Chapter Forty-Nine

The hand on my shoulder is warm, and I’m afraid to find a ghost stands there instead of a boy. But I can’t help myself, because he is the earth and I am a fallen star.

This Teloh bleeds. He leans upon one leg as if the other pains him, and his eyes, once blue-black, have turned an ordinary brown. He looks for all the world like a human.

“How?” I look him up and down again. I watched his power dissolve into the sky, forever lost to me. “I didn’t manage to untangle everything… I failed.”

He gently plucks blooms and twigs from my hair—all that remains of Omu’s spell. Yellow flowers litter his feet. “I…don’t understand it, either, but perhaps what remains of me is what even the Heavens cannot strip away: my humanity.”

If it is his humanity that remains, he wears it well. I stare unblinking, still afraid he might disappear and that I am only dreaming. I’m surprised to taste salt tears upon my tongue, and I’m not sure if they are from sorrow or joy.

He cocks his head slowly to one side. “So this body still pleases you.”

“It’s not the time,” I mumble and wipe at my wet cheeks.

But his amusement vanishes too soon. A familiar disinterested mask replaces it so quickly that I fear I only imagined it.

Reshar pushes through the doorway, smoke-stained and rumpled. Virian and Dayen drag Kalena between them. She screams words that do not form sentences in any human language. This wild Kalena is all hackles and claws, like a cat backed into a corner.

“What shall we do with her, Holy Astar?” Reshar asks.

“Call me Narra, please.” The name fits me like a familiar blanket. A gift from my mother. “Let us keep her close but safe. Throw her in the dungeons. She may know what Omu is planning next.”

Reshar purses his lips and searches the room. Some of the Baylan that succumbed to Arisa’s paint spell begin to stir. I shake my head and explain what happened.

“Your sister is dead, Datu Reshar,” I say.

Reshar doesn’t even blink. I do not know if this makes us enemies or friends, but I cannot stomach any more lies. He shoves Kalena out the door. I cannot see his expression, but he is a worry for another day. My family is a more pressing concern. I need to check the dungeons for my sister, and I need Baylan to unlock them for me.

“Narra?” Dayen asks.

I frown and return to the world outside my head.

“The Sundo isn’t over yet.”

Freezing Hells. The Sundo was the last thing on my mind. I stare at Dayen and Virian wide-eyed. “We still have to pick the new ruler?”

“Appearances are important, and someone must watch over Bato-Ko,” Virian says.

As usual, she is right.

“Not me. No, thank you.” Dayen takes two steps back and waves his hands in front of his face. “I do not want to worry about poison every time I sit down to eat.”

I study Virian. I would choose her if I were given the option, and she knows this.

“I was never here for the Sundo.” She sighs. “I want to become a Baylan. Datu Senil wanted someone to watch the proceedings and get to know the candidates. I was supposed to monitor the competition for any strangeness, because he suspected Arisa’s plans but had no proof.”

“You seemed like you wanted to win!” Dayen stares back with a mix of hurt and confusion, and I know there’s a private conversation they need to have.

“I did. Only because there are things I needed to prove to myself.”

I run my hands through the hair at the nape of my neck and sigh at the impossible tangle. Some things don’t change.

“Well, I guess we’ll have to see if anyone is still foolish enough to want the job.”

…

I take stock of everyone assembled in the great hall. The Seven Datus are now four. Senil, the head Archivist, is dead, and Hendan of the Guardians has vanished. Kalena is rotting in the dungeons with rats for company. Omu and her cultists may not have succeeded this time, but they still destroyed so much. I don’t know what will happen next.

There is someone else I have been waiting to see since my memories were returned to me, though. “Narra!” Kuran screams as she bursts into the hall beside Reshar. She pushes through the crowd. I forget what I am and run to meet her. I fling my arms around her, and the world feels a little less sideways. The bells on Kuran’s ankles tingle merrily. “What happened to your hand?” She gasps at my burns.

I may not be able to use my left hand again, but my blisters have healed. “I’ll be fine,” I say and squeeze her harder. “I’m just glad you’re safe.”

“Thankfully, the dungeons have thick walls.” She laughs, looking none the worse for wear. Thank the Heavens.

Our reunion is short-lived. A dozen harried candidates line up in the great hall. We are specks of faded color against white marble, just the leavings of those who began the Sundo. I can no longer tell who was rich or who was poor. All of us look changed.

My own face is a mask I don’t recognize. What little softness there once was feels as if it’s been scoured away.

The candidates eye me with suspicion even when guileless Payan, the head Healer, makes new introductions with his soft voice. So many of them wanted me dead, but I do not hate them enough to will more suffering upon them. I summon the remaining Datus to my side.

“Let us destroy the spells on the gates. Give the candidates a choice to return to their families or to stay and help us rebuild. We cannot afford to surrender these young ones now.” To my surprise, they agree. Perhaps we have all lost the taste for sacrifice.

But I must choose someone. Omu will need time to test the limits of her new body, but I have no doubt that she will return. The cultists remain a threat. I must choose well. I look around the room and realize the choice is obvious.

“I completed the tests in Kuran’s name, and we have a contract sealed with her blood. Will that suffice?”

The Datus argue, but Reshar tips agreement in my direction. Nothing would prevent us from choosing my sister.

“Kuran?” I bound back to my sister, suddenly awkward again. I remember just how young I am when the brat scowls at me. She’s only eighteen months older. “How would you feel about being Reyna of Tigang?”

She raises an eyebrow as she surveys the fortress around us, clearly unimpressed. The bright blue sky is visible through gaping fractures in the glass wall. Vines as thick as tree trunks creep up the walls, and I fear they are the only things holding the fortress together.

“Are you serious?” she asks.

I admit that I am partly being selfish this time and that I want my family close, but I think this might work. Meeting Nanay Oshar showed me that there is a way to survive this—that not all our rulers must suffer horribly. The past and present mix together in ways that make it hard to tell the past lives we’ve spent together from the present. Once she was Ketah, a fair and just leader, as well as my friend. She would do far better as ruler of Tigang than I ever could. I have had enough of power.

“Fine,” Kuran says and bites her lip. I expected protest and am relieved that we are done with arguments. “Because you’re stuck here, and traveling the continent without you wouldn’t be the same.”

Nothing will ever be the same again, but I dare dream that it might not be so bad. After all, you cannot build something new without first taking something else apart.

“You saved me.” I bump my sister’s shoulder. “In my first life, you were the one who cursed Astar and demanded better of her.”

“Well, you know, I have always been the older and wiser one between us.” Our straight faces dissolve into giggles that we cannot stop, even though everyone stares.

We are still laughing when a broad-shouldered figure dressed in brown pushes through the milling crowd toward us. Kuran’s mirth fades when Tanu rushes into the room and drops to his knees.

“Datu Astar—wife,” he says. His blue eyes are wide and distant as if he’s caught in one of Reshar’s spells. He sees me, but he doesn’t see me. The familiarity between us clicks into place, and I marvel that I never noticed it before. We were not so much older in that first life than we are now, but time is a spiral, not a wheel. I am not the same.

Teloh once mentioned that Ressa’s soul departed when Chaos took over his body. Now I know he returned to the cycle of reincarnation like the rest of us. The magic unleashed during Omu’s summoning must have woken something in him.

“Ressa, perhaps you meant something to me in another life, but in this one you betrayed my family twice.”

Kuran averts her eyes and hides her surprise. This is not what she wanted, nor what I wanted.

His loyalty was Omu’s in this life and before. I am afraid it is still Omu’s, and I dare not trust him. “Live your life and be free, but do not return here,” I say.

He bows and takes one last long look at Kuran before leaving. It disappoints me that he does not question what I asked of him or argue for a better way, but some things take lifetimes to change, and Tanu is one of them. I hope that he can find happiness elsewhere and that he learns to think for himself.

Kuran watches him go and forces a smile when she catches me looking. I had forgotten how few days passed since we came here. I had forgotten how long it takes to heal heartbreak. I give her shoulder a squeeze.

“So, when do all the beautiful foreign rulers start lining up to marry me?” she asks.

“You need a crown first.” I sigh.

“Is it full of diamonds?”

“No. It’s made of obsidian and steel.”

“Why are we Tigangi so fond of symbolism?” She puts her hand to her forehead and feigns despair. “Can I change my mind now?”

I smile. “Would it help to know that you can ask the kitchen for cake whenever you please?”

“Then I’m yours forever.” Kuran’s mischievous expression is back.

I throw my arms around my sister. Life always offers a little pleasure along with its pains, and even in Bato-Ko it does not rain every day.