He Who Breaks the Earth (The Gods-Touched Duology)
He Who Breaks the Earth: Chapter 20

The moment Knox was safely shut in the hold, Anwei upended her medicine bag, spilling the jar with the dead elsparn and packets of white death scattered through the other smells of camillia, elor, and rie. Hands shaking, she extracted her mortar and pestle from their pocket and a bottle of clear malt, setting them both within easy reach.

Noa slid to her knees, looking worriedly at the dead elsparn. “What do I do? What do any of us do?”

“Lia?” Anwei looked up. “How close is Vivi?”

“I could get him and be back in a few hours.”

“Right. Do that.”

“If there’s a ghost reporting everything we’re doing… everything we’ve done…” Altahn was still sitting over by the boat railing, staring out into the rustling trees. “Then that’s it. Tual went to the apothecary because he knew you’d head in that direction. Mateo brought the Warlord to the bay because he knew we’d be there on the boat. If this ghost can understand everything Knox sees, everything he hears—I mean, she could know where we are right now.” He stood up slowly. “How could this have happened? How could you not have told me—”

“Knox being haunted by the dead ghost of his sister wasn’t relevant, Altahn,” Anwei said, fumbling to bring out the little packet of oelia and parshan leaves, the smells dulling the acrid burst of color Sleeping Death made in her nose.

“What are you doing?” he asked, squatting down next to her mess.

“If Tual thinks we’re grabbing Mateo from the channel, then he doesn’t think we’re going to storm the place tonight,” she hissed. “Which means I need to have an antidote to Sleeping Death, because that’s what he’s got loads of in that place.”

“Anwei.” Lia knelt down next to her. “We don’t have a way in. We don’t know what’s in there. We don’t—”

“We do know. We have a map. We know waterways go in. We have a boat.” She pointed down the tributary. “You said the water goes into a tunnel right underneath the fortifications around Tual’s house. Where else would it go?”

“A little direct for a fortress, don’t you think?” Noa interjected. “We’ve never even seen inside the cave. And you heard Cylus talking about those kids searching for treasure in the waterways. They’re dangerous. It could be a dead end. Or a sinkhole, or—”

“A trap.” Lia licked her lips. “You said it yourself. Not even the first Warlord with all her Devoted could get in.”

“None of them were Basists.” The word burst out of Anwei like a confession, and she felt a glow of something in her chest like relief that she hated. “I… can see why you are concerned. Altahn?” The Trib looked up from tracing lines through a bit of ground lilia that had escaped its packet. “Will you come with me to explore the cave? We’ll take the canoe and some salpowder to use as a signal if we need help. If we don’t replace anything, then that’s the end of it. If we replace a way through, we go in.”

Altahn gave a hesitant nod.

“Lia,” she said, switching to the Devoted. “If we do replace a way through, I have an idea of how we might be able to cause a distraction while we’re there that will give us the time we’d need to look for your sister.”

“We’re not just trying to get Mateo now?” Noa asked.

“No, we still want to get Mateo. If there’s even a chance we’ll have to confront Tual himself tonight…” Anwei looked up at Lia, the shuddery feeling of something going missing inside her like it had in the tomb when Tual had been standing over her, the sword jammed deep into Knox’s gut. “We need Mateo as bait. As a shield.”

“You keep talking about him like he’s an object. Bait. A shield. A prize you mean to replace like any of the other jobs you’ve done.” Lia’s words were carefully aimed toward a question Anwei didn’t want to have to answer, but she got to it before Anwei could stop her. “What do you plan to do with Mateo, Anwei? He’s your brother, but you won’t talk about him.”

Panic rose inside Anwei. “I can’t. I can’t think….” She breathed in, calming herself with the scent of river water and wood and sails. “What do you want me to do with him, Lia?”

The boy who’d forgotten her. Anwei couldn’t fit the idea in her mind. He’d escaped and left her behind. The voice in her mind was small, so small she could almost ignore it.

Vengeance, if it was to be had, belonged to her, didn’t it?

It didn’t matter how small the voice was because when she looked at Lia, the Devoted was watching, concern twitching across her face. “You think he deserves to die.” It came out flat.

“I don’t know.”

“If he’s part of what happened to Aria…” Lia swallowed, looking down.

Anwei sat forward, the words fitting inside her a little too well.

“What if Mateo is just another victim in all this? That’s possible, isn’t it?” There was an awful kind of hope in Lia’s voice. The kind of hope Anwei had abandoned before her leaky rowboat had gotten her to shore all those years ago.

So, she moved on. “Leaving Aria on the island when we’re already going in doesn’t make sense. She’s in danger every second she’s there.”

“We’ll talk about this later, I guess.” Lia was already walking toward the edge of the boat. “I’ll be back with him soon.”

“Meet us at that pool you told us about, by the cave entrance. You two know the way?” Anwei looked at Gilesh and Bane, the former nodding enthusiastically and starting toward one of the paddling benches. Bane rolled his eyes, pulling another strip of dried meat from his coat, but he went to the other side and picked up the oar.

“What about me?” Noa asked, a hand pressed just under her damaged rib.

Anwei dug into her bag and produced a packet of fulamia stamens and the iridescent powder made from a dried coocoo beetle shell, eyes, and thorax. Pulling out an empty pouch, she measured out a bit of each and began to mix them. “You need to stay here and make a big enough ruckus that Knox thinks were all still here this afternoon. But not big enough anyone comes to investigate the noise.” She pressed the pouch into her friend’s hand. “Take a pinch of that with water. It’ll dull the pain in your ribs.” She kept hold of Noa’s hands. “I need you to think of something sparkly. Something big and flashy so that when we let Knox out, he’ll believe nothing is going on.”

Noa gave a curt nod, clutching the packet. “Knox is locked in the cabin at the back of the hold, yes? I’ll see if there’s anything useful in the cargo.”

Altahn didn’t move from his crouch next to Anwei when she turned back to the assortment of packets shimmering red and purple and green in her mind. Drawing in the scents, she closed her eyes, swapping packets around the Sleeping Death, taking some out, putting others back in, swearing when the bloom of colors wouldn’t quite balance. Go slow, she reminded herself. Being frantic never served you well in the past. Think it through; plan it out. You just need the right combination, and it will all come together. The thoughts calmed her as they always did, because healing wasn’t a race any more than hunting or thieving was. It was an equation. A science. All she needed were the correct components and a plan.

Knox hadn’t ruined her chances to finally put things right. There were always more chances. She made more chances, and she always had.

“Anwei.” Altahn still hadn’t moved, his voice quiet. “Is there anything else you haven’t told me?”

“Does it really matter now?” Anwei stared at the little packet of Sleeping Death. Then pushed it away. She could almost taste the shape of the antidote, but there was something missing she couldn’t quite place. Better to set it aside to let her nose work it through. She turned toward the elsparn jar instead, wrenching it open and spilling the slimy pieces onto the deck. “If Tual realizes we’re coming in tonight, we’ll have to start over. We can’t risk what happened at the tomb again.” The memory of energy tearing free from her chest burned inside Anwei, the glow of calistet charring midair. Tual had swatted away the most dangerous weapon she had, using the energy from Anwei’s own aura, destroying it with no more thought than he would have an annoying fly.

Galerey popped out from Altahn’s collar, calmly observing Anwei. When Altahn spoke, it was slow, probing. “My father was dead before we even knew anyone else was in the tomb, Anwei. Roots started growing out of the tunnel walls, making half the ceiling cave in. It was a miracle I got out unscathed.” When she looked up, he was watching her. “We didn’t know what we were up against back then.”

“We do now.” Breath caught between her teeth, Anwei set the elsparn’s severed head into a shallow dish from her bag and picked up her tweezers, the pulse of Knox’s bond like gold, stretching toward her.

She shrank away from it, trying to pull back every thread of her that touched him, but it was impossible. Knox twisted through her like a disease. Did that mean Willow could read her thoughts too? That Calsta could? Her stomach churned at the thought, none of it worse than the idea of the nameless god stirring deep in the earth, his attention creaking toward her.

His hand reaching, like it had that day on the beach—blood and bones and sand.

She swallowed, not looking at the Trib. “All I know is I don’t want it to happen again.”

That much was true.

Altahn had gathered together an interesting assortment of tubes and packets by the time Anwei had finished composing the salve to ward off elsparn. They’d gotten to the still pool Lia had told them about, and Anwei sent Gilesh and Bane down to the hold with Noa to cause a ruckus while she and Altahn explored the tunnel. Across the still water, the tall stones beckoned. Rocks and minerals didn’t speak to Anwei the way herbs did, but she could feel the bare outlines of the rock where it bent back from the water, almost like a sculpture fabricated to hide the narrow waterway that led into the stone.

Anwei had mixed the elsparn essence with oily ointment and malt in two separate jars, leaving one on the boat and taking the other. She gave it a regretful look before popping it open and sticking a finger into the purple ooze, then began to mark her sleeves and chest. It would have been much more effective with time to steep.

As Anwei smeared ointment down her skirt and then onto her ankles and shoes, she toed the larger salpowder packets Altahn had cannibalized from the ship’s hold, inhaling slowly as he began strapping some of the smaller ones to his vest. “This one has some kind of resin?” she said as he shoved one into a pocket. “And this one”—she pointed to the one in his other hand—“copper salt?”

“It’s a flare to mark where we are if we need help.” He buttoned his pocket, stooping to bundle the rest of it into a crate he’d brought from below. “The one with resin creates a slower burn, so we could set salpowder lines to a bigger explosion, then get far enough back for it to blast through something without us getting hurt.” He took one of the larger packets and set it in the boat, then stopped to give Galerey a fond stroke down her neck. “If this waterway does go through and we get caught, hopefully Galerey will be able to head them off.”

“Galerey…” Anwei climbed over the rail into the boat, smearing the elsparn goo down her sleeves and across her hands, then up her neck and across her face. “Knox said she steals your aura sometimes. Is that what you mean?”

He didn’t answer for a moment, climbing into the boat before he met her question with a shrug. “It’s not just caroms that Trib have sworn not to share.”

“Fair enough.” Anwei smeared a few last dabs of salve down her arms, hoping it was unnecessary, but not sure what they’d replace in the cave. She handed over the salve and took up the paddle. “So long as she doesn’t try to burn me like when we first met in Chaol, I don’t have any complaints.”

Altahn shrugged again. “Don’t try to choke me out like you did that night, and she won’t either.”

“You say ‘try’ like you didn’t spend the next two days unconscious.” Anwei pushed away from the boat with the oar and began to paddle toward the water foaming white. Elsparn gathered below them like little sparks of color in her mind.

Altahn took up the other oar, waiting for her to begin the rhythm of rowing before he joined in steering the boat out of the natural current that pushed away from the entrance. “Why aren’t we trying to go in where Knox saw Mateo’s boat?”

“A back way is always worth exploring. Especially if Tual doesn’t know about it.”

“And we’re sure this is a back way in and not, say, an underground waterfall with sharp rocks at the bottom?”

Anwei breathed in as they fought out of the current and drew up to the rock face. She dug in her paddle, and suddenly they were facing a large, dark arch, the top of it mirrored down in the water like a great mouth. A gush of warm air breathed out from it, ruffling Anwei’s braids.

The shape of the tunnel beyond this open maw teased out in her mind, the stones themselves awakening to greet her as if she were a long-lost friend. But the air in the tunnel was tinged with nothing.

Anwei shivered. “We’ll have to see, I guess.”

“Well, that’s comforting. Lead on, Yaru.” Altahn waited for her to dip in her paddle, then matched it, sliding them through the mouth and into the darkness.

Hot, wet air settled like mold across Anwei’s skin as she paddled, not wanting to reach for the lantern they’d brought to hang from the bough until they lost the light from outside. Except that one moment she could feel sunlight on her back, and the next it was gone, the darkness around them complete, as if they had rowed through a portal into the underworld.

Altahn fumbled for the lamp, but she touched his arm to stop him, because the walls had begun to glow. Not like the sun or even the stars, but more like elsparn, the faint light forming patterns on the ceiling far above their heads.

It was pretty, a design of loops, leaves, and flowers that pointed them on. She opened her mind to the water, the rocks, the odd glow above. But in doing so, her connection to Knox burned at the back of her head, and drops of him swirled through her, making her jump.

“What is it?” Altahn tried to steady the rocking boat.

“Nothing.” But it wasn’t nothing. A white glimmer had appeared over Altahn’s head. And when Anwei continued paddling, threads of purple spooled across her vision. The wrongness Knox had seen in her aura from the first moment they’d met, now hidden from everyone else by their bond like a dirty secret.

Their bond seemed to flower up inside Anwei even as she tried to tamp it down, her head aching with smells far too many and too strong—more than the muck growing on the walls. The cave felt like a puzzle, the pieces she never could have seen without Knox’s power inside her snapping into place. It was like her herbs, the stone waiting for her to take hold of it. To make it into something new.

Bonds allow gods-touched to do more… Legends of miraculous healings and foundations growing up from the earth, castles built without hands like the islands in Chaol with their glass walkways sat in the back of Anwei’s head like an invitation. As if with Knox glowing through her, she was something much larger to reckon with. She could feel more in the cave than rocks fit together at odd angles. More than the fluttering heartbeats below them in the water, hungry elsparn with their lights glowing bright.

She could feel that there was something waiting in the tunnel ahead.

“Anwei, talk to me.” Altahn’s whisper echoed down the tunnel as he stuck the paddle back into the water.

“Wait.” Ahead, there was a chartreuse spike of scents edged with a glistening silver in her mind. “Wait. Help me stop the boat, Altahn,” she whispered. “There’s a trap.”

Altahn shoved his paddle deep into the water, forcing the canoe to veer toward the side of the tunnel. Groping out for the wall, Anwei’s palm hit a stalagmite’s smooth tip. She carefully stood, making the boat rock, then stepped out of the boat onto the narrow shelf of stone littered with lumps of accumulated minerals. “If I scream, come after me, all right?”

Notably, Altahn didn’t answer when Anwei grabbed the lantern from the canoe’s curved nose, then struck the flint and steel starter to light the wick. Lifting the lantern, Anwei cast light over a forest of stalagmites and stalactites bristling down the length of the tunnel like teeth right before a curve in the passage. Inching down the narrow ledge between stalagmites toward the odd combinations of smells, Anwei gasped when one of them broke away in her hands, barely managing to stop herself from tipping into the water. Right when she rounded the corner, something ahead of her moved in the darkness. Anwei froze, breathing in deep.

When she lifted the lamp, the light fell on a column at the center of the waterway—no, not a column, a statue. It was a stone woman kneeling on the surface of the water, the current lapping up over the folds of her dress where it trailed into the deep. Her arms were spread wide to either side of her, head drooped so locks of hair hung over her face, the weight of the ceiling balanced upon her shoulders and back. The water parted to either side of her, and Anwei could smell the brownish green of rot coming from the wreckage of a boat caught in the spillway to the statue’s right. Below, though Anwei shouldn’t have been able to smell through water, she could taste the chalky grayish yellow of bone.

“Anwei?” Altahn hissed.

Anwei reached farther, drawing in even more of Knox so he seemed to sit inside her. The shape of the statue glowed in her mind. “It’s a gate,” she whispered.

It beckoned to her, asking for entrance into her mind, whispering that if she was the wrong shape, she wouldn’t make it to the other side.

I am the right shape, she thought. This place is the nameless god’s.

The words in her head didn’t sit well even as her confidence grew. She opened her mind a sliver and the something flooded inside her, took a good look around, and was satisfied.

The statue creaked, and suddenly the walls and the ceiling were groaning as waves rippled down through stone. Altahn yelled from the tunnel behind her, but then the statue was standing instead of kneeling, her hands holding the ceiling high up over her head. Slits in the rock opened up, letting in jets of light from above that pierced the darkness like stars.

The statue’s eyes were empty, watching Anwei. Her hair was made of vines. A hundred braids.

Anwei drew in a shuddering breath and got a full mouthful of nothing that billowed out through the newly opened tunnel beyond the statue. In her mind she could see another statue farther down the tunnel, and a room at the end, one great black pool with a mechanism that flared bright in her mind, as easy to open as any calistet jar, so long as you knew how. And beyond that, caves in a cliff.

A path made of water into a lake, to an island and a house made of stone.

“How big of an explosion could you make with the salpowder packets we brought?” she asked when she got back to Altahn and the boat.

“Did we replace a way through? Does this connect?”

“Yes.” She stared at him, waiting.

“An explosion… for what?” he finally asked. “You want to break down a wall, burn up a wooden structure—”

“I want to make it look like we’re trying to destroy the cliffs where Lia saw Mateo—like we’re trying to get through that way.”

“Oh, just that.” Altahn took the lamp. “More flash than cracked stone? Because I don’t know how salpowder will hold up against anything Basist made. I’d probably need the rest of the stuff from the boat to make it look serious.”

Anwei got back into the canoe and started paddling toward the statue. As they rounded the corner, Altahn’s paddle dragged as he caught sight of the stone woman, then the bits of broken wood sticking out from the water at her feet.

“This is safe?” he asked.

“Yes.” Anwei was sure. “We both need to be back on the boat later to show Knox what we gave up for the night. How much can you get done if I leave you the lamp?”

The cabin at the back of the hold was small. Too small for anyone, really, but definitely too small for Knox, the ceiling too low for him to stand straight and the bunks too short for him to lie down. Too small to pace, too small to do anything other than brace himself as the boat moved. He tried to draw his aurasight in as close as it would come to deprive Willow of whatever information she was gleaning by keeping him awake, but he couldn’t stop himself from noticing when Anwei left the boat and came back again later. Things outside the room banged around, and people yelled and talked and laughed outside, and Knox was trapped in another world. On another path, another plane.

As he always had been. But for the first time, he was angry about it.

I have spent my whole life trying to save Willow, his thoughts roared toward Calsta. I became a Devoted, gave my life to setting her free. He could hardly remember her as she was, a girl who spent weeks crocheting lace to edge a dress she was making with their mother, who’d blushed pink and twirled for days when she first put it on, then paraded up the street past the forge so the blacksmith’s apprentice might catch sight of her.

He still thought of her as taller than he was. As someone who got him out of confessing he’d broken the miller’s window when he’d been pretending to be a Devoted, throwing rocks up and batting them out of the air like arrows. Willow had taken the blame.

And she would have hated being a Devoted, giving up all her lace and pretty skirts, the ribbons she braided into two plaits, then pinned across her head like a crown. So when the Devoted had come for them—

Knox slammed a fist into the wall, swearing when it did nothing but make his knuckles ache. “Calsta!” he yelled. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? Why couldn’t you have just made me stay asleep until it was done? You said keeping my oaths would let me save her, but that’s not what’s happening. Now I’m trying to save myself and everyone else I care about from her, and I’m losing.”

I tried to warn you. The goddess breathed fire in his head, but it was faint, far away, making him want to punch the wall again, to tear out the built-in bunk, to break down the door between him and the only people he had in life.

“You haven’t tried hard enough! Why not just say it? Why not—”

Because I don’t want some little girl neck-deep in shapeshifter putrescence to stop me from fixing what has been done to me and my love, Knox.

“Your love?” He was shouting now at the ceiling. “The nameless god? He must be alive, or Anwei wouldn’t be stained purple. I wouldn’t be bonded to her, and there would be no such thing as shapeshifters. But if I can’t stop Willow, the people I love might not be lucky enough to survive. Just tell me how to fix her! The sword is gone, but she’s still claw-deep in my chest and won’t leave. How do I make her go?”

I don’t know, Knox.

“You don’t know?” The words opened a terrible hole inside him, deeper even than the one Willow had made. “So is that… it then? Anwei is right about you, that you just… lie to people so you can use them and—”

Knox! her voice blasted into his mind, larger and wider and hotter than he could hold. He fell back on the bunk, fingers digging into his temples. It was never about saving Willow. It was about saving you. Detaching her from you. None of them have ever gone, just been turned into monsters alongside the shapeshifters who killed them. The oaths kept you safe from it, and now Anwei is keeping you safe. Somehow even Willow is still partly there—that’s something new that could fix things. But it’s also all the more dangerous because she could make things so, so much worse.

“You lied to me,” he whispered.

I have never lied to you. We can release her. I know it. I just don’t know how yet. I need my love. When he is more awake—

“You’ll finally tell me everything, Calsta?” Knox leaned back against the wall. “You told me I could save my sister, not the whole gods-cursed world.”

Gods-cursed? She was silent for a moment, then began to laugh, louder and louder until the peals seemed to fall around him in a shower of embers. Sometimes I think I should just let myself die, take back my oaths and fizzle into nothing when no one remembers my name. Then maybe you humans will stop taking power meant to help people and using it to hurt people instead. We gave you oaths because we knew humans were selfish, but that they could be more given the right incentives. Still you’ve figured out how to destroy everything. I am so sick of you all.

“Is that how gods work? You feed on people’s pain for power? How is that different from a shapeshifter, Calsta? Willow always goes on about being fed. What do you eat, Calsta?”

The hearts of men. Well, women too. People. I’m not picky.

The hair on Knox’s arms stood up. He drew in a shaky breath, unable to say it out loud after so many years of his life spent trying to please the sky goddess. So you are the same.

Shapeshifters take souls to make themselves more powerful. I take hearts, which are given willingly, and teach them to grow larger, Knox. Her voice had gone from a salpowder roar to a thin gutter of flame. You will be the last to know the answers. Otherwise, that little girl gnawing on your soul will have all the weapons she needs to come back. Which will let the rest of them out.

“Come back?” Knox dug his fingers into his hair, his head aching.

But Calsta was already gone.

Willow could come back somehow? He thought of her screams and cries, her pleas for him to kill, to feed. If she’d gotten him to kill Anwei and turn into a shapeshifter, would that have been only the first step, the first thing she needed before… what?

The cabin door rattled, and Anwei burst through. Her mouth was hung heavy with a smile, but their bond seemed to shrivel as she looked at him.

The wound in his side twinged.

“Are you all right?” she asked, pulling him out of the cramped cabin. “There was yelling.”

“Of course I’m not all right.” He extracted his arm from her hand and backed away. “I can’t come out. I need to… leave? Or—”

“Actually—” she broke in.

“No, I can’t see… anything. What’s in these crates, where you moved the boat, nothing—”

“Knox. It’s all okay. We’re fine.” Anwei took his arm once again, pulling him gently between crates. “We’re going to take a few days to reassess. Everyone is tired after this morning.” She shrugged, leading him toward the ramp onto the deck. “And it’s too dark for you to see where we are anyway. So we’re—”

“We’re having a dance party!” Noa pushed Anwei out of the way, dragging Knox the rest of the way onto the deck. “To celebrate me not being dead and the two of us not kissing ever again—”

“I did not kiss you!” Knox interjected, covering his face to block out anything Willow might not have seen yet.

“I agree! That was hardly a kiss. Then you broke my ribs. But we’re friends now!” Noa gave a shout that echoed up into the sky, twilight just sitting on the horizon. “So, dance party.”

Anwei cleared her throat, gently pulling Knox’s hands away from his eyes. “Noa is having a dance party.”

“No, all of us are. There were drums in the hold, and Bane promised to play, and you promised me—”

“Yes, yes, all right.” Anwei gently pushed Noa out of the way, a harried smile on her face—a smile Knox didn’t understand, so peaceful and calm on the outside with something much angrier, faster, more terrifying raging under the surface.

“Sorry we locked you in the cabin,” she said quietly. There was a smear of something purple crusted to the side of her neck beneath the long braids. Looking down self-consciously at his scrutiny, Anwei shrugged. “Testing elsparn salve is going well—Willow can’t do anything with that, can she?” She grinned, squeezing his arm. “We’ll just… not plan things in front of you from now on.”

“Or let me come when you go after Tual? Unless I’m blindfolded?” he said slowly, heart thumping to the beat of the panic inside Anwei.

She smirked. “Lia went to get Vivi, so if you’re going to come up with weird training yard flexes like a blindfold to go with your stabbing practice, you’ll have to wait until she gets back. Until then…” She spread her hands wide, taking in the darkening sky, the little lanterns Bane was lighting and a drum Noa was arranging in front of one of the paddle benches. “I think we can take one night to rest. Gilesh made food, and I think you can eat some of it.”

Something was wrong, Knox could feel it. The curtain between him and Anwei remained solidly in place. Tension was strung tight across everyone else on board. Gilesh and Bane whispered to each other behind a table covered in food, and Noa trying to pry open a crate despite her splintered rib. The little forced laugh that came out of her when Bane shooed her away to sit down. But when Knox looked back at Anwei, she was just standing there watching him, the bond between them softening. “You look like you’re about to kick something in the head. Please do it to someone who is not me, because you know I’m not above retribution. Maybe Altahn?”

“Thanks a lot, Anwei.” The Trib pushed past Knox, dragging another crate from down in the hold. “Where did you want this one, Noa?”

It was only moments before Bane was sitting at a drum and Altahn was at the other, the two of them slapping out a beat that sounded quick as Noa’s laugh, Gilesh pulling out one of the Trib mandolins he’d brought to strum a melody. In no time Knox was sitting on a bench with some kind of dried vegetables and barley in a bowl, Noa turning and stomping, Anwei clapping along and laughing next to him. He wanted to believe it. Wanted to rest, wanted to sit there next to Anwei. Wanted to believe it was real.

Noa ran up to Anwei, grabbing hold of both her hands. “You promised there would be dancing!” she sang.

“You can’t dance, can you, Anwei?” Knox teased. Excitement seemed to have leeched out of Noa, taking root into all the empty spaces inside Knox like some sort of disease. The evening felt like an invitation to step into another world where Calsta’s fiery laugh didn’t exist. Where there were no closed doors between him and the rest of the crew. Where Willow had died and was painting clouds somewhere with the goddess in peace

Because down in the cabin, he hadn’t been able to breathe.

But up here, there was nothing but laughter, the steady drums, the stars starting to wink down from the sky, and the golden glow of lanterns against the night.

“Don’t let her try, Noa.” Knox grinned. “Or you’ll end up with more broken bones. She’s stepped on me enough times—”

“Says the man who inhaled poison to avoid even entering a ballroom a few weeks ago,” Anwei countered.

“Yes, I knew the poison was in the governor’s drawer before wrenching it open for you and stuck my face right over the jet. All so I could avoid a waltz.”

Anwei spun to point at Altahn. “He was the one who was supposed to prove he could dance, so why is everyone piling on me?”

“We’ll settle it now.” Noa grabbed Anwei’s hand and dragged her over to Altahn, who shook his head so wildly, Noa had to move the drum aside to get him to leave it. She arranged Anwei and Altahn in the small open space on the deck and started yelling directions to Bane so he’d drum the way she wanted, Gilesh’s picking coming faster and faster.

Knox didn’t want to look away when Anwei raised her arms to match Noa’s, stomping along to the beat of the drum. She was terrible. But Altahn was even worse, the two of them jerking like fish bobs in the water. Noa showed them some kind of arm-flaily jump that made Noa look like a wind goddess and Altahn as if he were having a seizure. Anwei was laughing so hard that her attempt didn’t even make it into the air. When she spun around, her eyes landed on Knox, her smile wide enough for three.

Knox looked down. That was the rule, wasn’t it? The one she’d reinstated first on Ellis’s boat, then again after she’d kissed him. When they got too close to each other, they looked away. Closing his eyes, Knox willed himself to let the fog of carefree joy be enough for him.

Lia’s aura appeared in the trees, and in a moment she was climbing on deck, her brow pinched with confusion. When she saw Knox, it pinched even more. Approaching cautiously, Lia slid down next to him on the bench, watching the others as she might some kind of enemy formation. “What in Calsta’s name is going on?”

“I don’t know.”

“We’re forgetting everything for a few hours, Lia!” Anwei called, a spark of caution rippling across the bond which didn’t show on her face. “Come dance with us!”

Lia shrank down on the bench next to him, as if folding herself small enough would be enough to stop them from sucking her into Noa’s shenanigans, and suddenly Knox felt like the dark frame to a bright picture. He liked the look of Anwei out there on the deck, her face free of worry. He liked the idea of fitting into that picture with Anwei, Altahn, and Noa, the former two trying so hard to follow the latter that Gilesh and Bane had bent over their instruments, laughing so hard tears were streaming down their cheeks. No swords, no magic, just people who liked each other.

Lia grabbed hold of his arm as if she could feel it too, the pull to join. “It’s like I can feel the Warlord watching me,” she whispered. “Old Master Tracy telling us that every moment we spent playing instead of training was a moment stolen from a goddess.”

“There are times when that is true,” Knox murmured back, the words sticking like pinesap in his teeth. “We are what we are.”

And, for some reason, Lia flinched. Then she stood and stepped into the light.

As he watched her walk toward the others, it was almost as if he were in that other realm again, alone. Lia had always been beside him before. Being a Devoted had been like diving headfirst into deep water for Knox, and Lia had been the one to hold him up when he was too tired to swim. That was different from dancing badly with Anwei and Noa because it looked fun. Lia was already doing it, as if this was a battle she’d already wrestled to the ground, and Calsta had conceded. And when he looked at Anwei…

You are not the same as a normal person. Calsta’s voice cut through his thoughts and sank in deep, and suddenly the glitter of the evening was gone. I need you to focus.

Knox swallowed, feeling himself shrivel back from the warmth and laughter. From the sight of Anwei smiling and twirling across the deck, because he didn’t fit into that picture. You said you were sick of me earlier. Have I ever told you I’m sick of you too?

I didn’t say this can’t be yours. Someday, when this is over, maybe it can. The Warlord made you think you’re only valuable as a weapon. Yet another unfortunate imbalance. You can be more than one thing, Knox. Don’t blame everything on me. She paused, considering. I’ve trusted you this long. Remember your oaths. We can’t afford for any of this to go wrong.

His eyes found Anwei’s again, and she laughed, doing another horrible spin. “Are you just going to mock us from your chair?” she called to him.

He didn’t want to be the frame, to be the one in another world. So, Knox slid into the light, toward Anwei’s terrible dancing and the beat of the drum. She met him halfway, something sparking in her eye that was none of her normal calculation, no storm hidden by clouds, and none of the measured distance she’d put between them, as if she’d been afraid that touching him might burn her.

When Noa pulled him into line behind her, Anwei stood next to him, leaning into him when she laughed as Gilesh tried his feet in a leap and then almost fell over the rail into the water. She sat close to him on the bench later, her shoulder pressed into his side and his arm on the bench behind her, so like all the times he’d touched her when they were pretending, ducking guards, looking into each other’s eyes as if they loved each other because people chasing thieves didn’t believe thieves were human enough to love.

Now the almost-touch felt like a risk, as if he were putting all of himself out between them. A question in the air she’d already answered more than once, but this time Anwei wasn’t moving away.

When she looked up at him, she didn’t look away.

Tonight, in this other existence, this other world so disconnected from the real one, maybe Anwei wanted to be burned.

By the time the sky above was cold and dark, Lia was sitting by Gilesh behind the drums so he could show her how to play, Noa was giggling into a bowl of rice between Bane and Altahn, and Knox’s shoulders began to sag. He blinked stinging eyes, willing his spine to straighten, for the fatigue, the emptiness to hold off just for a few hours. A few minutes.

I know you don’t care about this, Willow, he pled. But please don’t take me away.

It didn’t stop his eyelids from drooping, and Knox braced a hand against the bench to stop himself from falling. Anwei looked up from where she was spooning something too sugary for him to eat into a bowl, a flash of concern across her face. She picked up a cup from the table and held it out to him. “Willow doesn’t like dancing, eh?”

He closed his eyes. “I don’t want to talk about Willow.”

“I’ll get you something else to eat. Maybe that will help.”

Knox reached out and took the cup, his stomach twisting as he took her hand with it. “I don’t want you to get me some food,” he said quietly.

She smiled. “Drink it. You’ll feel better.”

He took a sip from the cup, trying to decide what kind of fruit came with such a clouded taste. It burned a little as it went down, and something inside him began to beat a steady, frantic rhythm, like the drum tower in Chaol before a storm.

“Knox?” Anwei’s hand was on his arm, and suddenly he was tipping forward, his muscles all shivering. “Help! Someone, please!” Her voice warbled as if Knox was half underwater.

Another set of hands gripped Knox’s other arm, sliding him off the bench because Knox couldn’t stand, couldn’t even sit, his whole body dead weight. “Is he all right?” a voice asked—Altahn, Knox thought.

“Help me get him down to the cabin,” Anwei whispered, the curtain between them pulsing with worry and a tinge of fear. He wanted to tell her not to bother, but then she and Altahn were hoisting him up by the shoulders, and Knox was stumbling down the ramp. They took him through the hold, and Anwei helped fold him onto the bed that was too small. Altahn started to pull off his boots.

“Go on—” Anwei waved him away. “I’ll be up in a second.”

And before Altahn’s footsteps had even made it to the ramp, Anwei had grabbed handfuls of the front of Knox’s tunic. The air seemed to burn between them.

“I don’t want to go back to normal,” he whispered, the words coming out in a garbled drawl. “Can’t this be how easy it is…?”

But then Anwei’s long braids were all around him and he could only smell river and herbs, her cheek against his and her heart beating fast as her arms pulled him up against her. Their bond sparked, touching her and circling back around so he wasn’t sure if it was her feeling it or him. He couldn’t breathe, every inch of him alive and waiting for her to move. But she was frozen, holding so, so still as his hands explored her back, the feel of her through the thin layer of cloth. “What do you want, Anwei?” he whispered.

The last time he asked, she’d walked away from him.

This time her fingers dug into his skin through his tunic and her breath caught in her throat, her heart drumming faster and faster. A taste of anger flowed across the bond, of unfairness, of rage, but then her mouth pressed hard against his, and her tongue brushed across his lip, and he forgot anything had come before or what might come after.

Everything except for her fists, twisted tight in his tunic as he slowly faded, gripping him hard as if she could keep him there no matter what Willow wanted. But as everything went gray and Knox’s arms began to go slack, the last thing Knox felt were those hands slowly loosening and letting go.