Chapter 32

32

Sirsha

Sirsha wanted one simple thing: to stop seeing Loli Temba die. But when she looked into a fire, she saw her friend's incinerated heart. When she boned a fish for a meal, she thought of the way Loli's body disappeared into the river.

The tracker's thoughts cascaded, and she found herself dwelling on older memories. Of the days before she was driven out from Jaduna lands. Of her failures, and the havoc she'd wrought.

Quil let her set the pace, and she pushed them hard and fast across the highlands, keeping away from trails so the Kegari sky-pigs wouldn't spot them. All her will was bent on tracking, on reading earth, wind, and water.

The earth offered its secrets freely, whispering of the monster and where she had walked. Who she had murdered. A young woman beside a river, a few miles from where they passed. A Thafwan child who'd wandered too close to a forest in the evening. Each time, Sirsha flinched, disgusted and enraged. Each time, the earth shrieked at the wound, and guided Sirsha east, toward the Thafwan coast.

Quil understood Sirsha's silence and gave her space during the day. But the first night they stopped, as she curled up against a tree trunk, he knelt beside her, dark hair falling into his eyes. Despite the highland cold, his hands were steady as he pulled her into his arms. For a second, she held herself stiff. But he was warm and solid, and in the end, she tangled her fingers in his and melted into his hard chest.

"I'm here, Sirsha," he murmured in her ear, and she couldn't help the heat that bloomed through her blood. "You're not alone."

Her Adah coin warmed, chasing away the cold. Its formerly flat surface was etched with thin, linked lines. The closer she and Quil became, the deeper and more intricate the etching. The harder it would be when they inevitably had to sever their connection.

Sirsha knew this. But in the dark nights, she didn't care.

On the fifth day of travel, as a storm rolled in, they took shelter in an abandoned shepherd's house overlooking a mist-shrouded valley.

The stone structure was bigger than it looked on the outside. It had a large main room with a dusty table and chairs shoved in a corner, two smaller rooms with no furniture, and a privy. Someone had long ago lit a fire in the hearth, and the privy had a pump, a tub, and a low stone pit for heating water.

Sirsha had dropped her pack to the floor when the wind curled into her senses, bringing a deeply unwelcome scent.

R'zwana.

She cursed loudly, and Quil turned from where he was laying the fire.

"It's R'z," she said. "She's close."

"No Kegari?"

Sirsha shook her head. "R'z will want to stay here." Sirsha rubbed her temple, agitated. "It's the only shelter for miles."

Quil tilted his head and there was sympathy in his regard. "She will, but not because of the storm. She wants to get to you. I'll deal with her when she arrives. Take one of the back rooms. Come out if you feel up to it—or not at all."

"I— We'll have to share again." She pulled at their coin, finding a strange comfort in rubbing her fingers against the etchings.

"I'll take the other room," Quil said. "You could use some time to yourself, perhaps. They can sleep in this room, and if they have an issue with that, they can take it up with me."

She wished to weep, to thank him, to hiss at him for knowing her when what she wanted was for him to be obtuse, so he'd be easy to leave behind. But he wasn't obtuse and that made her angry, so all she could do was glare at him and hope he'd flinch.

Instead, he stepped close, the proximity tightening something inside her chest. Closer , she wanted to say. As if he could read her thoughts, he lifted a big hand to her face, tipping it toward his with barely a touch. She channeled all her venom at her sister, at herself, into her gaze. He looked at her level, taking it in, aware of what lay at the core of it.

Until the loathing drained out of her, and she looked down at her hands—her useless hands that did nothing as Loli died.

"I've seen terrible things, Quil." Her voice shook, but she kept speaking, because she needed to expel the words from her mind. "Perhaps beyond what you could imagine. But even after all that, what stays with me is how it—it fed on her. Those sounds. I don't know how to get them out of my head."

"The more you try not to think about it, the more it will haunt you," he said with the surety of someone who lived with a bevy of his own ghosts. "And if you forgot, it would be an injustice to her. I don't forget what happened in Navium, even when I wish I could. I remember, and I mourn, and I rage at myself and then I vow to have vengeance."

The words were so unnaturally fierce coming from him that she glanced up, finding to her surprise that his venom matched her own. But she supposed it made sense, for who would hate himself more than a prince who didn't stop his Empire from falling?

He didn't look away, and she took it as a challenge, even when she knew this was exactly what she shouldn't be doing, staring into the eyes of a person she couldn't afford to care about, burning in his sunrise gaze.

Outside, thunder crashed, breaking the spell between them. Quil shook himself and walked to the back room, laying out her bedroll and lighting a fire for her bath. The rain had plastered his black hair to his head, his clothing to the taut ropes of muscle running along his shoulders and arms. She'd heard Quil joke that Sufiyan had gotten the looks and Quil the royal legacy.

But that's only because he didn't see himself clearly. Quil, with that aquiline nose and cut-glass jaw and magnificent body—Quil was addictive. Sirsha didn't think she'd ever tire of looking at him.

Something that was deeply inconvenient, she realized, as he was staring at her, saying something.

"Ah—what?"

"The fire is going." He nodded to the bath. "Your water should be warm soon. Are you all ri—"

"Fine!" she said, horrified when it came out more shriek than word. She pushed him out the bedroom door, shoved it closed, and marveled that she could find new and interesting ways to humiliate herself in front of the boy she wanted to kiss amid an emotional crisis. If Loli were here, she'd scoff. Tup him and get it out of your system. Sirsha chuckled, and the ache in her heart faded a touch.

After what seemed like an age, her bathwater warmed, and she stripped and scrubbed herself, her mind moving unbidden to thoughts of the creature she hunted. She shivered as she remembered the fixed, hungry way she had looked at Sirsha. The killer was far away—the earth told her as much. But Sirsha still felt disgusted, like there was a tentacle snaking along the deep reaches of her mind.

Eventually, she heard voices—R'zwana and J'yan had arrived. She rose reluctantly, throwing on clean clothes and braiding her hair. She'd greet her sister, so the hag wouldn't think Sirsha was afraid of her, then take her leave.

Easy enough.

She strode into the main room, and barreled into J'yan, who was pulling out a seat for her. He tried to steady her, but she slapped him away.

R'zwana, sitting across from Quil, smirked.

For his part, the prince looked almost bored. His legs were stretched out and he was slouched in his seat, like a big predator trying to put his prey at ease. He'd bathed too—out of a bucket, probably—and changed into dry clothing. His dark hair was still wet and pulled back from his face.

What a face.

"Sister," R'zwana greeted her, and Sirsha snapped her attention away from Quil. "Dawdling away your time in the bath, as usual."

"R'z," Sirsha said with a sugary bite. "Letting other people do the hard work because you're a shit Inashi, as usual. Why are you still following me?"

"Perhaps I don't trust you," R'zwana said. "Perhaps I think your engagement is a lie."

"That's not the reason," Quil said, and Sirsha heard that steel in his voice that made her weak in the knees. Skies, but she loved it when he was the hard, cool, disdainful prince. His pale gaze was fixed on R'zwana, and he didn't bother to hide his dislike. "You know what she's hunting. You're hunting the same thing, but can't manage it on your own."

"You admit it, then!" R'zwana's face lit with malicious glee, even as J'yan groaned in frustration. "You hunt as we hunt. J'yan, take her—"

"That is my fiancée you're threatening." Quil had a blade at R'zwana's throat—Sirsha hadn't even seen him draw it. "Touch a single inch of her skin and see what happens."

"She has admitted—"

"She could admit to lighting your arse on fire and you couldn't do anything because she's my Adah and a Martial citizen," Quil said. "For someone who claims to understand the law, you're remarkably forgetful when it comes to one you find inconvenient."

"Follow me if you want," Sirsha said, trying to quell her laughter at the image of R'zwana with her arse on fire, "but don't get in my way, sister. This isn't a normal hunt."

"It's a Karjad, like all the other Karjad—"

"You haven't seen it, have you?" Sirsha realized it as she was saying the words. No one who had seen that thing would compare it to a Karjad—a blanket Jaduna term for a dangerous magic-user. "You haven't seen what it can do. You have no bleeding idea."

"I have J'yan bleating in my ear a dozen times a day that it's dangerous," R'zwana scoffed. "I'm well aware that you two are frightened of it."

"It is worth being frightened of." Sirsha could hardly lift her voice above a whisper, thinking of how Loli had died. Of how dangerously cavalier R'zwana was. And though part of her wanted her sister to see for herself, come what may, R'z was still blood. Still her sister. No matter what lay between them, Sirsha didn't want her to get hurt.

"It's of another world, the spirit world," Sirsha said. "If you don't respect it—if you don't realize how dangerous it is—you'll get yourself killed."

"You're a coward, sister. Always have been."

"And you," Quil said, apparently bored of listening to them spar, "are pathetic. You're stalking us because you can't catch this creature yourself. You've never even bleeding seen it. When your sister tries to warn you, instead of thanking her, you insult her. For a Jaduna, you are stunningly weak-minded, Raan-Ruku. You shame your people."

He stood, as the rest of them, even Sirsha, stared dumbfounded at the insult. "My fiancée and I will retire now." He took Sirsha's hand, giving it a squeeze. "Take the night to think on whether we could be of aid to each other, or whether you'd rather continue acting like a skulking dog, yipping at the heels of your betters."

They walked down the hall and into the room Sirsha had claimed. When Quil closed the door, she whirled on him.

He sighed. "I'm sor—"

She cut him off. "I did not need you to defend me."

"She was so bleeding annoying—"

"I didn't need it," Sirsha said. "But it was glorious." She shook her head. "I can't believe you likened a Jaduna Raan-Ruku to a skulking dog."

"I can't believe she hasn't burst in here and turned me into a squirrel."

"If she had that kind of power, I'd be happily collecting nuts in the Cloud Forest."

"Hmm. You'd make a good squirrel, I think." Quil's grin was rare enough that when his lone dimple flashed, Sirsha's heart swooped. "You'd charm all the other squirrels."

"Have my own squirrel army," Sirsha said. "We'd stockpile acorns and pelt R'zwana with them."

The image was so ridiculous that she giggled, and Quil snorted, and then they were laughing until tears leaked out the corners of their eyes, the wild guffaws of two people who were dancing with the reaper and knew it. Fear and exhaustion and hilarity mingled, and Sirsha grabbed Quil's arm to steady herself.

Later, she'd wonder if that was the moment that lit the fire between them. Perhaps it had kindled earlier in the main room when she'd lost herself in his gaze. Or at that inn in Devan, with his hands tight on her waist, his pulse thumping beneath her fingers. Or earlier still, when he'd saved her life on the Effie in Navium.

It didn't matter. Because now, as if her touch had cut loose anything resembling restraint, he grabbed her by the waist, pulled her to him, and brought his mouth to hers.

Or had she leaned up to kiss him? She didn't care. All that mattered was his lips hard and demanding against hers, her frantic need to feel his skin, to peel away his clothes. She gasped when he pinned her arms to her sides and pushed her against a wall, pulling back, his kisses featherlight now on her jaw, her neck. At his withdrawal, a sound of protest came unbidden from her throat. She saw his lips quirk in a satisfied smile.

Some part of Sirsha's mind screamed at her that this was an appalling idea. Her dalliances had always been meaningless. It was better if they didn't matter.

But Quil, patient Quil, beautiful Quil, angry, enraged, yet always in control Quil, was making it matter. She should shove him away. Tell him this was foolish. Only he was turning her bones to liquid with these slow, languorous kisses.

"Bedroll," she panted, because it was the closest thing to a horizontal surface, and she wanted him so badly she ached .

"No," he whispered against her skin, pulling open the laces on her shirt, her pants, removing both, leaving a trail of fire down her neck and stomach, going slow, so torturously slow, like he was getting vengeance on her for her smart mouth, for all the times she'd argued with him or snapped.

"Quil—" His name rolled off her tongue, a prayer. "Please—"

"Mmm," he said. "You should say that more, Sirsha. I'd give you whatever you wanted."

"Then give me—"

"Not yet."

He sank to his knees, cradling her hips in his hands, whispering words against her skin that she couldn't hear but that sang through her blood like magic.

She ran her fingers through his soft hair with one hand, gripped his shoulder with the other, and thanked the skies she had purchase on something because he pushed her to breaking with his clever mouth, his big hands, the heat of his body against hers, the sure way that he held her, as if she belonged to him and always had.

Sirsha wanted to say, Don't stop . She wanted to say, More. She wanted to throw him on the floor and climb on top of him and claim him the way he was claiming her, but she couldn't think anything more than yes . As her pleasure crested, she clasped a hand over her mouth to muffle her cry and then sank into his arms, trembling and liquid.

Rain hit the small window, a pat-pat-pat that blurred the world outside, making the room their own isle. Quil looked far too pleased with himself, his cheeks flushed red, mouth parted in a lazy smile. He was, she noted with annoyance, still fully clothed.

She swung her leg over his waist and straddled him, watching the color of his eyes shift, shadows across gold leaves. His breath quickened as she slowly drew off his shirt.

"Now we're even." His hands tightened on her bare back. Sirsha tucked her fingers lightly into his waistband, drawing triangles on his skin.

"Not quite." She relieved him of all his clothing. With only lamplight between them now, she pinned his wrists to either side of his head and kissed him slow, all the while keeping the rest of her skin a breath away from his. Every muscle in his body was taut with desire and he groaned in impatience.

"Sirsha—" he said, his voice resonant, the low strum of an oud echoing across a desert.

"The way you say my name." She scraped her fingernails along his back, kissed a line down his shoulder. "It's indecent."

"Sirsha." He said it again, quieter this time, and took her face in his hands, his touch so tender that her chin trembled. When she tried to look away, he brought her gaze back, but she shook her head.

"I can't," she whispered. Can't love you. Not when one day, we'll have to let each other go. She hoped he could see. "Please."

He nodded, understanding what she didn't have the strength to say. When he kissed her again, there was no restraint, only need. She returned it in kind, melting into him. This—desire, lust, want—this she understood.

Later in the night, they lay together on her bedroll, staring out the broken window into a rainy sky.

"How long have you been planning that?" she asked.

"Since the second you told me that I'd probably enjoy tying you up."

"Would you?"

He turned toward her with a shadow of a smile that left her flushed. "Perhaps you'll find out."

She ran a finger along the sharp line of his jaw, letting him see in her eyes what she thought of that. He made a sound in his throat that made her hungry for him, again.

You're enjoying this too much , Sirsha told herself. You will regret it.

But by then he'd drawn her into another kiss, one that made her forget everything but him.

The next morning, Sirsha woke before Quil—before anyone—and slipped past the sleeping Jaduna and outside to the cabin's front porch. The rain had cleared, the mist burning away as the sun rose.

She was breathless for a moment at the beauty of the valley below. The mist had hidden it yesterday, but now, with the sun chasing away the night, its full glory was revealed—huge granite formations, and distant falls roaring from the onslaught of rain. A river ran through the base of the valley, its blue startling against the deep green hills. Sirsha wished she could make her way down there with Quil. While away the hours by the riverside.

She heard the scrape of a boot behind her and turned, smiling, expecting Quil.

Only to find R'zwana.

"Does he know what you did?" R'zwana asked. Sirsha was almost impressed at her sister's ability to kill a good mood faster than an arrow to the arse. "Does he know there's a grave with twelve hundred Brijnan villagers in it because you're a bleeding coward?"

"Shut it," Sirsha said, but she could think of nothing else. This was what she hated the most about R'zwana. Not what she said but how she made Sirsha feel, like a helpless child again, at the mercy of her vindictive big sister.

"Well"—R'zwana grinned at her nastily—"perhaps I'll get a chance to tell him about it. Seeing as we've decided to travel with you."

"R'zwana." J'yan appeared, hair still tousled from sleep. "Leave her be."

R'z grunted in irritation. "Still pining after her, I see," she said before disappearing back inside the cabin.

Sirsha and J'yan both looked after R'zwana before he turned back to Sirsha. "I'm not," J'yan said. "Pining after you."

Sirsha smiled. "I know that," she said. "I've seen you pine. Whatever happened to N'ral?"

"She and a daughter of the Songma Kin swore an oath." J'yan sighed theatrically. "My poor broken heart."

"Can't say I blame her. Who would want to be with an ugly goat like you?"

J'yan chuckled, a singular, hiccupping sound. It was the first time she'd heard him laugh in years. His smile was warm as he regarded Sirsha. "I missed you," he said quietly. "So much. My greatest regret is that I didn't stand up for you. It haunts me, Sirsha."

"What's done is done." Sirsha looked pointedly after her sister. "Unlike some people, I don't gnaw at old wounds. I'm going to make some biscuits. Saddle the horses?"

"Sirsha—"

"I don't want to talk about it," she said. "It was years ago now. I've left it in the past."

"But maybe that's not where it belongs," J'yan said. "You'll have to tell him eventually."

Sirsha walked away from him. "But not yet."