The impact tossed Nhika from the aircraft. She rolled through glass, which bit at her arms through her sleeves. Her ankle flared with pain, and distantly she heard someone calling her name.
Nhika blinked the haze out of her eyes. Their aircraft was a crunched piece of scrap metal, crushed against the railing. The crew members were quick to mobilize, pushing it over the edge before it could alight in full fire.
Her eyes flared as she tried and failed to stand. She hadn’t seen him get out—had he gotten out? One more push and the ship teetered over the edge and fell to the sea, Kochin’s name still stuck in her throat as a scream.
Then: arms around her. At first, Nhika resisted, but when she looked up it was Kochin. She nearly cried from relief.
“Can you walk?” he asked. A forehead cut leaked blood down his temple.
Nhika shook her head.
With a nod, he scooped her up into his arms. Now, with her pounding headache ebbing to a quiet throb, Nhika made sense of the scene around her. Nem stood above them from a passenger promenade, aiming a rifle at the two of them below. For a moment, Nhika thought she saw malice in his eyes—the same malice that had driven Dr. Santo to shoot Kochin, then her.
But he set down the rifle and barked an order toward his subordinates, who rushed back into the hull.
“They’re coming for us,” Nhika rasped.
Kochin tightened his grip around her. “Don’t worry. I’ve got you. We’ll get out of here.”
But how? Their only way off this airship was quickly sinking to the ocean bed. Nem wasn’t so foolish as to let them set foot near the landing platform again. He could stake them out on this airship forever, eating from its stocked kitchens while they hid themselves away; the only way back to land was if they commandeered the entire thing toward Theumas.
With her in his arms, Kochin started back the way they’d come. Before he could even make it up the steps, the door into the vessel opened, releasing half a dozen guards onto the gangway, none of them armed but all of them gloved. Swerving, Kochin ran in the opposite direction.
They quickly reached a dead end, nowhere to go but overboard. Nhika wanted to heal her ankle, but she couldn’t focus—not when she heard Kochin’s thundering heartbeat through his chest, when the guards were quickly gaining.
“Nhika, are your arms strong enough to hold on to me?” Kochin asked.
“Yes.”
“Get on my back and hold on. Tight.”
Without needing an explanation, Nhika shifted herself onto his back with his help, arms wrapped around his shoulders and nose brushing the nape of his neck. She was about to ask him where he planned to go when he took a running start toward the edge of the platform.
And leaped.
Her heart lurched in her chest as they went airborne and Nhika buried her face into the scruff of his hair, her eyes closed against the fearful height beneath her. She held on with all her remaining strength, and even then she almost lost her grip when they came to a sudden stop.
Nhika opened her eyes. Kochin had caught a ladder extending from the gangway all the way up the balloon of the airship. It was their last option for escape.
“Are you all right?” he asked, one hand moving to cup her legs around him. “Hold on.”
“I wasn’t planning on letting go,” she said, and he pulled them up the ladder.
In only a few seconds, they were level with Nem, who still stood on the promenade, his arms crossed.
“You’ve nowhere to run, Kochin,” he said, his voice carried on the wind. “You know I’ll find you. Both of you.”
Nhika felt Kochin’s muscles tense beneath her. He didn’t deem Nem’s threat worthy of a response as they continued upward, tailed distantly by a line of Nem’s guard.
Kochin worked like an automaton, pulling them up the ladder. When they reached the balloon, the ladder became bare rungs affixed to the metal hull, and somehow that made it infinitely scarier. Nhika clung close to him, holding on to his warmth as the air around them grew frigid and fierce. She dipped her influence into him, feeling the ache of his muscles and the raggedness of his breath. With closed eyes and a slow exhale, she mired her influence into his body, letting her energy wean away the acidity of his muscles until his influence barred her, as firmly as if he’d caught her wrist with his hand.
“Don’t,” he said between breaths. “Just heal yourself. I’ll be okay.”
“But you—”
“Please. We might be stuck on this ship for a while. We need to conserve our calories.”
Knowing he was right, she withdrew her influence from his muscles and descended it to her own ankle. The cuts all over her arms were grisly, but not a priority—not when she couldn’t put weight on her right leg.
After a brief assessment, she determined it was just a sprain—no broken bones, thankfully. The frayed ends of the ligaments throbbed in bruised and inflamed anger even at the lightness of her touch, though it would be a simple fix. Stealing collagen from her skin and threading it into fibers, she sewed together the tears in her ankle with a seamstress’s touch. When she was done, Kochin was just pulling them up onto the very top of the airship.
There were no railings up here. Just the end of the ladder and the vast curve of the hull. Nhika did not look forward to the hike.
“I can walk,” she said, shifting so he’d let her down. As soon as her feet hit the ground she slipped, catching herself against him. He made a noise of concern but she waved him away, doffing her shoes for better traction against freezing metal.
“Over there,” Kochin said, pointing to a hatch farther down the hull. Nhika followed him, her ankle sore and stiff but at least strong enough to place weight upon. They reached the hatch before Nem’s men breached the top of the airship. Kochin heaved it open, and they descended the ladder, dropping down onto dark rafters below.
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dimness. When they did, Nhika found herself on a grid of rafters that extended between innumerable inflated sacs, held into place by a weave of ropes. Every sound here rang out hollowly into the abyss, even the sound of her bare feet slapping against the metal.
“Quick,” Kochin said, pulling her into the cover of the hull’s triangle support. Only moments later, the hatch opened again behind them, letting in a blinding beam of light. As Nem’s men slid down the ladder, Kochin pressed closer against her, the both of them squeezing into their slim cover.
Luckily, the men—without any lights—passed by them farther into the hull. They waited a few more long minutes before daring to relax.
Nhika released a tight breath. Now that the adrenaline was burning off, she felt the full extent of her pain return with every new exhale—the cuts on her arm, the bruises along her legs, and even the ankle, hastily healed. Gingerly, she pulled back her sleeve and began picking glass out of her skin, guided more by pain and influence than by sight.
“Are you all right?” Kochin asked, grunting with effort as he moved to sit beside her. However sore she felt, he must’ve felt leagues worse.
“I’ll live,” she said, flicking a speck of glass as far as it could go.
“Here. Allow me,” he offered, his fingers grazing delicately over her arm. Despite the pain of her cuts, her skin still tingled at his touch. Where she expected him to pull out glass manually, she instead felt his influence soak into her skin.
Nhika pulled back. “We need to save calories for more important things,” she reminded him.
His eyes met hers in the darkness. “This is important,” he said, and continued soothing. Her skin mended, the healing tissue pushing out minuscule shards of glass, and only when he’d healed her cuts to red welts did she realize that he hadn’t taken a single draw of her calories at all.
Nhika’s brow knit. “Kochin, did you just…?”
He nodded. “Yes. I learned to use my own soothing. It’s how I brought you back.”
“But how? Who taught you?”
“You did, Nhika,” he said, drawing closer. Gently, with a touch that felt more like a caress, he took her other arm. “I always thought it was a physical limitation, because I was only half Yarongese. But I learned how to give away parts of myself using the same paths of influence you used to save me.”
His influence drew down to her skin again, kissing each wound in turn. His healing didn’t hurt at all, not even as glass pushed its way out of her skin. “You were always a real heartsooth to me, no matter what your gift looked like.”
“I know,” he said. “But I think I needed to prove it to myself.”
She stared at him, breathlessly, her heart squeezing with a tender ache. That’s what she’d died for, wasn’t it? So that he might be able to reclaim his heartsoothing, not as something abused or subversive, but as what it was always meant to be: a gift. Now he had, and he used it with such intention that she could feel the warmth behind every touch, as though it were the very extension of his love.
“It’s … magical, isn’t it?” That word had never carried good connotations for her—now no other descriptor felt apt for the way he wielded his heartsoothing.
“It is,” he replied, lifting a hand to cup her cheek. Without her realizing, he’d sealed the cut under her eye—a waste of calories, she wanted to tell him.
Before she could, he leaned in and kissed her.
She drew up into it, fingers playing at his shirt, urging him closer. Here, in the cover of darkness and metal, with the hopelessness of their inescapable dilemma, she let herself linger on the kiss. He did, too; she could feel his hunger in his breathlessness, the way his hands explored her waist, how he pressed himself closer until she was flush against the wall. Her fingers wrapped themselves in his hair, tousled and un-styled—she preferred it this way.
It was a kiss with nowhere to go, nowhere to be. A kiss that just was, because they were at the end of their line, broken and beaten and both a little frayed. A kiss because Nhika simply wanted to kiss him, and not because she needed to distract him from her death.
She remembered when they were last like this—him on the table, her bowed over him. Back then, their influences had warred; now they were entwined. His hands were everywhere—and so were hers, but she felt little beyond the exhilaration.
At last, they drew apart. She missed his warmth immediately after. As a parting gift, he skimmed a kiss across her jawline, as though to satiate an urge. They lingered close, still half entangled, and she let herself lean into him, his warmth in the frigid hull.
“What was it like, waking up again for the first time? Did you feel … pain?” His gaze was imploring, fingers tentative as they brushed a wisp of hair behind her ear.
Nhika thought back. “Not because of anything physical. But when I found your ID tags, I thought you were … dead. Next time, choose a less ambiguous keepsake to leave behind.”
Kochin snorted. “Well, you actually died, so you’re not one to speak,” he said, and she snuffed the sudden urge to throttle him. “Which, by the way, we never discussed. Don’t ever do that again.”
“Couldn’t you just bring me back again?”
“Nhika.”
“Very well. It’s not as heroic the second time, anyway,” she said, relenting. “But how did you do it, exactly? Bring me back?”
“A long story,” he said. A sigh tapered through his lips and he leaned back against the hull. They sat shoulder to shoulder, fingers laced and her legs draped over his, as he began.
He told her of the fallout of Dr. Santo’s arrest—the lab closed, Santo’s son discovered, his Daltan texts exposed. Kochin had stolen one of the iron caskets to keep her body alive as he combed through those same illicit texts for an answer. But there was none.
He told her how he returned home but couldn’t stay. How Nem had warned him of war—and how, when he wasn’t ever drafted, he’d enlisted. Then, at the end of training camp, when he hadn’t been deployed to Yarong …
… Kochin told her about how he’d assured it.
“I do it all the time,” Nhika said. “Butchers, a constable here or there. Animals, when I need the calories.”
Kochin shook his head. “It’s different because I didn’t have to.”
“My body would’ve started sprouting mold by now if you hadn’t,” she said morbidly. There came the acidic taste of guilt, knowing he’d had to profane his heartsoothing to bring her back. “But when it came down to it, exchange an innocent life for mine, you didn’t.”
Kochin nodded; his tale continued—Trin, Nem, the research paper. The pieces would have come together so cleanly, if only he had been willing to take a life.
She knew he hadn’t—Trin had told her so—but she felt the terror of the decision nonetheless, then relief when he finally revealed how it was she truly came to live: not through the death of another, but through the awakening of his heartsoothing.
There was some concern at the things he’d done to bring her back, but it was fleeting—she could not judge another heartsooth for what he might do in the name of loneliness. And some part of her, equally lonely, relished in how she could mean so much to someone that they would go to such lengths for her. She’d thought the opportunity dead and gone with her family, yet here he was.
“Thank you,” she said, the words feeling inadequate. “For bringing me back, but especially for not using another life to do so.”
He drew closer. “When you gave me your life, I think you stayed with me, somehow. Maybe it was my imagination, maybe it was the magic of heartsoothing, but I didn’t want the same to happen to you. I had made my peace with losing you—the only reason I brought you back was because Trin and I returned for your body.”
“You returned for my body?”
“I intended to add your bone to the ring. I knew it’s what you would’ve wanted.” He gave her a soft look, and in the moment, she could’ve kissed him again. “Ring or no ring, I’ll always carry a part of you, and now you’ll always have a part of me.”
She grinned. “Is that a comfort or a threat?”
He returned the smile. “To be fair, you haunted me for months. It’s only right I return the favor.” His hands took hers, thumb rubbing the soft flesh of her palm with deliberateness. “Whatever happens, you’ll always have me. I promise you that, Suonyasan Nhika.”
Her heart swelled, then subsequently stuttered when he leaned closer. His scent reminded her of a house on the top of a hill, with a garden in front and a view of the river. “You know,” she said, “your brother Bentri misses you.”
An ache shifted across his eyes. “You visited my family?”
Nhika nodded. “Met your brothers this time. Had a long, long talk with Vinsen. You’re lucky—two brothers who care so much about you. Although, I have it on good authority Vinsen might want to punch you.”
A timid laugh escaped him. “It’s within his right.”
“He saw your ID tags, but he doesn’t believe you’re gone—and I’m going to prove him right. I’m going to bring you home.” Nhika squeezed his hand with new resolve. “So, how do we get off this airship?”
His expression grew solemn, a curtain of reality drawn over their quiet tryst. “We’re two loose bloodcarvers on a ship of some of the most important voices in Theumas. I’m sure the paranoid among them are already evacuating, which means our options for escape vessels are narrowing,” he thought aloud. “It’s possible we can wait until Commissioner Nem docks the airship back in Theumas, but I imagine he’ll telegraph the mainland for an armed welcome party.”
“He can do that? Send a message from out here, the middle of nowhere?”
“Yes, through wireless telegraphy. It sends messages through the air, rather than any cable in the ground.” His eyes narrowed in question, reading her easily. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that I might know some people with airships of their own.”