T he injuries were worse than I had let on to Klasto, Blif, and Max. The truth was, when we returned to the others, I could barely move. At least
Sammerin healed the burns easily. He didn’t bother to scold me, though he did give me that disapproving “Don’t-think-I-don’t-see-you” look that he gave all his uncooperative patients.
Ishqa was not pleased that we had left. He proposed that we go back tomorrow with Sammerin present to make things, as Ishqa put it, “safer.” I was more than willing, but Max was steadfast.
“Absolutely fucking not,” he’d say, every time the topic was broached. “She could have died.”
These days, I regularly confronted my own mortality. So what?
A part of me was secretly glad, though, that we didn’t return to Klasto and Blif right away. A knot in my stomach persisted through the rest of the day at the thought of what I had witnessed. Max’s body. His mind. Yes, the tattoos had been rendered useless, but the ink would cover him forever. I knew how it felt for someone else’s will to alter your body without permission. He would have to think about Nura, and what she did to him, every time he looked at his own skin.
And even that, as horrible as it was, was nothing compared to what I had seen in his mind. It was a patchwork of scars and walls, either markings of a vicious wound or the defensive measures raised to prevent another one. I was so close to the man I loved, close enough to cradle the precious pieces of everything that made him him.
And yet, that also meant that I was also close enough to see how badly he had been hurt—been hurt by me, intentionally or not.
I was quiet for the rest of the evening. I didn’t want to open my mouth for fear of what might come pouring out. We got rooms in a dilapidated inn
—if it could even be called that—and went our separate ways early. Sammerin was the first to go. Zagos was a strange place, but it was a real city, and not one that was in the midst of a war. Sammerin was eager to disappear into a dark room full of beautiful strangers.
“This place is dangerous,” I said to him, as he slipped off into the streets. “Don’t get yourself killed.”
He gave me a tiny smirk over his shoulder that scolded me for not knowing him at all.
Ishqa, of course, disappeared again and declined to tell us where to. Brayan retreated to his room, and Max to his shortly after. But I had no interest in sleep.
A few doors down the street, I found a pub that seemed like it had once been a library—books lined the walls, stuffed into the crevices between cracks and crumbled stone. Most were written in languages I didn’t recognize, let alone understand, and time or water had long ago destroyed their legibility even if I did.
Still, the place was quiet, occupied only by an old man with a scarred face who looked like he was halfway to the grave. He spoke neither Aran nor Thereni, so I gesticulated through a request for…something. What I got was a cracked wine glass full of clear, hot liquid. One sip burned all the way down to my stomach. It was, by a significant margin, the strongest alcohol I had ever tasted.
Right now, I wasn’t sure that I minded all that much.
The pub-slash-library was divided into many little rooms—by nature of its placement in ruins that forced it to accommodate their shape—and I kept walking until I found a tiny, secluded spot in the back. There, I drank and practiced. For hours, I watched white butterflies of light sputter to life and wither away in my palms.
Useless, yes, but at least it was something. That was more than I had before. Whatever Max and I had done had been partially successful.
But those walls…
Butterflies lived and died in my hands, over and over and over again.
My drink was three-quarters finished when I heard footsteps. I looked up to see Max leaning against the doorframe, watching me.
I started. “How long have you been here?”
Confusion briefly crossed his face, and I realized that in my drunkenness, I’d spoken in Thereni without thinking.
“Short minute,” he replied, in heavily accented Thereni.
My throat bobbed. I hadn’t been expecting that—for him to remember Thereni.
“I’m sorry,” he said in Aran, as he sat beside me. “That’s more or less all I can say. Yes, no. Big, small. The colors. That sort of thing. I don’t know why I know it.”
I did.
“What about the curse words?” I said. “Thereni has very good curse words.”
“Enlighten me.”
I did, and Max repeated the phrase with hilariously intense concentration.
“Beautiful,” I declared.
His pronunciation was terrible, actually, but it still brought me great joy to hear Max saying “dick-sucking asshole” with all the focused deliberation of someone learning ancient prayers.
He chuckled, and I watched the path his smile tread over his face. It disappeared when he looked at my drink. He picked it up, sniffed it, and made a face. “You’re going to be very unhappy tomorrow.”
“I am perfectly sober.”
“Ah yes. You’ve convinced me. You’re puffechtly soober.” He smeared the words into an exaggerated slur.
In all seriousness, I hadn’t realized how drunk I was until this moment. “How did you find me here?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Luck. But…” He cleared his throat. “I’m glad that I did.
I owe you an apology. For today.”
“You have nothing to apologize for.” He scoffed. “That isn’t true.”
“It is true.”
You don’t even understand how much.
I leaned against the table. My head was foggy, emotions close to the surface. When I opened my mouth, I had intended to say something innocuous. Instead, I said, “Tell me about Ilyzath.”
Max’s face changed. I cursed myself immediately, wishing I could take the words back.
“It was more or less what you’d expect an ancient magical prison designed for torture to be.”
“I tried to get you out,” I said. I couldn’t stop talking. Gods, I was drunk. I was never, ever doing this again. “Many times. I hope you didn’t think we had forgotten you. That I had— had let you go. Even when you were in there, you were not alone.”
A wrinkle formed between Max’s brows. He gave me a weak smile. “The truth is, I didn’t think much of anything, in there. It strips you of everything that tethers you to reality. Takes away any connection to the physical world. Surrounds you with things that look real and smell real and feel real, but are figments pulled from your own head. It’s terrible, but at least it’s just one long dream.”
“When you saw things, did you…”
“Did I understand what I was seeing? No. Not really.” He gazed into the dark. I wondered what he saw within it. “They were horrible images.”
I remembered visiting Ilyzath with Max. It had shown me my mother, dying, begging me to save her—so real that even though I knew it was an illusion, I found myself questioning every rule I knew of reality.
“But they were like shadows,” Max said. “I knew they must be related to my life in some way, but not how. Maybe that was a sick sort of gift.”
A gift. Perhaps. Perhaps the walls that had so horrified me today had been the only thing shielding his sanity.
“I’m so happy you’re free,” I murmured.
His eyes flicked back to me, abandoning the past for the present. “Me too.”
“I missed you.” “I—”
“I still miss you.” My voice cracked.
Don’t cry, you idiot. Don’t make such a fool of yourself.
I had gotten so skilled at locking away every shred of vulnerability inside of me. Until Max. Until I allowed him to see those weaknesses and unspoken fears. I hadn’t known until then how much I needed it, how much strength came from the act of sharing weakness. I was so tired of being strong.
And the man in front of me, so close that I could feel the heat of his body and smell that agonizingly familiar scent of ash and lilac, barely knew
who I was. He was not my lover. But gods, he looked just like him. And right now, I wanted to pretend.
The way he was looking at me sent a shiver up my spine. “I’m right here, Tisaanah,” he murmured.
“Not all of you.”
A wry smile. “Maybe I’m better off without the parts I’m missing.”
But those were the parts I loved.
“You know…” He shifted closer—such a small movement, but every part of me reacted to the closing of the distance between us. “I’m not… good with words. But I do feel something. Maybe the memories are gone, but when I saw you, you weren’t a stranger.”
I was so desperate for him, even this admission seemed like so much.
I stood and stepped closer, closer, until Max was inches away, his gaze locked to me. Slowly, I parted my legs and climbed over him, my knees on either side of his hips. The hard warmth of his body suffused mine, my breasts barely brushing his chest with each breath. Something sharpened in his stare. His hands fell to my hips, grasping me a little tighter than I expected, as if he was holding himself back from pulling me closer.
I didn’t want him to hold himself back. Self-control made a soul tired. I was sick of it.
I traced the lean muscle of his shoulders, then his neck, swirling my fingertip over the ink fragments of the broken Stratagrams—brushing his jawline as his throat bobbed, then his temple, then the tense line of his brow. Down the slope of his nose. And finally, over his lips, which parted slightly at my touch.
One of his hands slid around my back, grasping tighter. The other moved up my body, caressing the curve of my waist, barely brushing the underside of my breast—lingering for a split second, and if he thought I didn’t notice, I did, because every muscle in my body wanted to arc into that touch—before leaving and settling at my cheek.
Not pulling me to him, but wanting to. I knew he wanted to.
I wondered if he would taste the same. If he would move the same way as he filled me. If he would still reach for me when he came, as if he wanted me as close as possible in that moment, with all barriers between us erased.
If he did, would that change anything? Because there would still be a barrier, even if it was a different kind, the kind that lived between me and
every memory he had of us.
That thought chilled me even in my drunken loneliness. It whispered in my ear, This could hurt you.
Worse, it could hurt him. I hesitated.
It wasn’t so much as a movement, but Max saw it anyway. I watched his own uncertainty flicker across his face.
“You’re drunk,” he murmured. “You don’t know if you want this.” What I wanted was not the problem.
I moved closer, so close my nose brushed his. “What do you want?”
He huffed a laugh. “What a question. You haven’t taught me the Thereni words for that yet.”
The hand at my back tightened, grasping a handful of my thin dress. A wave of heat surged between us, and my hips rolled of their own accord, drawing a hiss from Max and a small, wordless groan from me.
Max whispered, “We—”
It was so easy. I was already so close. It took just the slightest turn of my head to kiss him.
It was not a kiss between strangers.
It was a kiss that gave, and took, a thousand unspoken words. Slow— not frantic and messy, but languishing, desperate. My lips parted for him immediately and his tongue slipped against mine, exploring my mouth with deliberate, thorough care. Everything he had been resisting snapped, and he pulled me so close that I thought he might crush me, and I would welcome it. I put my arms around his neck, clung to him, pulled myself closer with every kiss.
Heat built at the apex of my thighs, just from our closeness, even with our clothing between us. When he shifted, drawing me closer, sparks of pleasure spiraled up my spine. Pleasure and want—no, more than want, need.
Our mouths broke out of sheer necessity for breath and I released a tiny whimper. Max’s hands clenched around me.
“That’s the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard,” he murmured, the words rumbling through me.
I kissed him again. Again, again. My hands slid over his head, his hair, his neck, his shoulders. I memorized him all over again.
Something was building between us, a growing fissure. Every sense was connected to him. Every breath. A haze fell over me that had nothing to do with the alcohol.
He pulled away. “You’re drunk.”
He kissed me one more time, gently. His hand slowly released my hair, at the same time as he let out three heaving breaths, visibly struggling to collect himself. His eyes searched mine.
“Not like this,” he murmured, voice rough.
He was going to ruin this moment of suspension. I didn’t want to let it go, because I feared that we would never reclaim it if we let it slip away.
I leaned in closer again, but he withdrew. He looked down, brows furrowed.
“Tisaanah—”
“What?” I whispered.
And then I realized something odd—that warm light now fell over Max’s face. I followed his stare, where Max cradled my right hand, palm up.
The gold mark was glowing. I gasped.
“You have been difficult to find.”
My head snapped up to see Ishqa standing in the doorway.
I was about to show him the wayfinder. But something about the look on his face that made even those important words fall from my lips.
“What happened?” I scrambled off Max’s lap, too worried to be embarrassed. “What’s wrong?”
Ishqa said, “Come. We need to talk.”
