W e settled in Sammerin’s room, which was the only one large enough to have a sitting area. I was actually surprised to see the blinding sunlight
streaming through the curtains. I had lost all perception of time. I wandered about the room, looking for a calendar that I could casually glance at in a way that would tell no one that I’d been so busy sleeping and fucking that I literally didn’t know what day it was anymore.
Not that my subtlety fooled Sammerin, who gave us one look up-and- down and remarked, drily, “I’m glad I had the foresight to make sure my room wasn’t next to yours.”
“So superior. As if you’ve been sitting here all alone like a priest.” I picked up a discarded hair clip from the end table and arched an eyebrow at Sammerin, who shrugged as if to say, Fair enough.
Despite myself, I smiled.
It was strange. I had been traveling with Sammerin for weeks, and yet, the restoration of my memory gave me a new appreciation for my friend. I’d missed him.
Ishqa sat down, unamused. He looked tired.
“Where have you been?” I asked, trying to keep the accusation from my voice and not quite succeeding.
I wasn’t sure why I didn’t trust Ishqa. Was it just because I knew he had betrayed his friend, and that sort of thing, even five hundred years later, bore a mark on his character that I couldn’t shake?
I was self-aware enough to recognize the hypocrisy of that, if so. “Here.” Ishqa produced a letter and slid it to Tisaanah. “For you.”
Tisaanah’s throat bobbed. She opened it and read silently—and a grin broke out across her face. “Orasiev held.”
“They withstood weeks of onslaught from the Threllian military.” Tisaanah sagged against the table in relief. “Thank the gods.”
I eyed Ishqa. “So why do you look so unhappy?”
He stared at me just long enough to be unnerving. “Something is different about you.”
“Something is the same again, actually.” I tapped my temple. His brows rose slightly. “How?”
“He broke down the barriers separating him from his magic, just as Klasto and Blif said,” Tisaanah said. “When we retrieved this.”
She placed the petrified heart on the table.
Ishqa blinked at it, utterly stunned. “This is it?” he murmured. “Apparently so,” I said. “Not that we have any clue what it is, or does,
or how we use it. That, actually, is what we were hoping you could tell us.” “If it is an object, then it must be a conduit. An object that calls and
channels the magic beneath.”
“And who made this conduit?” I asked. “Why is it a heart?”
“And whose heart is it?” Sammerin added, a little too quickly, like he’d been thinking about this question for the last two days.
“I do not think that is relevant,” Ishqa replied.
“I think it’s very relevant,” I said. “I’d like to know who is going to come haunt me because I’ve been carting around his heart.”
“It could be a her,” Tisaanah pointed out. “Fair. His or her heart.”
“If it is a person’s heart, it would be from many thousands of years ago,” Ishqa said. “Likely from long before the initial fall and re-opening of magic a millennium ago. Whoever forged these channels did it so long ago that even my ancestors have forgotten these facets of history.” The corner of his mouth rose in a rueful, humorless smile. “Humans and Fey alike have been hungry for power they should not have for as long as we have existed. Whoever created it very well may have ended up destroying themselves with it.”
“Lovely,” I muttered.
“Which is why, however we decide to use it, we must be very careful with it,” Ishqa said.
“Maybe we shouldn’t be using it at all.” I knew too well the negative consequences of playing around with that kind of power. I had no desire to unleash another Reshaye upon the world—at least, not any more than we already had.
“If we are able to make that choice,” Tisaanah muttered.
“The important thing is that we obtained it before Caduan or Nura did. I think that is clearer than ever, after seeing what it is capable of. Little remains of what was once Niraja, and what is left is… different.”
“Different?” I asked.
“I do not know how else to describe it. I went back to the ruins after the soldiers fled, when it was quiet. The stone is… different. The marble is as clean and white as it must have been a thousand years ago. But it is uncut, as it would be when it was harvested, no longer forged into pillars and bricks but lying over the island like mountains.”
Well. That was… strange.
Tisaanah and I exchanged a glance. We’d barely been conscious down there, with no way to really know what we were doing. The whole thing felt more like a fever dream than an intentional Wielding of magic.
“I have never heard of anyone doing anything like that,” I said. “Let alone at that scale. A thing can’t just be changed into another thing.”
Tisaanah jolted, like a thought just hit her hard. “Klasto told us that there were rumored to be three types of deep magic,” she said. “One creates life, one destroys life, and one changes life.”
We all looked at the heart in the middle of the table with fresh eyes. Ishqa let out a strangled chuckle. “A mortal heart. The most fickle of things for a fickle, changing magic.”
Ascended fucking above.
“So if this magic gives us the power to… change life… what does that mean, exactly?” I said. “Could we stroll over to Caduan’s army and change them all into frogs?”
“And why stone?” Tisaanah mused, deep in thought. “Was ‘change’ a direct translation?” Sammerin said.
Tisaanah seemed to understand immediately what Sammerin was asking. “In Old Besrithian, the word for ‘change’ only refers to… the way things change over time. Like…” She struggled to find the Aran translation.
“Evolution,” I finished.
“The city was built of stone, and once those stones were mountains, so they became mountains,” Sammerin said.
“This is all ridiculous.” Brayan looked like he wanted to peel off his own skin.
“I think we must let go of the notion that any magic this old and volatile will ever bend fully to the bounds of mortal logic,” Ishqa said, remarkably calmly. “None of it will make sense the way we want it to make sense.”
The rest of us gave him a flat stare and took a long moment to mourn our sanity.
“Well.” Tisaanah rubbed her temples. “At least now we have ammunition. Until we know where the other magics are, we should go to Orasiev and work with the rebellion against the Threllians.”
Ishqa’s face changed immediately. “The Threllians? No. We go after the Aran queen.”
“The closest thing we have to an army is the rebellion, and they cannot help us when they are fighting for their survival. If we defeat the Threllians, we rip out the teeth of Caduan’s army, give ourselves more resources, and free the rebels to help us against Nura and Caduan.”
She was right. The only resources we had were tied up in a war against the Threllian Lords.
“There’s a factor we aren’t considering,” Sammerin said. “Perhaps we can work on both fronts. Nura has never been very popular, even before all this. And while she managed to build a legal claim to her power, I don’t doubt that most understand exactly how tenuous it is. Perhaps our allies there could lay groundwork before we arrive.”
The name came to me immediately. Tisaanah glanced at me, like she was having the same thought.
“Iya,” we both said.
The most reasonable person who sat in Orders leadership—and the Councilor who had backed me in my attempted bid for Arch Commandant.
Sammerin’s brow knitted. “I’m surprised she allowed him to stay in his role.”
“She needed the support of the Council,” I said. “The rules she built her claim on would collapse beneath her if she openly executed Orders leadership.”
“Openly,” Tisaanah muttered. “I hope he has someone testing his food.” Ascended above, I hoped so, too.
“Fine. Iya,” I said. “I trust him. So how do we communicate with him? Communications to and from the Towers are being monitored closely, I’m sure.”
“I can handle it,” Brayan said. “Roseteeth Company whisper networks reach everywhere, Ara included.”
I scoffed. “We were just run out of town by mercenaries, and you want us to trust the Roseteeth with something this sensitive?”
Brayan looked offended. “The Roseteeth are not mercenaries, they’re
—”
“A ‘private army.’ Sure. And the man who tried to kill you in the streets
of Zagos? Was he a ‘private soldier’ too?”
Brayan’s lip twitched. “I trust these men and women with my life. But if you don’t, fine. What is your alternative?”
At the ensuing silence, his lips curled into a smug smirk that looked exactly the same as it did when he was an obnoxious know-it-all eighteen- year-old.
Tisaanah rose, pressing her palms to the table. “Fine. Then it is decided. We will go to Orasiev first, move against the Threllians, and, by extension, the Fey. We will keep our fingers on the pulse of Ara through Iya.”
I nodded. “And when the time is right, we strike. Hopefully, by then, with the force of the rebels behind us, too.”
We looked around for confirmation. Sammerin nodded, and Brayan let out a grunt of agreement.
I sighed. “It seems as good a plan as any.” It was the most enthusiasm I could muster.
Ishqa was silent, his jaw so tight it trembled. “Ishqa?” Tisaanah pressed.
“It does not seem like enough.” “It—?”
He stood so abruptly that he nearly knocked over his chair, eyes bright and furious. The change in him was startling. “Your human queen tortured my son, and she did the same to my sister. She turned her into a monster. I fought my own sister in Niraja. The Aran queen deserves death for what she has done.”
Gone was the elegant, calm Fey who seemed like he might as well be made from marble. This was the face of someone out for blood.
I almost said, You sound like your king.
A wrinkle of pity deepened between Tisaanah’s brows. “I’m so sorry, Ishqa,” she murmured. “I didn’t know…”
Ishqa drew in a deep breath, then let it out again as he struggled to collect himself.
“I understand you,” Brayan said quietly. “Trust me, when I confronted the people who killed my sisters…” He shook his head, once, a sharp movement that said more than words could. I had to look away, suddenly nauseous.
“You are not the only one who wants her gone,” Tisaanah added. “And she will be. I promise you.”
Ishqa sank back into his chair. “I know. I—I apologize.” He folded his hands carefully over the table, his eyes downcast. Then he let out a rough, humorless laugh, a sound so odd it struck me off guard. I had never heard him laugh before.
Sammerin, Brayan, Tisaanah, and I exchanged awkward glances.
“It is just… sometimes, I understand him,” Ishqa said, shaking his head. “Caduan. I despise what he is doing in the name of his vengeance. I despise what he is doing the world, to all of us. But I understand him. At times, that seems like cruelest part of this of all. We all feel the same things, and we will still die trying to kill each other for it.”
