Terror shot to my heart.
Soldiers.
Dark green plumes bobbed from their helmets—sharp bursts of color against the gray of their armor, their horses, and their stony faces.
The shansen’s men.
“Demon’s breath,” I muttered.
The call for another attack came from behind me, just enough warning for me to run.
Another volley of arrows flew high above the trees, then showered down in my direction. This time, their shafts were tipped with fire.
A shock of heat flew past me, and the moist dirt sizzled with steam inches from my heels. I barreled through the forest, twisting around the densely packed trees. I wouldn’t be able to outrun their horses or their arrows.
But my carpet would.
“Fly!” I cried, retrieving it out of my pouch. “Fly!”
The carpet remained limp. In desperation, I angrily grabbed its edges and yanked on one of the tassels. My amulet grew hot over my chest.
“Fly,” I commanded the carpet again. My voice came out low and guttural this time. A voice I barely recognized.
I jumped on the carpet, and it shot forward.
I didn’t get very high before a net tumbled over me. Thick, sturdy ropes dug into my skin, and my carpet plummeted. As soon as it hit the ground, I burst up, trying to cut my way out.
A boot shoved me back down.
“Got you!” one of the men shouted. His sword slid out, the flat of the blade heavy against my back. “Don’t move.”
Two men held me down while the others lifted the net.
I lay on my stomach, heart pounding, knees chafing against my carpet. My mouth tasted of mud, of grime clinging to my lips. Rage swelled within me. The veins in my neck pulsed, and my cheeks burned, a rush of heat bringing my blood to a boil.
How dare they! the voice inside me screamed.
I agreed. With a flick of my wrist or a flash of my eyes, I could have them all writhing on the ground. The shansen’s men would be no more.
Do it, the monster purred. Let them come closer. Let them touch me. I will burn them all.
Show them your power, Sentur’na.
I bolted up onto my knees, so fast I barely felt the blade scraping my skin. Blood trickled down my arm, staining the edges of the ripped cloth. Anger burned in my eyes.
They gasped. “D-d-demon!”
The soldiers came at me with more force and desperation than before. I’m not a demon yet, I reminded myself. I was still flesh and bone. I leapt away from their swords, astounded by my own swiftness.
A rippling cold crept over me, hardening my skin like a thick armor. With each strike against me, the armor thickened.
I picked up a fallen sword and stabbed the next man who grabbed me. I spun, swinging for another man sneaking up behind me. But he went rigid and fell forward, an arrow lodged in his neck. Same with the other two soldiers—arrows stuck out of their chests and backs like they were pincushions.
I was so preoccupied looking for who had helped me that I didn’t notice the two soldiers rounding on me from my sides. One hooked his arm around my neck, trying to choke me into unconsciousness, and the other grabbed my arms, twisting until I let go of my sword.
My amulet slid out of the folds of my robe, warm against my skin.
I focused my mind, trying to access the power tingling inside me. But the dresses wouldn’t answer to me, not while a demon’s rage rattled within, swelling in my chest. My lungs squeezed, breath growing tight. I clawed at the man’s arm. Fire bubbled in my blood, ready to boil over if I would let it.
I let it.
In a burst of force that shocked even me, I flung the men aside, sending them reeling a dozen paces back.
I scooped up my carpet. It was in shreds, a threadbare mess of knots that I only vaguely remembered weaving. I clutched it under my arm and ran.
This way, Sentur’na. Through these trees.
The ocean, in the east, sparkled, as if beckoning me toward it. But east was the way to Lapzur. I ignored the directions and went the opposite way. I couldn’t tell south from east or west.
The shansen’s men followed. I slid down a slope, skating across the leaves, and hid behind a rocky outcrop.
The men passed above me.
I waited until the rush of their clothing and weapons faded into the forest. Then I let out a sigh and sagged against a tree. Finally, safe.
A leaf dropped onto my shoulder. As I brushed it off, another fell onto my palm. I stared at it, its heartlike shape oddly familiar.
“A poplar leaf,” I breathed.
A rush of excitement bubbled in me, and I whirled to face the endless grove of poplar trees around me, when—
Someone grabbed me. A man in a tawny cloak, with a near-empty quiver of arrows on his back and a slender walnut staff in his left hand. The man who had intercepted the shansen’s soldiers.
He held me against him, so close I could feel his breath on my hair. I tightened my grip on my scissor bows, at my side.
“They’re gone,” whispered the man. “All clear.”
I spun out of his grasp and brandished my scissors. His eyes widened, and he backed away, raising his hands to show he wasn’t going to harm me.
His heels hit the trunk of a poplar tree, and the creamy little buds fell like snow over his black hair. Aside from his clothes and the walking staff he’d dropped, he looked no different from the other soldiers. He could be one of Khanujin’s men, sent to bring me back to the Winter Palace. And yet…
“Maia? Maia, it’s me.”
I didn’t put the scissors down. My vision was blurred from the men choking me earlier. My hands still throbbed with power.
“It’s me,” the man said again, softly this time. The intensity of his gaze tickled me, but not in an unpleasant way. He reached for my hands, his touch achingly familiar.
Edan?
I’d wished for so long that we’d be reunited again, and now here he was. But was this Edan my Edan? Or was he an illusion sent by Bandur to torment me?
I could not tell.
My hands trembled. I exhaled, the steam of my breath curling into the cold air, and I looked up at him. His expression was tense, lips pursed and brow knotted as my eyes roved over his face.
“Do you not know me?” he whispered. Hurt flashed in his clear blue eyes. “Maia.”
Maia.
Even my own name sounded strange to me, stranger than it ever had before.
I grasped my amulet, now cool against my chest and glowing with the silvery tears of the moon. Holding it calmed me.
Steadying my fingers, I reached out and touched his cheek. Slowly, I traced my fingers over the shape of his face, brushing my thumb over his thick eyebrows and down to the corner of his eye.
Its color, blue as the sea by home, convinced me. No ghost could take that from him.
Faster now, I swept my touch down to his lips, pursed with anticipation, then over to his nose and the small dent on its bridge, where it had been broken.
“You never told me what happened to your nose.”
A familiar grin eased the worry on his face, and his eyes flickered—tentatively, hopefully.
“A soldier broke it when I was seven or eight,” he said. “He’d been aiming for my teeth, but was so drunk he missed. Said my smile was too smug for someone my age.”
The ice around my heart thawed, and I wound my arms over his shoulders. “Edan. You found me.”
Relief bloomed in his eyes, and his shoulders, which had carried all the tension in the world, released. “I’d find you anywhere, xitara.”
Xitara.
In Old A’landan, it meant little lamb. But also something else—in a language I’d never learned.
“Brightest one,” I whispered. Brightest one, in Nelrat, the l
anguage Edan had grown up speaking.
He leaned in to kiss me, but I put my hand against his chest to make him wait. I wanted to look at him first. His chin was stubbly with little black hairs, something I’d never seen during our months of traveling together. He did the same to me, thumbing the dirt off my cheeks, his fingers following the lines of my cheekbones to my shoulders, to the chain that held my amulet.
A war broke out on his face, like he didn’t know whether he was happy to see me or pained by the state he’d found me in. Happiness won out, and he kissed me.
I placed his hand on my cheek. His fingers were warm in spite of the chill.
“I’m not sorry I lied to you,” I said. “You wouldn’t have left otherwise. The emperor would have killed you—”
“I know why you did it,” he interrupted. “I’ve had time to think about it, and I understand.” He took my hands. “Just don’t do it again.”
“I won’t.”
“Good.” His fingers brushed across my cheek to my chin, lifting it so our eyes were level. If the coldness of my skin startled him, he did not show it.
He kissed me, so tenderly that all the love I had for him flooded back into me. I returned the kiss, hungrily, almost desperately, parting his lips with my own and digging my fingers into his back. Bringing him closer.
Edan let go first. “There’ll be more time for that later,” he said mischievously.
The crooked grin on his lips faded when he saw I wasn’t returning his smile.
There was so much still unspoken between us.
“I’ve been looking for you for days,” he said. “Wandered off the Tura Mountains, then a hawk said it had seen you.”
I tilted my head. “You can still speak to hawks?”
“After centuries of being one, I still understand a squawk or two.”
I couldn’t tell whether he was being serious or playful. Or both.
I pointed at the staff he’d dropped. Edan had told me once that walnut had magical properties, so I knew it had to be special. “What’s that for? I’ve never seen you carry it.”
“It’s to help channel my magic,” he replied, picking it up. “Makes enchantments a little easier these days.”
A wooden hawk, roughly whittled, perched on the top end of the staff. Fitting.
“Come,” he said. “We’re not too far from the temple. We should go before more of the soldiers come looking for you. And for me.”
He must have seen me tense up, for he added, lightly, “If we hurry, we might make it back in time for dinner. For a temple that’s been forgotten for centuries, the food is quite outstanding.”
His stomach rumbled, not mine. I laughed quietly at the sound, but still I hesitated. “Why does everyone try to ply me with food? You and Master Longhai and Ammi…”
“The Maia I know never passes up good food.”
Concern crept into his voice, no matter how hard he tried to hide it.
“I’m still the Maia you know,” I assured him—it wasn’t a lie, I hoped. I couldn’t even tell anymore. “But I can’t go with you to the temple. I have to be in Lapzur in a week’s time.”
“Lapzur is on the other side of the Tura Mountains,” said Edan softly. “The temple is on the way. Let Master Tsring help you. And if he cannot, I will come with you to Lapzur.”
My eyes glared red in the reflection of his gaze. Seeing them, I covered my face. I wasn’t even angry; I was happy for the first time in weeks. So why had my eyes changed?
“I…I can’t….”
Edan caught my hand, pushing it away from my face. “Now that I’ve found you again, Maia, I will never leave you. I will stay by your side until the fire in the sun grows cold and the light in the moon is no more. Until time blots out the stars.”
“You’ve gotten more poetic since I last saw you,” I said mildly.
Edan’s expression did not change. “I know you would do the same for me.”
Seeing him again, feeling his arms around me and his breath warm against mine, I found my resistance wavering. “How could Master Tsring help me?”
“Bandur was once an enchanter. And Master Tsring knows more about the oath than anyone else in the world. Perhaps he can find a way to break your pledge to Bandur.”
My brow furrowed. “Why is he at the temple of the beggar god?”
“Nandun is not the most beloved of the A’landan deities, true, but he’s one of the most important. He had compassion for the humans he’d been instructed to punish, so he renounced his heavenly state and became a beggar like the poorest of humankind. He gave strips of his golden skin to the humans, until he too became flesh like them, and quite nearly mortal. When drought and famine came, he dissolved into the Jingan River; his blood became the water to irrigate the land for crops, his bones, fish to feed the hungry A’landans.”
“I’ve never heard the tale of Nandun told in this way,” I reflected. “Often, he’s made out to be a fool.”
“A fool to the other gods, perhaps. But we are taught otherwise: it is said that Nandun’s disciples were the first to be touched by magic. To control the greed and hunger for power that some of his students developed over the years, he created the oath—to bind magic from those who would disrupt the world’s natural balance and overpower the gods.”
“He created the oath?” I asked.
“The origins of magic are unknown,” Edan replied. “You’ll find the story changes depending on who you ask. But Master Tsring is a disciple of Nandun’s teachings, and the keeper of many of magic’s mysteries.” A pause. “He was also Bandur’s teacher.”
A flare of hope lifted my brow. “His teacher?”
He nodded, extending a hand for me to take. “Come, let’s see him.”
No one can help me now, I thought, looking toward the water glittering in the east. Lapzur was that way, beyond its mist, waiting for me. I’d already bought as much time from Bandur as I could.
But if this Master Tsring had truly been Bandur’s teacher, maybe I did stand a chance. Maybe there was hope.
Maybe.
Above us, dusk was falling. Amana was winding up the threads of the day, unspooling shadow and moonlight across the aging sky. And my cloth bird had returned—she fluttered from tree to tree, making percussion of the rustling leaves before she landed on my palm. As I patted her soft head, I sighed. Maybe her return was a sign of better things to come.
Against my better judgment, I took Edan’s hand. “All right, I’ll go,” I told him. “But just for a day.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
A pair of inky eyebrows darted up at the sight of me, drawing creases in the monk’s broad forehead.
“Your kind is not welcome here,” he said, waving me away from the temple doors. “Go now, before my master arrives and banishes you to the fiery pits of Di—”
The last thing I needed was a reminder of what I was becoming. “Summon your master,” I said, cutting him off. “I have come to speak with him.”
The monk opened his mouth to protest, but he noticed Edan beside me.
“You!” he cried. “You are not permitted to return here either. Master Tsring specifically—”
Like me, Edan wasn’t in the mood for the doorkeeper’s games. He pushed past the young monk, and I followed.
The monk scurried past us, shooting warning looks at Edan. “Once he hears you’re back, Gen, you’ll be in trouble yet.”
Edan and I ignored him and continued along the corridor. The Temple of Nandun was ancient, its structure carved into the underbelly of the mountain so skillfully one could not tell where the temple ended and the mountain began. We passed several chambers, sparsely occupied by the master’s acolytes, their eyes half closed in concentration.
“Are they practicing magic?” I asked Edan.
“Most are.”
I
tilted my head at a lone plum tree in one of the open-air courtyards. “How does it flower so late in the year, and so high in the mountains?”
Edan led me to stand under its branches. “Nandun took refuge under a blossoming plum tree,” he explained. “Magic is what keeps it alive here. The disciples take turns tending to it, and it blooms always, even in the dead of winter.”
“Plum blossoms are the first flowers to bud after winter,” I remembered. “They’re a symbol of hope and purity.”
He plucked one and set it in my hair, the way he’d done on our travels with the blue wildflower I now kept pressed in my sketchbook. “And new beginnings,” Edan said quietly.
We found Master Tsring meditating in the garden. His eyes were closed, and if he heard us approach, he made no gesture to acknowledge it.
Copying Edan’s movements, I sat cross-legged on the ground, and waited.
Master Tsring looked so old and frail his robes practically swallowed him: his pants hung slack, the hems discolored with age. His shoulders were pinched, narrowing his gaunt frame. Yet when he spoke, his voice was strong.
“You disobeyed me, Gen,” he said. His eyes snapped open, pupils sparking like burning coals. “I forbade you to leave the temple.”
Edan touched his forehead to the earth, remorsefully. “Forgive me, master. It is entirely in your right to expel me.”
“Quite so!” Master Tsring huffed. “The audacity of you young enchanters—”
“—is inexcusable,” Edan finished for him. “However, I implore you not to punish my companion. She—”
“I know who she is,” said the old man irritably. “Even if you had not spoken about her all these weeks past, I would recognize the demon’s kiss upon her. You do the temple grievous harm by bringing her here.”
“She hasn’t yet succumbed. There is still a chance for her. Please, help her.”
Master Tsring looked at me, his gaze holding mine. He muttered, “Trouble always comes from enchanters who take the oath.”
“It is because of this girl that my oath is broken,” Edan said softly.
“I would hardly call her a girl,” Master Tsring said, pointing at my red eyes.
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