6

The nightstar hangs low in the sky, casting her light across the tall grass that hides us. The blades bend with a breeze now sweeping over us.

Jadon’s fingers graze my cheek, brush away strands of my long, curly hair that have fallen across my face. His touch is fire. I can barely move even with just his fingers on my skin.

“Come with me,” I whisper. “We’re made for each other.”

Will he leave everything behind for me?

Jadon’s brow furrows. “I do want to come with you.”

“But?”

“But…” He lies on his back, his eyes to the stars. “I can’t. No matter how much I want to. Unless…”

I don’t speak and hold my breath, listening to the distant rustle of leaves, the soft murmurs of night creatures, his heartbeat, mine. The entire realm holds its breath with me, waiting for his answer.

Unless…?

Jadon turns back to me. “I can’t,” he whispers. “No matter how much I want to, how much I want you.”

A single teardrop trails across the bridge of my nose and plops on his hand. “I have you now, though, yes? You and I and no one else? Until the start of tomorrow?”

He smiles, and his “Yes” is just a puff of air from his lips to mine, and I want more.

“Hey,” he whispers.

“Hey,” I whisper and lean in.

He leans in closer.

An explosion rips through the silence, and the nightstar is swallowed by fire. The earth splits open between us and a great beast—a wolf or a bear or a man—climbs out of that fracture, teeth bared, talons bloody. The creature roars but then it disappears as thick gray smoke billows from the fires burning above the earth and from the faults breaking the earth apart.

Ashes swirl and sting my eyes.

“Kai!” Jadon shouts.

“Where are you?” I shout back, crawling through the meadow, lost in the smoky dark.

“Follow the sound of my voice,” he shouts, sounding farther away.

I can only hear iron striking iron. Swords? Is Jadon fighting that creature? I hear screaming now. More striking. Roaring. The noise, this fight, sounds closer…closer… Screaming. Who’s screaming? Bam! Bam! Bam! Is that a sword? Is that Jadon—?

Roars cut through the explosions.

My eyes feel like they’re burning, and I close them.

Screaming. It’s me . I’m screaming. My cheek burns. I scream louder and touch that burning cheek. My fingers come away wet. Blood on my fingertips. I’m bleeding and now the flames lick at my bare feet and I scream and the creature bursts through the gray smoke and it swipes its claw across my face and—

My eyes pop open, and I bolt upright, gasping for breath. My throat feels raw. Jadon’s brown tunic sticks to my sweaty skin.

The world smells of smoke and sheep.

“Finally!” Olivia is sitting cross-legged behind me. “I thought you’d never wake up.”

“What’s wrong?” I blink back at her and then send my eyes darting around the…

Where am I? I’m sitting on quilts with yellow straw all around me. The small slot window shows only dingy blue sky. I’m high up.

Bam! Bam! Hiss!

Ah. Yes. I’m in the loft above the forge, not stuck in my dream with all those explosions of earth and sea of flames. But my memory of those explosions, the sea of flames and billowing smoke, the creature attacking me, losing Jadon, everything from my dream… It feels so real even as I sit here in a decrepit barn, fully awake, heart still pounding loud enough for the entire village of Maford to hear. And the other part of the dream, the part with Jadon… My skin heats at the memory of his touch, of the way he looked at me like I meant everything, the way he turned away and told me that he couldn’t come with me.

Bam! Bam! Hiss!

I scowl and rub my face with both hands. “Why is it so loud?” I massage my aching biceps and twist my head to loosen the muscles in my neck.

“Forges usually are,” Olivia says. “And it’s loud because Jadon’s working. Dawn was four hours ago, and you’re sleeping like you’re a duchess with a rich husband and servants when you’ve got geld to earn back today.”

Bam! Bam! Hiss!

I peek over the edge of the loft.

Jadon’s wielding a thickheaded hammer across a soft, red-hot shaft of metal. The air trembles from the violence, and I’m transfixed.

“I’ve been thinking,” Olivia says.

I ignore her, still focused on her brother. My dream is sharp and fresh in my mind—

“Are you listening to me?” Olivia barks. “I said you can go next door to Farmer Gery’s and help him out, since his wife is too ill to work. Milk his cow. Also, muck the stalls for the horses. He may need you to shear the sheep. Don’t go inside their house, though.”

“Miasma,” I say, nodding, eyes on the muscles twining and flexing beneath Jadon’s shirt as he lifts the hammer again. Sparks fly from the glowing metal as he strikes.

“Exactly,” Olivia says. “Stay out in the open. Then, after the farming chores, visit the candlemaker across from the school and retrieve the new candlesticks that will be lit in the church’s candelabras. I’m supposed to go, but since you’re here, you can. I think Father Knete will also need you to polish those candelabras and polish the altar and the pews.”

I say, “Umhmm,” as Jadon wipes sweat from his brow with a sleeve and adjusts his grip on the hammer.

He pauses before striking the metal again. Does he sense me watching? He looks over his shoulder and then up to the loft, and our eyes lock. He does. “Hey,” he says, smiling.

Just like he said it in the dream , except we were resting beside each other, closer, much closer. And now, my cheeks burn and I open my mouth to say—

“Be sure to wipe off the sheep shit before you step into the church,” Olivia says.

I grimace at her over my shoulder. “What?”

She scowls. “Didn’t you hear me?”

I turn back to look down at Jadon as a frizzy-haired brunette with a toothy grin enters the barn’s double doors. She’s holding a broken meat cleaver and bats her eyes at him. “I know you just fixed it last week—”

I roll my eyes and sigh, settling back into the straw. “Yes, I heard you. Sheep shit. Got it.”

Olivia rubs her neck, and I notice my left-behind handprints have faded. The whites of her eyes are no longer jaundiced. She looks healthier today than she did yesterday. “The moment I opened my eyes this morning, I remembered where I’d seen a name like yours.”

I perk up. “Yeah?”

She smiles at me and crawls over to the corner of the loft and lifts a bale of hay. “In here.” She pulls out a book, but it’s not an ordinary book. The cover is encrusted with jewel-colored glass. Square red garnets edge the book, as well as circles of mother-of-pearl, tiny squares of green glass, and flecks of yellow topaz. Thick jeweled lines segment the cover into four quadrants. An angel sits in the top left corner, and an eagle sits in the right. A boy holding a sword takes up the lower left corner, and a girl holding a hammer takes up the lower right. Each figure is embossed, and the soft leather looks buttery, as though hundreds of hands have stroked this hide before it found its way to a sooty forge in Maford.

“It’s breathtaking,” I whisper. “But what does this have to do with my name?”

“This isn’t just one story,” Olivia says, “but a bunch of stories. About knights and ladies and dragons. There’s one story about a pretty girl named Larissa and a strong, handsome boy named Hammond, and they’ve been banished from the kingdom of Cahyrst and sent to sail across Devour. That’s a sea far, far away from here. They have these adventures based on the Wheel of Fortune. Trust, war, peace, love, power, death. You know, fate .

“Hammond and Larissa learn that the king wants them dead, and the death warrant is hidden in Hammond’s knapsack. They need to find this safe place called the Mount of Outer Places, but there are monsters on the road and magnificent beasts that they must fight while also avoiding all the king’s men. They both find love, but then those loves are smashed by either fiery rocks falling from the sky or melted and drowned in the Sea of Devour. That’s my favorite one.”

“So, these are cheerful tales, then,” I say.

“Absolutely. See?” She pushes the book toward me and points to something on the page.

I scan the words and find the name. Kaivara. I gasp like I’ve been punched in the gut. My heart rolls with thunders . Kaivara. Kai. My name . I scan the story:

In the mythic land of Toskin, a deity named Kaivara holds dominion over the villages closest to the treacherous sea named Devour. Even though her countenance hides behind a glaring silver glow, she can still survey the lands before her. The parched, cracked earth. The bare trees. The scattered bones of animals. In one hand, Kaivara holds fire, and in the other hand, she holds a cloud filled with rain. Amber glows everywhere her gaze touches, especially around the multitude of people on their knees, looking up to her, their hands clenched in prayer.

“Lady Kaivara,” the cleric pleads. “Please bless us.”

But Kaivara turns her back to them, for they have disobeyed her every command. Though they claim that they have changed their ways, she knows they haven’t.

I continue reading until the end, and that’s when I gasp. I look up to Olivia with wide eyes. “She kills them.”

“Does this story sound familiar?” Olivia asks. “Maybe your mother read it to you?”

A shaft of sunlight slices through the loft’s small window and shines across my knee. “I don’t know this tale.”

“Well, I’ve always hated it,” Olivia says, “and I hate that goddess. She’s just so cruel.”

Neck prickling, I raise my eyes from the page. “Does this town, Toskin, exist?”

Olivia shakes her head. “But the Sea of Devour does. There are towns scattered around it. But then, beyond those towns, walls of sharp gray rock build, one atop the other, higher and higher still, never crumbling, only growing. Heaps of gray rocks taller than the tallest tree, but there are no trees, there are no crags or paths to climb and ascend—the mountain refuses to be scaled by man or beast. And if there is a top, the mountain refuses to let any eye glimpse past thick white clouds that never part.”

My mind aches trying to imagine a mountain so bold yet elusive, so formidable yet incurious, a mountain that refuses to be summited. My skin turns clammy with dread—nothing should be that powerful, that… impossible .

“Maybe I was named after this goddess.” I shift on the uncomfortable hay bale and lift the book into my lap. “And maybe one of the towns around this sea is my home.” I slide my finger down the last page to the illustration of an amber-glowing heap of dead villagers baking under the relentless daystar. The prickles on the back of my neck sharpen. “Why would my parents have named me after someone so cruel, though?”

There must be more to this goddess than this story.

Olivia takes the book from my hands, then shoves it back beneath the bale of hay.

“Why are you hiding it over there?” I ask, squinting at her.

Her face colors red as a blister.

I grimace. “Must you steal every shiny thing in Maford?”

“This didn’t come from Maford,” she sniffs.

“Oh, pardon me. You would never steal from this pigsty of a town, would you? Olivia Ealdrehrt steals only from fancy-nancy places with incredible hauls. Is that how you’d say it?”

Color splotching her face, Olivia looks like she’s about to argue, but the rage disappears, and she peeks over the edge of the loft at the forge before saying, “Don’t ever mention that I have this book, okay? It doesn’t exist, understand?”

I stare at her.

She holds my gaze with her own.

“Olivia,” Jadon calls from below. “Kai really should get started.”

Olivia shouts, “We’re coming down now,” without losing eye contact with me.

I whisper, “Does he know you have this?”

“He does.” Olivia continues to stare at me, eyes solemn and steady.

This is not her normal demeanor. Finally, I blink. “Okay, I won’t say anything.”

She exhales and tosses me a grateful smile. “Get changed and come on down.”

As I pull off the tunic and drag the peacock-blue dress over my head, I think about the story in that jeweled book. Who is Kaivara? Did my parents worship her and take the smaller version of her name for me? Or did they name me “Kai” because they saw something in me that reminded them of her? Also: Where is this sea called Devour? Is it anywhere near Chesterby? How long would it take me to get there? And if I go there, will I find my family?

Jadon has sent the frizzy-haired woman away, and he’s examining the broken cleaver.

Olivia and I join him at his worktable. “Good morning again, Jadon,” I say, smiling.

Jadon turns to me, and his mood instantly brightens. “Good morning again, Kai. Wow. That dress looks great on you.”

And now, I’m grinning like a dewy-eyed fawn. Ridiculous.

Olivia wriggles her nose. “It’s a little tight around the bust—”

Jadon’s gaze drops to my bust.

I stand perfectly still and arch an eyebrow in challenge, my pulse racing.

“Looks okay to me,” he says.

I snort. “Just okay?”

“How about…” He scans me as if analyzing a sculpture, then searches the sky for a word, eyes narrowed, his finger tapping his chin. “Celestial? Or elysian?”

“I’m thinking supernal,” I say with a nod.

“I’ll accept that answer,” he says. Heat arcs between us like it has since we met.

“Are you two done?” Olivia snarks. “Or shall I come back for the baby shower?”

Jadon rolls his eyes and hangs the meat cleaver on a nail over the worktable. “Sorry about all the noise, Kai. I hope I didn’t wake you with all that banging.”

“Not at all.” My face and neck warm as I remember my dream and resist the urge to fidget. “Olivia was just sharing a story with me about a deity named ‘Kaivara.’”

His eyebrows lift. “I’ve heard that name before. From Dashmala nomads around Devour.”

My heart jumps. “Really?”

“When were you at the Sea of Devour?” Olivia asks her brother.

He brushes her comment away with a flip of his hand and says to me, “You know what? They sew and stitch circles in their clothes. Brand it on their horses’ rumps. And they carry these totems of their goddess, ‘Kaivara.’ That would make sense if that’s where you’re from—if you’re one of those people.”

“Not Chesterby after all?” I say.

“Maybe, maybe not.” He grabs short strips of iron from a bucket.

“While I’m earning twelve geld,” I say, “I’ll figure out a way to get back to Devour. Maybe I can find a sage in the next town over who’d know about Chesterby and Kaivara.” For the first time since landing here, I feel a solid sense of identity, direction, purpose.

In my mind’s eye, I see… Rays from the daystar shining across fields of stone. I see… A colorless sea, bleached shells and stones covering its banks. I see… Shining jewel-colored lights racing across the sky and disappearing into the clouds…

Bam!

I startle, knocked from my vision and pulled back into the Ealdrehrts’ forge.

Jadon has resumed work. “Sorry. Needed to get back to it before it turned cold.” He lifts the hammer again and strikes a glowing orange, mean-looking rod of steel between the vise.

My hands shake, and I step back. This banging sounds close to that steel in my dream, after the earth split apart.

“What are you making now?” Hopefully, Jadon doesn’t notice my voice wavering. “A pike? A lance?” Good. Back to sounding assured and solid.

Jadon blinks at me. “Spoons.”

For some reason, this towering, well-muscled man creating spoons out of fire and ore seems off. “Ah. Useful.” I rub my sweaty hands on my skirt. Perhaps it’s the memory or the violence from my dream, but my skin feels tight and itchy and my breathing hitches in my chest and I’m ready to leave this part of the barn. “Work,” I say. “Gery’s farm next door first, yes?”

“Yep.” Jadon shoots me a smile. “You’ll earn twelve geld in no time. And then you’ll be free of Maford and free of us.”

I nod and follow Olivia out of the barn.

Being free of Jadon?

Hmm.

For some reason, that thought chills my heart.