’d just tried to assault him.
“Get in the boat,” Nes said in Nalitzvan, because he didn’t want to speak Hoi with this man.
Nes, a half-blooded islander, spoke the language. He carried his mother’s heritage in his hair, in his features, in his skin, in his heart. And yet he was a stranger. Here he was, on the edge of his mother’s homeland, forbidden to enter because he’d grown up across the sea, in the home of his Nalitzvan father.
&n
bsp; But Ilyr, this flailing drunk, had been allowed to live here. Among Nes’s mother’s people. Speaking their language.
Ilyr hadn’t broken free of Nes’s grip yet, but he was trying. “Who are you?”
“Get in the boat,” Nes repeated, jerking Ilyr’s arm toward the little craft. He didn’t owe this spoiled wastrel a depths-drowned thing. Not even his name.
The only person Nes owed was Liyet. Rehyor had threatened to hurt her if Nes didn’t help retrieve his precious princeling.
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