Five damned days on land, and I had already forgotten how much I wasn’t made for this. We were barely forty
feet from shore, and I was ready to retch.
Or maybe that was just the physical reaction of returning to Ara, which I desperately did not want to do. Mostly because I had no idea what would be waiting for us there.
I pushed myself up from the rail and turned around, running my eyes across the crowded deck of the ship and up those spine-like sails. We’d had to charter a larger boat just to carry all of the people who were coming back to Ara. Most of the former slaves had chosen to remain in Threll, but many still would return with us.
I watched them hustle and bustle across the deck, leaning excitedly over the edge of the boat, pointing, laughing. Tisaanah had mentioned that most of them would not have ever seen the ocean before, and I had to admit that it was charming to watch their excitement. Even if another part of me wanted to say, Give it another three hours and see how you like it when you’re vomiting your guts out.
“You are famous.” Nura appeared beside me, so silently that she seemed to fold from the air. She smirked and
raised her eyebrows, nodding to a group of people across the deck.
I followed her gaze and sighed.
The sea was not the only subject of the former slaves’ wide-eyed amazement. Faces turned constantly to shoot curious, awed glances to me and Tisaanah. This particular group looked away hurriedly as soon as they noticed my stare.
“You two put on a show. I’m sure none of them have ever seen anything like it.” Her gaze flicked to me. “Neither have I.”
“You didn’t see it.”
“I heard enough.” She lifted her hands, fingers spread to mimic dazzlement. “A great serpent of fire. Interesting.”
“They exaggerate.”
“Probably. But you did manage to use magic while dosed with Chryxalis. And you went up against Reshaye. So I know that no matter how stories grow, something remarkable happened in that ballroom.”
“The only remarkable thing that happened is that everyone managed to make it out alive.”
A small, humorless laugh. “That is remarkable. We’re in agreement there.”
My eyes found Tisaanah, who stood at the head of the boat, body pressed to the edge of the rail, chin lifted. As if she were throwing herself into the ocean air. Remarkable indeed.
Nura followed my gaze.
“You know… I do want you to be happy, Max.”
She said it quietly, almost under her breath. The statement was so jarring, so uncharacteristic, that I had no choice but to whip my head around to look at her.
I scoffed. “What, are you suddenly desperate for forgiveness?”
“You don’t have to believe me.” Her gaze slid to me. Serious. “But it’s the truth. And no matter what happens
when we get home, it still will be.”
There was something about the way she said it — no matter what happens when we get home — that made me suddenly uneasy.
But before I could ask her what, exactly, that was supposed to mean, I turned around to see that she had already drifted away, melting into the crowd like another shadow.
Still, I turned those words over in my head as I settled back against the rail. My eyes found Tisaanah again. She was still in the same spot, leaning over the edge of the deck, looking out at the shore.
I started to approach her, and then stopped myself. Stopped myself, and just watched her, framed against the image of the sky and the sea and the distant Threllian hills.
Less than a year ago, a young woman in a ridiculous dress had been abandoned at my cottage and refused to leave. And now, absolutely everything was different. All of my certainties had been rearranged, some destroyed, some new ones built in their place.
And for the first time in so long, something new altogether had begun to grow in the space between those certainties, something harder to see but more powerful, more dangerous, more beautiful:
Possibility.
I slid my hands into my pockets, lifted my chin to the cold caress of the ocean air, and stood there for a moment longer.
TISAANAH
I clutched the side of the ship and swept one final glance out over the distant Threllian shorelines.
Hours ago, I had watched the Mikov estate unravel before my eyes as we Stratagrammed away. The home that had broken me and built me, and that I had broken in return, disappeared into nothing but smoke before my eyes.
I thought I would feel something more poignant in that moment, but I hadn’t. It wasn’t until now that the wave crashed over me. Now, as I stood on a boat packed to capacity with former slaves going to a new life, I whispered goodbye to Threll for perhaps the final time. Maybe I had felt nothing when I said goodbye to Esmaris’s city because it had never been a home, just a prison.
But here, I could see the hints of flowing plains, far far in the distance. I could feel the faint, echoing call of my home. Of my mother and the salty smell of her skin, cool and refreshing in her embrace. It hurt to say goodbye to that.
I looked down at my hands, two-tone skin pressed over the damp wood of the rail.
I felt different.
I had not heard Reshaye speak again, but I could feel it within me as if it were coursing through my blood. Certainly, its power, if not its voice. I had thought of my visions many times since I awoke, running through it step by step. I told Max about the whole thing, too. Neither of us understood, exactly, what I had done, if anything. Maybe it was just a waking dream, a vision like the nightmares Reshaye thrust upon me.
But it felt more real than that.
I curled my fingers together and pressed my hand over my heart, grounding myself in the faint pulse beneath my skin.
The cadence of familiar footsteps approached and Max leaned against the railing beside me.
“The last time I said goodbye to these shores,” I murmured, “I thought it would be a miracle if I made it to the other side alive.”
“At least we can be glad the circumstances are different this time.”
“And I was alone.”
I had been so, so alone.
I didn’t pull my eyes from the shore, but I felt his gaze drag over my skin like a caress.
“I’m glad those circumstances are different, too.”
My hand slid over his, and his fingers easily rearranged to accommodate mine.
Seven months ago, I stood on the deck of a much smaller and much dirtier boat, blood running down my back, three desperate sentences running through my head over and over again. The ghost of that girl still lived inside me somewhere. She had what it took to survive, and I had what it took to live.
I had Wielding skills honed by months of relentless brute force and instruction by the best damn teacher in Ara.
I had magic running through my veins that could destroy and create and rebuild.
I had the ability not just to look at people, but to see
them, and to carry their stories with my own.
And, most precious of all, I had people to protect — love that burned for all of them like an enduring flame deep in my chest.
“We’re not done,” I whispered.
I didn’t even realize that I’d said it aloud until I felt Max’s fingers squeeze mine.
“Barely gotten started,” he said, and a smile tugged at my mouth.
The Threllian shore grew farther and farther away. And within my thoughts, I whispered to myself just as I had seven months ago.
My name is Tisaanah. I am a free woman and yet still a slave. I am fragments of many things but a whole of only myself. I am a daughter of no worlds, and all worlds.
And I am not done yet.
