Chapter 121

Rarely, the wise will also seek—in loss—to flip the board and scatter the pieces. But if you do this, it is likely the last time you will play. This also is not an adage for towers.

— Proverbs for Towers and War, Zenaz, date unknown

A dolin had drilled in pike block formations, but had never been in battle manning one. Doing so now—in the last stand to protect Azimir—proved one of the most humiliating experiences of his life.

When he and May arrived at their posts—charging through the night while carrying enormous pikes well over ten feet long—they were sent to different points in the line. Split apart because the commander in charge, though apologetic, didn’t want “two weak links next to one another.”

Adolin had to strap his longsword to his back—because at his hip it might knock into others in the line. He was positioned somewhere in the middle of the block that was holding the extended breach in the stone wall of the dome. It was right at ground level, ripped open by the Fused who had in turn been killed by Taln. That gap, which had been expanded in the hours since that assault, was some forty feet long.

The defenders had placed chunks of rubble across it—more stumbling block than fortification—and held that gap with a large pike line. Modern pike formations were less shield wall and more an anti-cavalry defensive position, often with crossbowmen at the wings. Tonight they deployed a more classical arrangement: a shield wall in front, with two ranks of pikes behind.

The front row employed shields and short spears to hold the enemy back. The second rank lined up tightly and held the pikes in two hands, stabbing them over the shoulders of the front rank to kill enemy soldiers. A third row stood at the ready, resting and getting water, but also sometimes bringing pikes to bear—reaching past two ranks—during a particularly difficult rush.

Adolin was put into the back line first, filling a hole among soldiers who were sweating and gulping water among ever-present fearspren, exhaustionspren, and painspren. By now, there were no Alethi blocks or Azish blocks; the two regiments had been fully integrated. This section was commanded by a tall Azish man with scars on his bald scalp.

He gave the order to prepare for the ranks to swap, and the men around Adolin groaned softly. Not enough time to rest, not nearly enough. They needed far more troops, as the enemy was trying to break through each of the doorways on the ground level and break out from the balcony above. Each section was defended with flagging troops, many of whom were untrained.

Adolin could taste the desperation in the air as he was ordered forward. The second pike line withdrew, folding around the third pike line, who stepped forward into their places. The others put Adolin to shame as they efficiently brought their pikes into an overhand grip and let the inner line slip past them. Adolin’s pike clattered against that of a retreating soldier, and he nearly got them into a snarl, earning a curse from the man. In this dim light, the fellow couldn’t see who Adolin was, which was probably best for both of them.

Adolin hefted his pike and moved it into place, trying his best to protect the spearmen in the front line before him. Beyond was a dark gap, broken only by the glowing gemstones in the singers’ beards. A sea of red, blue, purple, and yellow stars. That and glowing red eyes marking Regals.

The defenders had killed a great number of singers—at great cost, yes, but it meant stormforms couldn’t bring down this pike line easily, nor could direforms just rip through it. There weren’t enough Regals remaining, and it didn’t seem the Fused that Notum had seen earlier today were ready yet.

So, it came down to the dregs: the weakened, wounded, and exhausted human defenders against the singer grunts who had seen tens of thousands of their kind die during this assault. Adolin tried not to think about who he was killing: people who arguably were barely a year old. Legitimately angry at what had been done to them, they had been taken in by Odium, made soldiers, and now were forced to charge pike blocks. Adolin grunted as they came in again, knocking aside pikes, trying to get close and batter through the shield wall.

Most of his work was in stabilizing and resetting his pike. Pulling it back, stabbing in. Grueling work that quickly had his arms burning. It was a nightmare, lit only by a few weak sphere lanterns. He stood for a frighteningly long time, trying to shove back a tide of aggressive troops.

It was a miracle the defenders hadn’t fallen. The line would buckle and shift as the singers hit it, but Adolin’s entire world was that storming pike, heavy enough that it was hard to even keep raised, let alone do something useful with. Secondary was the pain of trying to keep himself from slipping because of his missing leg. He could sometimes lodge the peg against the edge of a cobblestone and get some leverage, until it inevitably slipped and he stumbled.

He felt sorry for the poor souls who had to not only keep their pikes in place, but also put up with him. Adolin gritted his teeth and kept at it for what seemed like an eternity—long past when his arms started going numb. He’d never been a liability on a battlefield before, and he hoped he wasn’t one now, but storms … the experience was absolutely, thoroughly, horribly humiliating.

My muscles aren’t used to this work. My ego isn’t accustomed to standing in a formation rather than running around in Plate, virtually impervious.

Weren’t there supposed to be rotations? Weren’t they supposed to have a chance to—

The captain of their rank called for rotation. Adolin gladly pulled back, and was embarrassed as he immediately knocked pikes against another man coming in to relieve him. Storms send it wasn’t the same one. Adolin stumbled out of the line, and someone blessedly took his pike while a woman offered him a ladle of water. He drank three in a row, and then checked the moon.

It had been at most fifteen minutes. Storms. They had to keep this up all night ? He settled down on the ground, allowed ten minutes or so before they’d have to stand in line again. Judging by the setting first moon, they had twelve hours until his father’s confrontation—which would happen at midday at Urithiru. Adolin barely felt he could handle a second shift, let alone twenty more.

The officer of the rank stepped up to Adolin and spoke softly. “I can rotate you out, Brightlord. You don’t have to go in on next shift.”

“No,” Adolin said. “As long as the others go in, I go in.”

The tall man, mostly a shadow in the night, seemed concerned. “The next shift is the difficult one, Brightlord.”

“More difficult than that ?” Adolin said, amazed.

“Everyone takes a turn in the shield wall.”

Storms, of course. The pikes were hard to carry, but the soldiers in the most danger would be in that front line. They rotated in a different way, as they had different equipment, but it made sense that everyone would do a stint there.

If he’d just survived a nightmare, what was coming would be … Storms, it would be Damnation itself. Adolin sat on the ground, listening to men shout, grunt, and bleed.

“Send me in,” he said to the officer, gritting his teeth. “I’ll be better on the front line anyway—I haven’t built the muscles for holding a pike. I’ll be more effective with spear and shield.” He gestured to his peg leg, and felt strangely—and stupidly—embarrassed at how poorly his trouser leg fit around it. “But don’t put me next to someone else weaker or untrained.”

“Less and less I can do about that lately, Brightlord,” the Azish man said, looking over his shoulder as another group of reinforcements arrived from the recruitment tent. Five men who carried their pikes even more uncertainly than Adolin.

Adolin sighed and took another drink, but his break was up before he had a chance to appreciate it. He was handed a spear and shield, sent forward at the side with some others—they’d rotate in from the edges while the men at the center of this section retreated through the middle of the pikemen.

Minutes later, he was fighting for survival against a tide of darkness come alive.

Visions twisted and spun around Shallan, never remaining stable for long. She saw her father beating her brother Balat—then she was killing her father, singing as she strangled him. Anger, pain, and betrayal. From parent to child to child. All of that, and so full of hatred —as her father hated his father and hated his children, who hated him.

Time distorted and scenes bled together.

Hatred.

Loathing.

Odium.

This was his realm, and Shallan had let him find her—so he punished her with scenes of killing. Her mother gasping, eyes burning. Tyn impaled on the end of Shallan’s Blade. Testament screaming as Shallan ripped her very soul apart.

That made it so difficult to remember the reconciliation she’d just had with her mother. Such happy moments were washed away, and she was back with Tyn in a grand tent that had seemed so magnificent to Shallan at the time—though it was nothing compared to Alethi finery. Tyn was standing over her, complaining that she’d have to pin Shallan’s death on Vathah.

I’m sorry that you have to learn the lesson this way. Sometimes, we must do things we don’t like, kid …

Shallan struck first, killing the woman with a Shardblade. Tyn died with burned-out eyes, and something was born inside Shallan. A persona who could kill, though it wouldn’t find a name for some time yet. She had two budding personas then, and maybe a third—the child—which she had never acknowledged.

But two to help her. One to hold memories. Another to fight and kill when she could not. These two would be bloodstained so Shallan could continue to function. Eventually Shallan would take one and make of it Veil—then later, when she needed a swordswoman, would take the other and make Radiant, but both had been growing for far longer than that.

In this vision, Shallan stabbed again, chopping at Tyn’s fallen body. And Formless stood behind her, nodding. That … wasn’t how this had happened. Was it?

In a flash she was killing Mraize, and her sword left blood as his head rolled free. From there she murdered Wit, who laughed. Then Jasnah, stern and unloving, dying as she chastised Shallan for her sword form.

“No,” Shallan whispered. “I wouldn’t kill them.”

Yet in the vision she did, over and over. Everyone who had ever loved her, helped her, or offered her mentoring. She’d killed her parents, then needed replacements to kill as well. Sebarial and Palona. Dalinar and Navani.

Blood on her hands, and her personas couldn’t help her.

“No!” she screamed. She knew this wasn’t real. She’d walked into this intentionally, but that didn’t matter anymore. Her will faltered as she was forced to watch, time and time again, as someone she loved died at her own hands.

Don’t let him win. Don’t believe.

Yet it was relentless. A repetitive chorus that proclaimed she was dangerous to anyone who got close to her. She would outgrow them, then murder them.

Just as she’d done to her parents.

Rhythms vibrated through Rlain as he appeared on a battlefield. Nearby, humans fled before a cheering host of singers. It was … the end. A fight won.

Others soon began to bring the warriors water and bandages. And they were beautiful. Civilians in flowing robes that displayed carapace to its fullest. Outfits of fine stitching and sturdy design, made of seasilk, dyed to complement skin tones. They spoke of the warriors having fought to defend the city. A singer city.

He longed to see it. Show me, he thought. Please?

He was among them suddenly. In their city—beautiful, with buildings that incorporated the flow of crem as it fell, sculpting it over the long term into shapes and designs. Natural patterns, making the city feel as if it were a feature of the landscape, not an imposition constructed atop it.

Here were blacksmiths who worked forges, artists who created swirling, flowing murals from sand or bits of colored shell, craftspeople who constructed drums or other instruments he didn’t recognize. All done out under the sun, instead of hidden away in a workshop, bearing artform or other magnificent forms. They wanted to be beneath the light and within the wind.

He found himself humming to the Rhythm of Awe. It was true. He’d always imagined they had culture, creations, nations, that rivaled those of the humans—but a part of him had felt an itching worry. That perhaps the singers weren’t capable of such majesty.

This was wonderful. Not just versions of what the humans did, but something distinctive. Marvelous. Theirs. In all these visions he’d been seeing the human perspective, except in that first one. Now he finally experienced something else.

His heritage.

This isn’t what you need to see, a voice whispered. It was Mishram. I’m sorry.

“Send me back then,” he said, reluctant.

He was again on the battlefield.

I hate this, Mishram whispered. I hate you. See.

Warriors were gathering at the center of the battlefield, and he joined them. Singers did not line up or form ranks. Even in this ancient army, nobody wore uniforms. There were leaders, by necessity, but no platoons or divisions.

In this, Rlain had come to think they might be able to learn from the humans. There was strength in regimentation, much like there was strength in a lattice structure of reeds forming a basket.

Bridger of Minds, something seemed to whisper to him on the wind. Not Mishram this time. The one who is of both worlds. You can heal us.

Rlain spun and looked, but saw only a sea of singer faces, each with its own distinctive pattern—red, black, white mixing. He’d heard a human child call him “painted” once, but of course that was a very human way of seeing it. In reality, the humans were the ones who seemed painted, covering their colors with one hue.

He tried not to think of it that way. Neither was painted, and neither was better. There could be a certain handsomeness to either. You could see human eyes and expressions better, as their irises were so easy to catch against the white. He found that appealing, and the mop of hair that was so unruly at times, where singer hairstrands tended to fall straight.

He looked around, wishing to find Renarin. Something was happening there, something he hadn’t hoped for—but which was exciting and invigorating. After years without even a basic warpair, and despairing of ever knowing one, was he actually close to something better? Something more?

He wanted to seize that, to hold to Renarin and never let go. He felt elated, and kept attuning the Rhythm of Joy, including when he deliberately shifted off it for another reason.

There isn’t time for frivolities during this important moment, he thought. This is why it’s better not to think of such bonds except in the proper form. It’s distracting.

But he wanted to be distracted. Did that make him a bad soldier? Fortunately, his attention was drawn by something manifesting at the center of the troops. There, on a stone elevated nine feet in the air, a figure grew from dark smoke. He knew Ba-Ado-Mishram’s face by now, but it was odd seeing her fully present, in a body that was nine times the size of an average singer, wreathed in bloodred clothing that exposed carapace. Her entire figure smoldered—wisps of dark light rising from it, the edges fuzzy. She was made, it appeared, entirely of black and dark red smoke, and her eyes were golden.

The soldiers hushed, the humming softening to the Rhythm of the Terrors. Mishram, so tall and dominating, like a mountain. She carried a staff, which she slammed down on the rock, the sound sharp in Rlain’s ears.

With that thought, he realized what he might be seeing. This vision was before Mishram had been captured. It was during the time Mishram had become their god, creating the False Desolation. That must have included the battle that he’d seen the tail end of, the corpses of which were still strewn about behind, though the army had moved to a cleaner section of ground to watch Mishram.

She hummed the Rhythm of Exultation. “A battle won,” she announced. “And gifts to be given. Some of you have been chosen for your valor. Come forth, and receive your gift.”

She held out a hand, and darkness rained from beneath her downturned palm, forming a miniature storm. A singer was tapped on the shoulder by an imperious stormform, then sent to stumble up before her. She nodded, and he stepped into the storm—though he’d been in warform, he was but a doll to her, her palm large enough it could have held him.

The crowd grew even more still as he emerged from the darkness—altered, as if by a highstorm, into a new form. Direform, with glowing red eyes, and carapace that imitated a suit of armor—more tightly closed, with spikes. A form of power, and one of the best for war.

Two more were chosen and took upon them forms of power.

“The other Unmade,” Mishram said, her voice booming across them, “have agreed to support me. We are winning. Now we press the humans. Relentless.”

“And Odium?” Rlain called, his voice ringing out across a quiet, awed crowd of soldiers. “What of him?”

“He is locked away,” she said, “like the human Heralds. I used his power to bind him for a time. He cannot waste our lives any longer.” She focused on Rlain and reared up, standing tall rather than crouching. “Who are you, soldier?”

“I’m … I’m nobody,” Rlain said. “Why do you fight, Mishram? Don’t you want peace?”

“ Humans will never want peace unless they are forced into it,” she said. “Once I bring them to the brink of collapse, we shall see. Who are you?”

“Nobody,” Rlain said. “I choose to be nobody.”

With that, he turned and left.

First alone, with many humming or shouting to words of betrayal. He left among the corpses, and then … was followed. One here, one there, not a flood. A trickle. Some just … turned and walked away.

Mishram appeared in front of him. “Why? Why do you leave? We’re winning!”

Rlain pulled to a stop. Why?

“I rejected him,” he said, “but not to replace him with another war.”

“We can win!”

“At what cost?” he said. “I’m done.”

He walked around her. And others, they did join him. The listeners, who would together break ties with Mishram and the rest of their kind, giving up their forms in order to seek their own way.

“Singer,” Mishram said, standing tall, calling after him. “This will not serve you. I stepped into God’s role. I took his pool, his perpendicularity, and am tied to every singer who holds a form. To every spren, to every fiber of Roshar.”

Rlain looked back at her, hesitating.

Mishram’s expression changed, and she suddenly hummed to Confusion, glancing around. “It is you. It is this. Yes …” She focused on him again. “This was the day. The day I realized … I realized that I had to find another way.”

“When the listeners left?” Rlain said. “That was when you decided to meet with the humans?”

“I was betrayed …” Her eyes flashed. “Because of you.”

“Because of evil people, doing evil,” he said, turning from her. “That does not make my action unjust.” He continued to walk away.

“Toathan,” another said, running to him. “Why do you leave?”

Rlain turned to them. Toathan. That name … He knew that name. One of the ancestors. His ancestor, a name recorded in song. Others joined him, asking what they should do. He could see confusion in their eyes, worry about the war.

“Something is wrong with all forms lately,” a femalen said. “You can all feel it, can’t you? It feels wrong. The rhythms change. The songs warp.”

“I’m done,” another said. “It’s never going to end. We just keep fighting. And fighting. And fighting.”

“Go,” Rlain said to them. “Gather your families. We will leave together, enter the storm and abandon our forms. She has taken up the mantle of divinity, and in so doing, touched everything. That wrongness you feel? It will dig deep into us if we do not act. It will change our minds, draw us back to her.”

“Abandon our … forms?” the femalen asked.

“What are we without forms?” said another, to Anxiety.

“Free,” Rlain said to Resolve.

They nodded, and went running for the warcamp in the near distance. To gather children, once-mates. Rlain was proud, in this instance, to stand in his ancestor’s place. The next part would be traumatic for them, as they eventually entered a dull fog of thought—where only a few songs would survive.

And in the distance, Mishram stood tall. She let us go, he realized. He’d never considered that. He’d imagined them sneaking away, but this was the full light of day, beneath the sun and sky.

For all her faults, she hadn’t forced them to stay. And after this, when she’d been asked to seriously consider peace, she’d … learned from the listeners. He saw her standing there, surveying the battlefield, and she seemed to waver.

“It’s a different thing entirely to see them die when you are in command, isn’t it, Mishram?” he asked.

Yes. Her voice vibrated through him. I wish the best of you hadn’t chosen to leave. Perhaps you’d have helped me.

“Perhaps,” he said. “Or perhaps we’d have been corrupted by your ambition.”

Now what? she asked. You know my failures, my pains, Bridger of Minds. I want … want so badly to break something, everything, for what was done to me. I … I cannot hold it back, most days. I rage, I scream. I will kill you, if I can. I fear it. What will you do, when you find me?

“I don’t know yet,” he said, and started walking away. “Maybe I’ll just listen.”

It was the darkest day Renarin could remember.

The first day the visions had struck him. The day he’d worried he was beyond redemption.

It had been only … what, a year and a half ago? Yet he felt so much younger, isolated and alone in his room at the warcamps. Dalinar liked austerity, and that affected his sons as well. So Renarin sat on a hard wooden chair, in a room with too little light, enveloped in darkness.

The visions were obviously trying to upset him. He stood up, and it began: his first time seeing the future. He saw the coming storm, and numbers in the air, indicating the time until its looming arrival. The Everstorm.

The sights had terrified him—and as he remembered this day, he screamed, hands over his eyes, overwhelmed by how much noise and chaos crashed into him. Yet despite all this sensation, he now understood. The younger him had seen into the Spiritual Realm, which meant all the possibilities were vying for his attention.

He cut off his screams, and forced himself to watch, as he hoped to be able to parse it better now. But he couldn’t help remembering his fear—his worry at what was wrong with him. That he—in seeing the future—was to be consigned to Damnation for his heresy.

Renarin’s father saw visions too, but in his, he lived the life of a Knight Radiant of old. He saw Nohadon, the great king, or witnessed grand events like the Recreance. When Renarin saw visions, they were of blackness, a coming storm, and even—in the most terrible moments—his father falling to the influence of the enemy and becoming Odium’s general.

The messaging seemed clear. Something was wrong with Renarin. I will be sorry, Glys said, his voice anguished. I will be, Renarin.

Eventually, Glys would offer some explanation—that he, as a newer spren and only recently defected to Sja-anat, hadn’t realized what all this would do to Renarin. Neither of them had understood the greater truth: that what Renarin saw wasn’t inevitable, and the possibilities he saw were heavily influenced by the enemy. Renarin stood up. He’d spent so long thinking about the visions, and how to avoid their terrible possibilities. But what about the present moment? Shouldn’t he work to change the now ?

It is not our strength, Glys whispered. We focus on what will be.

“I have to do a lot of things that I’m not very good at,” Renarin said. “That’s basically my whole life, Glys.”

Soon after this, the younger Renarin would learn to channel all this information into a visualization. Stained glass windows; a way to bring order to the chaos of the Spiritual Realm. He could do that now, so he turned around, and the flashing visions crystallized and grew into windows surrounding him as if he were in a dark room—light shining from outside.

In the windows, he saw dates depicted in glyphs in the glass. He saw furious winds, crimson lightning, the eyes of the enemy peering through—bloody and terrible. But the past was dead and gone. What of the now?

New windows grew around him, vibrant, each color so bright and vivid it seemed to be an infused gemstone. They showed a dark landscape, crops that barely grew, withered towns, a people enslaved. He saw his father’s funeral pyre, which was foolishness. When his father died, he’d be turned into a statue like all Alethi kings and highprinces.

Each of these windows had signs of Mishram’s touch, but they were in corners, hidden. As if she were … piggybacking on Odium’s visions.

I do think all of this is leading us somewhere, Renarin thought to himself. Odium is trying to break us, but Mishram is using his attacks to tell us something. About isolation, and betrayal, and pain …

He found these windows too dominated by Odium to tell him what he wanted to know. “This is your influence, isn’t it?” Renarin said to the sky. “I’ve always seen the future you want. Even if you weren’t paying attention to me directly, your shadow looms long.”

It has to be that way, Renarin, Glys thought to a mournful rhythm. It is what I am. Of him, now.

“No,” Renarin said. “I spent my life being told I had to become an ardent, Glys. Because people couldn’t think of anything else to do with a highborn boy who couldn’t fight.” He squeezed his hands into fists to keep from trembling. People thought he was emotionless because he didn’t take part in their conversations or find what they did interesting, but they were wrong. He felt too many emotions. When he’d been a child, it had been difficult to contain them.

They could all read each other better than he could read them, and that made them assume they understood him. When the truth was, he didn’t work by the same rules, and he never had. He saw the world from a different perspective.

He could make that his strength. He shoved into the darkness again, away from these windows, and as he did, he summoned his Light. Despite his many attempts to learn to make illusions like Shallan did, this was what it always came to for him. Light growing like a ball in his hand, shining all around him, and showing him truth.

The ancient Radiants must have known this was possible, right? Their order was named for it. His society said that seeing the future was a terrible and evil thing, but maybe that was just because Odium influenced it so heavily. Surely there was a way to cut through it.

Everyone saw by light. Could you see better by a purer light?

A new set of windows began to grow around Renarin, like crystals forming. He held his hand high, filling it with the power of this realm, and—bathed in that cool, white illumination—the windows changed. Shadows melted from them, fled from them. Darkness evaporated.

Renarin was left with the truth. A dozen varieties of it. For while certain things were true no matter what perspective you saw them from, that wasn’t the case for most things in life. The answer to most questions was “Well, it depends …” That went for inconsequential questions like what one wanted for breakfast, as well as for vitally important ones like “What do you want from life?”

Is this possible? Glys said, awed. Can we see this?

“We change the now, Glys,” Renarin said. “The future always begins with the now.”

Each window depicted him. Renarin the ardent was here, with a shaved head and an embarrassing beard that didn’t grow in that well. Renarin the scholar was another option, wearing the arcane robes of the stormwardens. The window presented him in a dynamic posture, but he’d known enough stormwardens to think poorly of their art. Perhaps that was Aunt Navani’s bias. People inherently viewed any man who tried to become a scholar as ridiculous; it had infected even him.

Another was Renarin the general, and he found this interesting, because he thought he might have been good at tactical decision-making. This him wore a strange uniform, one he didn’t recognize—not Alethi, though of that cut. He stood at Urithiru, he thought, and was older, with longer hair and a clean-shaven face. He studied this one a long while, for the Oathgate platforms visible to the sides were covered over with fields.

He moved on from that window eventually, instead seeking one that he’d glimpsed earlier: the one window where he stood with a tall, handsome singer with a skullcap of carapace and a neat, dark beard. Rlain. Was there only one window where he was with Rlain in the future?

He has hard times ahead, Glys said.

“What do you see of them?” Renarin asked.

Only what you do, but the future is … mine. I understand it. I don’t see farther, or more, but better.

“That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, Glys,” Renarin said. “I’m sorry.”

Rlain, Glys said. Look at him in this picture.

A singer wearing a Bridge Four uniform, but the city behind them was obviously a singer one—judging by the architecture. Indeed, it was probably Kholinar.

“If I go with him,” Renarin said, “I’ll have to turn my back on humankind, to an extent.”

As he will need to turn his back on his kind to an extent, Glys agreed. Both sides will hate both of you.

“Like both gods hate you?” Renarin said.

Yes, Glys said softly, trembling with a rhythm. You will understand. If you walk that path, you will understand, Renarin. I … do not want you to have to.

“It might be the only way,” Renarin said, looking at the depiction of himself in the window, wearing singer clothing, standing with Rlain’s arm in his. That flowing outfit was remarkable, designed to show carapace Renarin didn’t have.

Rlain in a human uniform. Renarin in one of the singers’ formal outfits. It was a statement. A future that Renarin would never have imagined for himself. Growing up, he’d assumed that his lack of attraction to the young women around him was related to his other mental divergences. Now he saw it as something else entirely.

No one is normal. Normal doesn’t exist.

He could choose any of these lives and work toward them, though none of them were guaranteed. Was this really the life he’d choose? The risk he’d choose?

Why? Glys said. Why do you want to be with him?

“Because he has tried to understand us,” Renarin said. “I love that he tries so hard. So many people just dismiss the different. I’ve lived that all my life, seeing it all around me. But Rlain … he wants to understand everyone.” Renarin reached up and touched the glass. “I think he truly does understand—me. One of the only people to ever do so. Other than my family, I don’t think anyone has ever wanted to.”

This path leads to both pain and joy, Glys said.

“So much better to feel,” Renarin said, “than to take the path that leads to only greyness and safe solitude. This is what I want. Him, yes, but also the life where we try to blend these worlds.”

Why?

“Because someone has to, Glys,” Renarin said, pushing on the window with his hand. “My father can’t end this war by drawing lines and trying to enforce them. If we want to end the war for real, we have to change hearts, not maps. ”

They changed the future by changing today. He’d pushed past the awkwardness. He’d learned that Rlain was interested. Now, that final step. Renarin shoved his way through this stained glass window and vanished from his vision, relying on Glys’s guidance to enter another, where Rlain was walking with a group of several hundred singers.

Rlain pulled up sharply as Renarin appeared in front of him. Then he stepped forward. “Renarin?”

“Yes,” Renarin said. Then he took a deep breath, reached for Rlain, and kissed him.

It was harder than he’d have liked, given how tall Rlain was. The singer didn’t flinch, fortunately—because that might have broken Renarin’s will. He let Renarin take him by the sides of the face, fingers brushing carapace, and kiss him.

A flood of emotions. Passion, nervousness, and an overwhelming heat—so many emotions. Yes, Renarin knew emotion. Today he basked in it.

This was the future he wanted. It wasn’t the one that others might have chosen, and wasn’t one that many would have chosen for him. He wasn’t even certain it was right, but it was what he wanted. He would merely have to hope that those who cared for him would understand that the decision was his to make, not theirs.

He pulled back and waited for a reply, anxious.

“That was … nicer than I expected,” Rlain said to the Rhythm of Anxiety. “Are you sure, Renarin? I don’t think that the world is going to take kindly to us being together. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Will you be the one to hurt me?”

“No,” Rlain said to Confidence. “Never.”

“Then I will risk it,” he said. “Come on. I think … I think I’m close to understanding what Mishram is trying to say to us.”