When I rose the next morning, too-early after a fitful, restless sleep, Max was already up.
He sat at the dining table with a letter in his hand. He slid it to me silently. Tisaanah, the front read, in perfect inked script.
Grateful for the distraction, I opened it.
Tisaanah –
It was a pleasure to see you at last night’s festivities. You certainly made an impact. It would appear that many attendees developed a sudden, pressing interest in Threllian humanitarian causes — interesting coincidence, no?
But alas, this is not the subject of my correspondence today. Instead, I would like to discuss your evaluations. Normally, results would be delivered by letter and would not be available for another week or two. However, I would prefer to deliver yours in person.
Please come to the Tower of Midnight for noon.
My clerks will be expecting your singular arrival.
We have much to discuss.
– Z.
I read it, then handed it across the table to Max, who did the same.
“It seems I will be traveling to the Capital again,” I said. “It seems we will,” Max replied, and we looked at each
other, anxious curiosity unfurling between us.
 |
I TOLD myself that I was not nervous.
I told myself that I was not nervous as I recited every word of that letter through my mind, as I flipped through possible outcomes. As I picked at my fingernails, watching the Towers rise into view.
Max and I both knew, of course, exactly what “your singular arrival” meant — “don’t bring Max” — but since I couldn’t reliably Stratagram myself to the city on my own anyway, he would accompany me to the Towers before my meeting. I was happy for his company.
“Perhaps they changed their decision,” I said, allowing a note of tentative hope into my voice. “About sending support to Threll with me.”
“Maybe.”
I heard what Max wasn’t saying aloud: that it seemed too easy. And as much as I hoped otherwise, I couldn’t help but think so, too. I’d gotten plenty of attention last night, yes. But it still felt like the first step of a larger struggle, not a victory all its own.
A wrinkle of thought formed between my eyebrows as I revisited my memories of the night before. “Maybe there is something else.”
“What do you mean?”
One sentence kept snagging in my mind. One thing that Zeryth had said during our dance that imbued me with a small, tentative hope. “Last night, Zeryth said he had to
test me. And that I passed. I thought he meant the evaluations. But maybe he meant something else.”
A second of silence.
“Test you,” Max repeated. His voice was odd, quiet.
“Yes.” I was lost on thought as I began to scale the steps to the Towers’ entrance. “Maybe because of what I asked for, they—”
“He said that they had to test you?” “Yes. What—”
A yank on my arm interrupted my thought. I turned, and one look at Max withered the rest of my question on my lips. In a matter of seconds, all of the color had drained from his face. A spike of panic leapt in my throat.
“What’s wrong?”
He said nothing. Just stared at me. “Max—”
“He said that they had to test you,” he said, again.
I nodded, confused, and Max just stood there with his hand still around my wrist, brow lined, mouth tight, looking as if he had just made some terrible realization.
“What’s wrong, Max?” I pressed.
But his gaze flicked back to me, eyes wide and piercing. “Don’t go, Tisaanah.”
He said it so fast that the words blurred into one desperate sound. I didn’t even know if I heard him right. “What?”
“Don’t go to the Towers. To the meeting. Don’t go.”
“I—” The expression on his face, the sheer terror of it, gutted me. “I have to go.”
He shook his head, once sharp movement. “No, you don’t. You don’t have to do anything, Tisaanah.”
“But—“ I was so confused. This was everything I’d worked for — wasn’t it? “I don’t understand.”
“Listen to me.” Max’s fingers tightened around my wrist. He took a step closer, his eyes bearing into me with desperate intensity. “No matter what they offer you. No
matter what they give you. Whatever they ask you to do. Say no. Alright? Even if they send an army to Threll today. Even if they give you everything you want. Say no.”
His voice was shaking.
My lips parted, but it took a moment for the words to follow. “Because they will not fulfill their promises?”
He let out a sound that was almost a laugh, but uglier, rougher. “It’s not about that, Tisaanah. None of this is about that.”
I opened my mouth. Then shut it. Finally, I could only choke out, “Then why?”
Max looked at me in silence, jaw tight.
Of course. What else did I expect? “You will not tell me.” “I can’t.”
Acidic frustration ripped through me. Surely he understood the weight of what he was asking me to do, or not do. And still, here he was, guarding his secrets?
“That is unfair,” I said, quietly. “I know you hate the Orders, but—”
“I will go with you.” He said it fast, in one exhaled breath. “We can go to Threll today. We don’t need an army. You and I could do it alone. We will find a way.”
His words careened through me, slamming against my heart with a force that left me momentarily speechless.
“I mean it, Tisaanah. I’m serious. Right now. We can go right now.” He lifted his palm, gesturing to the sea. But his eyes did not leave mine, and I drowned in that thread connecting our gazes.
“If the Orders offer me support, then I need it,” I rasped. “I have nothing else.”
And there was no hesitation, no pause, as he stepped closer and said, “You have me.”
My chest hurt.
I wanted to smooth the desperate wrinkle between his eyebrows. I wanted to still the quivering muscle in his
throat that betrayed the intensity of his anxiety. I wanted to take the kiss that I had left behind last night.
And most of all — more than anything, anything — I wanted to say yes.
But this was not about me.
And he knew that, too. I could see it in the anguish in his face: that we both understood that what he was proposing was a fantasy. The two of us alone could never do what I wanted — needed — to do.
I placed my hand over his. “You must tell me why.”
What I meant: Give me a reason. Give me any reason to say yes.
The corners of his mouth tightened. “Do you trust me?”
Gods, I did. More than anyone. “I trust that you are trying to protect me above all else.”
A flicker of hurt crossed his face. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” I said quietly, “that I am willing to make sacrifices that you are not.”
His fingers tightened around mine. He barely breathed, barely blinked. “He could be dead, Tisaanah,” he murmured, and he sounded like it hurt him as much to say it as it did for me to hear it. “What if he is? Even if you go there, he could be gone.”
Just to hear my worst fears condensed into words rose a lump in my throat. “I know.”
And I did. I knew that it was unlikely that Serel had survived. I knew how fragile his flesh was, how easy it would be for one slave boy to be killed by the cruelty or malice or mere carelessness of the Threllian Lords.
“But it’s not just about him,” I whispered. “There are so, so many.”
Because, after all, such heavy sacrifices had already been made for me. How could I not return them? How could I stop at anything that would ever repay them? That was all I was worth. Even though the part of me that
lingered beneath all of that — the part of me that stood against the wall last night, drowning in the sensation of Max’s breath — wanted nothing but this.
We stared at each other for a long moment.
“Tisaanah, please,” he said, at last. “Promise me.”
I extracted my fingers from his, then placed my hands on either side of his face. I drank in his features. Then I pulled his face toward me and pressed my lips against his forehead. Inhaled his scent of ash and lilacs slowly, savoring it. And in my exhale, I whispered against his skin, “I promise you that I will be alright.”
I turned away before he could say anything else, and I didn’t look back as I scaled the steps to the Tower entrance. It was only as I opened those heavy doors that I cast one final glance over my shoulder to see Max still standing there, watching me go.
I lifted my palm in a wave he did not return. And as I curled my shaking hands around the handle to close the door behind me, I wondered if I had just made the biggest mistake of my life.
