THREE WEEKS AGO
Kochin dreamed of Nhika among his family. She would’ve gotten along with every one of them, connecting with his mother over their shared gift and regaling Bentri with tales of her time in the city. She had Vinsen’s same quiet judgment and shared his father’s deep compassion, hidden beneath layers of stoicism. From the very moment he’d met her at the wake, when she’d returned his insults rather than quailing from them, he knew she would belong.
The dregs of bittersweet happiness were quick to dissolve as Kochin blinked awake, finding himself on his military cot with no memory of falling asleep. The dream left an acrid taste on his tongue. How horribly cruel the Mother was, letting him love someone he was destined to lose. How sadistic She was, giving him a way to bring her back that would cost the life of another. It was, however, fitting: Kochin’s gift was so good at taking. This was the only answer that would’ve worked—he himself was not enough to heal Nhika, so of course he would have to use another.
Last night’s revelation came with its own withdrawal: lethargy, discouragement, indecisiveness. He wondered if he’d overlooked something, a caveat to the matriarch’s absolutes, but the papers were gone.
And a small part of him, a belligerent voice he tried to quiet, told him he’d already killed before, so what was one more? Why hesitate now, when it was to save Nhika?
Kochin knew the answer but didn’t want to put words to it. It wasn’t about what he was willing to do; it was about whether Nhika could live with that truth. She’d died to give him back his art, unhallowed by Santo’s exploitation. Would she hate him if he defiled his heartsoothing to bring her back?
The voice, ever persistent, insisted: Nothing mattered, her hatred or his heartsoothing, if she was gone.
Around him, other soldiers were dressing. Today, while Kochin tended the wounded, they would be preparing for another attack. Their next goal, now that they had taken the naval base, was to aid the locals in overthrowing the Daltan occupation of the capital. Freedom fighters prepared their numbers, and there were talks in private tents about how long Theumas would stay. It was a multistep venture, one that would take many more months. Kochin had forgotten this war he’d joined extended so far past his goal.
That morning, while Kochin worked, his mind was elsewhere. Half of him was looking for the translator while the other half contemplated a terrible decision. He was slow to react to calls for more narcotics, sluggish in his triage, clumsy with a needle. For a moment, as he remembered the soldiers in the emergency ward—soldiers with uncontrollable bleeds, in the chokehold of sepsis, or hemorrhaging in the brain—he wondered if it would be so bad to take a life like this. It was the cycle of life, calories spent now or wasted in death.
He blinked the thought from his mind, sparing a moment to be appalled at himself, at how easily the notion came to him. When had he grown so accustomed to this, taking lives? When had those plots come with cold calculation, rather than the reprehension of a conscience?
A collection of shouting drew him from his stupor. When he looked up from his work, he found a commotion across the yard: a Daltan prisoner, free of his binds and sprinting toward the fence. A Theuman private leaped up to intercept him—but the prisoner tackled the young soldier, wrestled him in the dirt, and snatched his pistol.
Now armed, the Daltan prisoner flew to his feet. He brandished the pistol at the private on the ground and someone cried out in panic.
A gunshot rang out through Camp Majora. Around Kochin, the field nurses gasped.
But it was the Daltan prisoner who collapsed to his knees, a bullet in his chest. Kochin was breathless until his eyes panned to Commissioner Nem, standing on the other side of the camp with a rifle raised. The barrel was still smoking.
The camp swelled with applause and relief as the private pulled himself out from underneath the dead man. Commissioner Nem, lauded and fierce, turned to the line of remaining Daltan prisoners, who were all being marched toward detainment. “Let that be a lesson,” he said, and Kochin heard the message loud and clear.
No one crossed the commissioner or his city.
At noon, Kochin searched for the translator. She was elusive, never where he expected—not by the tents the Yarongese freedom fighters shared, nor in the spots the girls huddled in for lunch—and he didn’t know her name to ask for her. He was just exploring the medic tents when steps approached from behind.
When he turned, he found Trin coming up to him on a wooden crutch, out of bed far too early for the state of his leg, soothed or otherwise. Kochin bristled on instinct—despite his injury, Trin’s broad shoulders and stern brow offered him a menacing quality.
“Private Dep,” Kochin greeted. They were nearly the same height, but Trin was bigger and older. Kochin’s shoulders tensed underneath the uniform as Trin stepped closer, until they were within arm’s reach, stares contesting each other. Somehow, Kochin knew Trin hadn’t come to thank him.
Trin only jerked his chin down the path out of Majora. “Mr. Ven, take a walk with me.”
Pushing past him with an onerous, lopsided gait, Trin started down the path. Kochin remained on guard, wondering if he should’ve prepared himself for a disagreement. Long ago, he’d promised the Congmis he would stay out of their lives, and he’d done his best to uphold it.
Nevertheless, he followed.
Trin took them down the winding path out of Majora, the same path they’d ascended after storming the beach. While Kochin kept a wary distance between them, he didn’t doubt he could overtake Trin in this ambling, impaired state. Still, Trin walked the path in silence, his pace unfearful of the bloodcarver behind him.
“I read those papers,” Trin began once they’d left the vicinity of Majora. Realization struck Kochin like lightning then—he’d been wrong. It’d been Trin to notice him translating those papers, to take interest. It’d been Trin to swipe them.
Had he put together what Kochin had planned, why Kochin was on Yarongese soil? He must’ve, and yet he walked with his back exposed, the skin of his neck bare. Kochin wondered if it was a gesture of peace or a sign of foolishness.
When Kochin remained silent, Trin glanced over his shoulder, his eyes demanding an explanation. But Kochin had nothing to say that Trin hadn’t already guessed. They continued down until dirt mixed with sand, but Trin stopped them at the edge of the forest. They both looked out to sea, using it as an excuse to avoid eye contact.
“You’re trying to bring her back, aren’t you?” Trin asked. He turned to Kochin, gaining false height from his daunting expression. There was a subtle pity there, too, as though Kochin were nothing more than a misguided lover, blinded by grief. As though there was no merit to his plan.
“You had no right to read those papers,” Kochin said in lieu of an answer, nose crinkling with indignation.
“Answer the question.”
Kochin tried not to flinch at the sharpness of his words. “Yes. I am.”
“Kochin,” Trin began, and his words drew dangerously close to sympathy. In the moment he seemed years older, having lived and lost more than Kochin could understand. But Kochin wanted neither sympathy nor pity from him, only complacency and a blind eye turned. “I understand you loved her.”
Loved her, past tense.
Trin continued, “And I know she cared deeply for you, too. I’d never learned how to read her, but that much was clear. That night, she made a decision. It was her choice.”
Throat still narrowed by ire, Kochin said, “What are you trying to say?”
“Is this really what she’d want?”
Anger soured Kochin’s throat and he spun on his toes, hands curled at his sides. “You didn’t even know her full name. What would you understand of what she wanted?” he hissed, the rage so palpable he could feel it in his heartbeat.
Trin flinched with regret, leaning further on his crutch. “She sacrificed herself for you—”
Kochin lunged forward, hooking his ankle around Trin’s poor leg. His hand extended for Trin’s neck as he pulled back, toppling Trin and ramming him up against a tree trunk in the same halting motion. The shudder of Trin’s body against bark was enough to shake seed pods from the canopy. Fury pulsed in the vessels of Kochin’s hand and he extended his influence into Trin’s throat. “You think I don’t know that?”
His arm trembled as he held Trin against the tree. There was room for Trin to escape him—knock him back with the crutch or knee him—but he didn’t, either from weakness or the fear that, with the contact of their skin, it was already too late. Instead, he swallowed, the prominence of his throat bobbing against Kochin’s palm. A sliver of air escaped his lips in the shape of a sentence: “I always thought you were a murderer.”
Kochin tightened his grip, not a heartsooth act but a human one, until Trin’s breath turned into a wheeze.
“But,” Trin managed, “I see now that you’re not.”
Those words stilled Kochin’s hands and he narrowed his eyes, the vehemency of his stare drawing more out of Trin.
“Nhika loved you. I didn’t understand it. I wanted to be upset at her for it,” Trin elaborated, sentences coming in breathless bursts. “But you healed me. You healed Hendon. You may have committed an atrocious act, but it doesn’t need to condemn you.”
But it already had. If only Trin knew how Kochin had come to be deployed, how Kochin had healed him not out of servitude but guilt, then he would not be so quick to absolve. “You won’t change my mind,” Kochin responded.
“I won’t let you do it.”
Gritting his teeth, Kochin raised his hold on Trin’s neck, until he’d lifted Trin to the balls of his feet with unbidden strength. He saw nothing now but the anger—at Trin’s gall, broaching threats while in a bloodcarver’s grip and presuming he knew Kochin so well. “How would you stop me?” he challenged, and his words carried the threat of death. Trin sucked in a sharp breath and Kochin watched the fear unspool in his eyes, like he was looking at the man who had killed Mr. Congmi, rather than the one who had healed his leg. Here, Kochin held all the power; he could steal the last rush of electricity from Trin’s chest with a single thought.
So, why didn’t he?
There, now you’ll have it all. That was Nhika’s voice, a fragmented memory surfacing into crystal focus: them both on the operating table, him holding her form, so impossibly light, against the cradle of his chest. Her head resting in the crook of his elbow, the glow already dimming from her dark eyes. Peace, freedom, and …
Love. She hadn’t been able to say it, but he heard the word on her breath. Kochin, I love you.
This anger now, was it love? That was her gift—peace, freedom, and love—but Nhika had left him no instruction on how to use it. In her absence, the gift had morphed into something else: grief, guilt, and loneliness.
His fingers loosened around Trin’s neck before he pulled away altogether, leaving the red portent of a bruise on Trin’s skin. Trin sagged against the tree, coughing for breath and eyeing Kochin with unmistakable fear.
“She still had a life to live,” Kochin said shakily.
“Kochin—”
“What else am I supposed to do!” He resented the vulnerability that had escaped into the tremble of his voice. “How could I live with myself, knowing I could bring her back but choosing not to? If this were about Andao, or even Mimi, wouldn’t you do the same?”
From the way Trin’s eyes softened, Kochin could tell some part of his appeal had gotten through. But Andao and Mimi were safe behind luxurious walls in Theumas; it was never a reality Trin had to fear, so he could never understand. His answer came out cold, hardened by dogged righteousness. “I won’t let you take another life, Kochin. This isn’t how you live with loss.”
Kochin turned away sharply, leaving Trin breathless against the kapok, and ascended the trail toward Majora. He paused, looking back only to say, “She’s not lost yet.”
What a familiar position: deciding whether to carve, a decision he had to make tonight—before Trin had time to stop him. Around him, bunkmates snored and murmured in their slumber, but Kochin couldn’t sleep.
He could bring her back if he wanted to. Leaving his station would not be difficult—all he had to do was switch out his ID tag with a corpse, mark himself as deceased, and pay a Yarongese charter boat for passage back to Theumas. The island was still seeing battle; a medic casualty would not raise too many alarms, and only Trin might suspect his absence. As for finding an equivalent life … not even that would be difficult. Chengton had a small hospital, not nearly as secure as the Theumas Medical Center, where he could find someone near the end of their life. Kochin resented how simple it was.
But the alternative was staying here, with Nhika miles across the water, knowing he had the answer to saving her yet doing nothing with it. He could keep working as an army medic, fighting for the same thing as his peers when he enlisted in this war for something wholly apart.
How could he live with that?
For a moment, Kochin thought—why not? Why not bring her back? He could not face her after, but he would die with the secret of how she returned. She would never need to know it was another life that brought her back. It would not have to haunt her conscience as it did his. But that meant he’d have to leave her because those eyes could compel any secret from him, as they had before.
Knowing he wouldn’t find sleep that night, Kochin left his cot and ducked out of his squadron’s tent, dipping into the calming darkness of a Yarongese evening. In Theumas, it was hard to see the stars; the city never truly slept. Here, on the island, he saw the entirety of the Star Belt, which lit his path as the last of the sun winked from the horizon.
His feet took him toward the field hospital of their own volition, the voice in his head telling him that if he were to do this, he had to be certain, it had to be tonight. He shuffled around the courtyard, clinging close to shadows to avoid the undue attention of sentries, until he reached the field hospital. A glance through the windowed canvas revealed a medic inside, burning a gas lamp through the night, but they were too captured by tending the wounded to notice Kochin slip around the back.
Toward the bodies.
Behind the field hospital, covered by tarps, lay a line of fallen soldiers waiting to be taken home for a proper burial. The Yarongese heat and humidity hadn’t been kind, accelerating the process of decay to the point that the stench alone burned his nostrils and nipped at his eyes. He almost feared lifting the tarp from the bodies and unveiling what lay beneath, whether they be soldiers or merely the echoes of them.
It was a mix of both that greeted him when he threw back the canvas. Flies swarmed, their meal disturbed, and Kochin waved them away from his hand. One corpse called to him in particular—a man his size and build, but whose body was so burned that he could not be distinguishable from any other Theuman. Half of his face was raw, scalp hardly still on the bone, and his uniform had been melted into his skin.
This one would do. Kochin threw a glance back into the field hospital, assuring that he was unnoticed by the medic within. Here was every part of his plan come together so cleanly: the register that documented ID numbers of the deceased, the corpse that could pass as his own, and his ID tag, dangling around his neck.
Yet, for a moment, all he could do was stare at the corpse at his feet. He saw his own face in its gnarled one, his lips formed out of its grimace and his eyes in its sunken pits. The image was jarring enough to stagger him, and when he blinked, the corpse was just a corpse again.
Something stirred inside his chest, a conscience come out of slumber, followed by disgust, because he’d had to see himself in a corpse to make it human. This act, erasing the memory of this soldier to claim this body as his own, was a crime in and of itself. There was no heartsooth tenet against this, nothing but Kochin’s own sense of moral rebuke—that all he wanted to do was to heal Nhika, but the Mother kept asking him to take. More and more—taking from the Daltan soldier beneath the rubble, stealing this corpse’s dignity in death, and ending a life as the final ultimatum in bringing Nhika back.
It was almost as though She was testing him, trying to see how far he was willing to go.
As far as it took, he’d told himself. Kochin drew out his ID tag from beneath his shirt and cupped it in his palm. The metal was still warm from the heat of his chest, the finish a little tarnished by blood from his ordeal in the naval base. There, beside the ID tag, hung Nhika’s ring.
“What would you do?” Kochin asked, wishing bone could talk. He needed guidance—if not from Nhika, then perhaps from the heartsooths of her past. With a sinking feeling, he realized if these bones could talk, they would have no words for him but admonition.
A presence shifted at his side. When he turned, she was there, the image of her. This time, she brought no comfort, not when he’d accepted she was just a delusion and couldn’t offer the answers he sought.
“Just say the word and I’ll do it, Nhika. I’ve gone to war for you. I’ll kill for you, too, if that’s what you want,” he said. “But only if that’s truly what you want.”
Her gaze was distant, as though she were looking past him. “All your life, you’ve been told what to do with your heartsoothing. When I died, I told you the gift was yours again. So, it’s not up to me what you do with it—that’s only for you to decide.” These were words borrowed from her deathbed. “What does heartsoothing mean to you, Kochin?”
What did heartsoothing mean to him? It meant that he was never quite enough. It was just enough to set him apart in Theumas, but not enough to connect him to the Yarongese on the island. It was just enough to rope Nhika in, but not enough to save her.
And yet, heartsoothing was supposed to mean magic and family. It was supposed to mean surviving; the gift had fled Daltanny, had seeded in Theumas against all odds. It was supposed to mean connection, the one thing that had brought him to Nhika, and Nhika to him.
Just … not his heartsoothing. His heartsoothing was what had killed her.
But his bloodcarving could bring her back. Kochin stooped by the fallen soldier, prepared to exchange his tag for theirs, when a voice said, “Not here to mourn the dead, are you?”
Kochin froze. When he turned, that translator was looking down at him, arms crossed. She was tall, made of angles, with muscled shoulders and a long braid down her back—and she’d caught him at another crime scene.
When he didn’t respond, she said, “You’re not fully Theuman.”
“What if I am?”
“I saw you soothing.”
“I’m not a heartsooth.”
“Ah, so you know the Yarongese term for it.”
She’d caught him, but Kochin hadn’t intended to lie; he wasn’t a heartsooth. “You’ve no proof,” he said instead.
“You’re mistaken. I don’t intend to report you.”
“You’ve been watching me. What do you want?”
“My name is Numathai Lanalay. You have something that belongs to me.”
Kochin shook his head. “You must be mistaken.”
“Eighteen years ago, a Yarongese matriarch was taken from her family. She was forced to perform acts of resurrection. When she couldn’t bring back a human, they killed her grandson. Now, only her granddaughter lives to continue the Numathai bloodline,” Lanalay said. “Do you still believe I’m mistaken?”
Kochin quieted. It was uncanny—part triumph, part tragedy—to see the girl from the papers standing before him: alive, resilient, having taken down Daltan soldiers in the naval base without hesitation. It meant that research was something more than words on paper. That matriarch was real, and her legacy was close, and the crimes against her were all the more heinous when her granddaughter still bore the scars.
“I’m sorry,” Kochin said, as if it meant anything from him. He could not undo what had been done to her grandmother.
“Where are the papers about her?” Lanalay asked.
Kochin stood to face her, eye to eye. “I don’t have them anymore.”
Her expression soured with annoyance. “But you did.”
“Yes. I did. But someone took them from me.”
His cheek flashed white with pain before he even realized she’d slapped him.
“You had no idea what you had,” she said, seething. “Who those papers belonged to. Why does someone like you have them, anyway?”
Her words were formed of anger, but he heard the hurt underneath. And he didn’t know which part of him she was reviling—the part that looked Theuman, or the part ready to defile the dead.
Kochin shifted his jaw, the pain cooling. “I wish I could return the papers to you.”
She regarded him as one did an insect. “Who has them now?”
Kochin paused, hesitant to give Trin’s name to a girl on a warpath—one who had killed Daltan soldiers with such ease. But Lanalay’s deathly stare bored it out of him. “Private Dep. He’s a good man—he’ll return them, if only you explain.”
“Good man?” Lanalay scoffed. “Very few have come to this island who were good men.”
Seemingly done with him, Lanalay turned from the bodies, her path set toward the barracks. Before she could go, Kochin called, “Are you sure you want to see what the Daltans did to her?”
That paused her. Kochin wasn’t trying to deter her from those papers. Even if they were the sole reason he’d come to Yarong, he had no more need of them—and Lanalay was right. They didn’t belong to him, never had. It was almost a relief that someone could take them off his hands, like wrapping up the last open end of his conspiracy before he set sail back to Theumas.
But he knew if it were his mother or Nhika in those papers, he would never survive reading them.
“I’m sure,” she said at last.
“And what do you plan to do with them?”
Lanalay’s brown eyes glowed like embers in the lamplight. “I’m going to burn them.”
Kochin furrowed his brow. “All this work, just for that?”
Something mournful overcame her, if only for a second. He recognized it: unspent grief. The desperation that came from coming so close to a single-minded goal that she could no longer turn back, no matter what it took from her. He hadn’t once questioned his objective, not even when Vinsen and Trin tried to deter him, so he knew nothing he said could change Lanalay’s mind now.
In a disarmed tone, she said, “As long as those papers exist, that’s how the world will know her. But in their absence, her memory will be the one I carry with me, the way she sought to be remembered. Even if all that remains of my grandmother are the stories, I’d rather that than have her immortalized as an experiment.”
She left him then. In her absence, the night dipped into complete silence—like even the wind had ceased through the trees. Kochin stared at the corpse in front of him, wondering if he still had the energy to fake his own death. Now that he’d met Lanalay, the act felt like a violation more than ever, knowing the Numathai bloodline had nearly been culled for that research.
But the night still held room for unspoken sins.
Kochin yanked off his ID tag. When he did, she appeared—Nhika, standing just beyond the tent. Her eyes held depths, like she had his answer: to kill or not to kill. Before he could speak, she disappeared behind the tent.
Kochin sucked in a breath and followed.
Disappearing and reappearing, Nhika drew him out of the camp beneath the watchful eyes of sentries. Her path led him toward the beach, and if she intended to coax him out into the water and drown him, he’d let her. It was an answer, after all—that there were easier ways to reach her.
When Kochin reached the surf, she was gone.
He stood alone at the edge of the water, his hand clasping the bone ring. Take a few steps forward, and he could let the tide claim him. But take a few steps back and he could return to the line of the dead and find one with his same face. Where he’d expected an answer, Nhika had disappeared, leaving him somewhere in between with a decision only he could make.
The waves lapped at his hesitation. He’d always had someone to tell him what to do with his gift. Santo told him to perform miracles. The entire city of Theumas told him to hide it. So maybe that’s why he looked to Nhika’s bone ring for an answer on what to do now—because there had always been someone telling him how to soothe.
Nhika was the only one who gave him permission to use it for himself. But she was gone. And if he was honest, he didn’t even know how he wanted to use it.
Did he bring Nhika back, even if his heartsoothing took a life to do so?
“It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?” Nhika asked, appearing beside him.
“It is.”
“If you’re looking for an answer, it’s not on the horizon.”
“I know.” Now, more than ever, the loneliness felt heavy. He felt like he might die from it, on an island far from home with the ghost of the girl he loved.
His eyes fell to the bone ring in his palm. That name, Suonyasan, so beautiful when she said it. There was a space on that black band that belonged to Nhika. That had been her final act, pressing the ring into his palm and whispering an unfinished sentence. Peace, freedom …
Realization pulled out his legs like a riptide. He fell to his knees, kissing the surf, bone ring cupped in his palm.
He’d been waiting for an answer. The ring was the answer—had always been the answer. It had told him, months ago, what Nhika wanted; he just hadn’t been ready to accept it. The ring was an act of remembrance, so she simply wanted to be remembered. Like Lanalay burning those papers, he had accepted the ring like a duty, the burden of her memory. He’d promised her to carry it with penitence to the end of his life, however short or long.
Nhika had died to return his heartsoothing to him. So, it was as Lanalay had said—he had to carry her in the way she sought to be remembered.
He hung his head, his heart drawn somewhere between the island of Yarong and the city of Theumas—because he had his answer. And it felt more like a defeat than a relief.
“Wait for me in another life, Nhika. I’ll find you there.” He’d have to, because Kochin realized with ever-growing surety that he could not spurn her sacrifice just to bring her back. It would not be just him who would have to live with his decision, but also her, and he couldn’t bear the thought of tainting her heartsoothing with his own.
After everything he’d fought for and fallen for, war on Yarong and a naval base conquered, Kochin would not bring Suonyasan Nhika back. He couldn’t.
With the tide calling him, Kochin brought the ring to his lips and pressed his decision into the bone. It was an apology and a promise: that he could not bring her back, but he would keep her memory safe.
Something shifted in his chest, like a knot come undone. It reminded him of notions long passed—peace, freedom, love—but this wasn’t any of those. This was … acceptance.
It fell like ash over his heart. Slowly, laboriously, he stood, taking a moment to just stand and stare at the ocean. How little he felt here, standing at the edge of the water, watching the immortal swell and ebb of the ocean. Theuman scientists had explained this phenomenon in doubtless detail, had mapped the spring and neap tides to the phases of the moon, the gravitational pull of astronomical bodies. Just the same, Yarongese heartsooths had charted the bounds of their ability with tenets and rules.
It made him feel small and audacious, thinking he could conquer death, the world’s oldest guarantee. Maybe he’d never been meant to.
With that realization slow to settle, Kochin started up the beach toward the field base. When he reached his barracks, a man slipped out before he had the chance to enter. He balked as the moonlight limned the man’s squared features in silver: Dep Trin.
“Mr. Ven,” Trin said, sounding bewildered. “I—”
“You were right,” Kochin interrupted. He bowed deep, and when he rose, Trin’s surprise had deepened. “I’m … I’m sorry. I talked to you then in grief, but I’m deciding now in acceptance. Keep the papers—I’ve no need for them.”
Something tugged at Trin’s brow. “You’re … You’re not going to…?”
“No. You won’t have to worry about me.”
Kochin was wondering why Trin looked so flustered when another figure emerged from the tent behind him, dark coat thrown over broad shoulders and inky hair gelled back. It was Commissioner Nem, who placed a firm hand on Trin’s shoulder. In his other hand he held bloodstained research papers.
The menacing look the commissioner gave him turned Kochin’s blood to ice.
“No, he won’t,” Commissioner Nem said, his voice so deep that Kochin’s very bones rattled. “Ven Kochin, you’ve been hiding something from me.”
Kochin glanced at Trin, finding a new emotion there: remorse. He was too surprised to feel betrayed.
Dep Trin had turned him in.