Rasia yawned as she climbed the underbelly ladder to the deck. She wasn’t getting much sleep lately, but that was nothing new. Either her mind whirred too fast, too used to the constant vigilance required of the Desert, or her body buzzed with too much energy. Sex with Kai had helped with both. Rasia hadn’t realized how much sleep she had gotten until he was gone.
No, not gone. Just out of reach.
Rasia popped her head out of the hatch and frowned at the sight of Zephyr and Kai sitting against the front corner. Zephyr read aloud from the leatherbound scroll he carried in his satchel: first a sentence of unfamiliar sounds, then a translation of the same sentence into an oddly terrible song.
Neither had noticed her yet.
Kai pointed at something inside the leather-bound parchment. Zephyr leaned forward at the question, and their shoulders pressed together. Rasia didn’t hear Zephyr’s response, but Kai looked up, and Zephyr smiled, and their eyes met with all the soft light of impending dusk.
The bottom dropped out of Rasia’s stomach, a chilling lurch that no amount of speed or danger could elicit. Her guts churned with anger and realization and fury.
Rasia had been willing to give the “just friends” thing a chance, but she hadn’t known that meant losing to Zephyr. She hadn’t considered Zephyr competition. Quite frankly, she hadn’t considered anyone competition. She had arrogantly assumed Kai couldn’t possibly be attracted to anyone other than her. Who could possibly compete?
And yet, she was never chosen. She’d been abandoned time and time again—by Ysai, by stupid kids at school, by her tahs.
Rasia stormed across the windship, and her feet beat the deck so loudly the sound had Kai and Zephyr scrambling to their feet in alarm.
“Rasia, what’s wrong?!” Kai asked.
A knot welled in Rasia’s throat as she looked between Zephyr and Kai. She didn’t know how to put this ugly, blinding rage shaking through her into words. What ended up cracking from her throat cut her raw.
“Why doesn’t anyone want me?”
Kai’s face fell. He bowed, staring at the deck. His silence stabbed at Rasia’s worst fears. Was there something more going on between Zephyr and Kai? Were they having sex?! It didn’t seem possible Rasia could have missed such a thing on this small windship, but she had obviously missed the fact that Kai was double-sided.
“Are you and Zephyr fucking?” Rasia demanded.
“Wouldn’t be your business if we were,” Zephyr grumbled from behind her. Rasia spun on her heel to confront him, and Zephyr tensed, ready for her to make a move. Rasia would shove him overboard if she could, but she doubted he’d budge much. She hated him more because of that.
“Zephyr, do you mind giving us a moment?” Kai asked.
Zephyr’s brows furrowed. He released a heavy sigh as he retreated to the other side of the windship, out of earshot. But Zephyr leaned against the back railing, facing them, to threaten Rasia with a glare. Rasia honestly thought she’d never hate anyone more than Nico. But her hatred for Zephyr was certainly coming close.
“No,” Kai said, answering her. “Zephyr and I aren’t having sex.”
She believed him, if for no other reason than this windship really was too small for any sort of covert shenanigans. Still, she knew what she just saw. She was certain something was there. Rasia asked, “Do you want to have sex with him?”
Kai shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“I don’t know, Rasia.”
It fogged Rasia’s brain to think of Kai being with Zephyr in the same ways they had been together—how Kai lazily picked things out of her hair while she was falling asleep, how Kai kissed her as if they were the only ones in the world who mattered and everyone else were grains of sand to their bright stars, and how he would tie on her wrap with increasingly intricate linen flowers. She refused to give that back to him.
Rasia didn’t know when Kai had gone from the obsession she needed to flush out of her system to the hands that put her to sleep. All Rasia knew was that “just friends” wasn’t enough. But seducing him hadn’t worked. Yelling and screaming hadn’t worked. Patience hadn’t worked. She didn’t know what else to do.
“Is it so hard to give me a second chance?” Rasia asked, desperate.
Kai rubbed his face. “It’s just . . . Rasia, you can be a real asshole at times. It’s a lot. It’s a lot for me.”
People had criticized Rasia all her life—from Kiba-ta, to Ysai-ji, to other members of her family.
Rasia is too wild. Rasia is too rough. Rasia is too curious for her own good. Why can’t she sit down? Why can’t she pay attention? Raj, why can’t you be nicer to Jilah?
Rasia had long learned to ignore those voices, and Rasia had never in her life bent for anyone. Rasia hissed, low and defensive. “Who are you to demand that I change?”
“I’m not. I’d never assume I’d have the right to ask, and I like who you are, but . . . I can’t. I’m sorry. We don’t work, Rasia.”
But they did work. That’s what frustrated Rasia the most. Rasia pressed at her eyes, thinking, trying to find a way. She could compromise, maybe a little. “I’ll be nicer to Zephyr. I can do that.”
“This isn’t just about Zephyr, Rasia.”
“Okay . . .” Rasia waited, but Kai didn’t elaborate further. “How am I supposed to make this right if I don’t know what it’s all about? What else is there if it’s not about Zephyr?”
Kai’s lips thinned as he bit down. Then he sighed. “It’s about Nico, too.”
Rasia’s face fell, confused, and a little blindsided. “What the fuck does this have to do with Nico?”
“She’s my jih, Rasia. What happened during the chase never sat right with me. I tried to push it aside, but I can’t.”
“We settled that forever ago!”
“Nico is risking her entire Forging for me, and I do feel a little guilty and selfish about it all. I don’t want to hurt her any more than I already have. Nico has sacrificed so much for me and you . . . you feel like a betrayal.”
“I don’t believe this,” Rasia fumed, pacing. “That skink is cockblocking me, and she’s not even here.”
“You just called my jih a skink! That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”
“Yeah, ‘cause she’s a skiiii-ink,” Rasia sang and crunched the end with satisfaction. “Clean your fucking face, Kai. Nico is the selfish one here. She’s the Ohan, and she’s out risking her kull, and the future of the entire Grankull, chasing after you. You’d think she’d get the message after you ran away from her the first time, but she’s so far up her own ass that she can’t see you are perfectly capable of deciding where to point your own dick! She’s not saving you, Kai. She’s the one wrapped up in her own doomed, tragic quest. Nico is the villain here. Not me!”
“You don’t know everything, Rasia. She’s only trying to protect me.”
“You are plenty strong enough to protect yourself, and you shouldn’t have to feel guilty and selfish for going after what you want. If you want something, fight for it. Do you want me, Kai?!”
Kai dropped his eyes to the deck and brooded in his silence before releasing the most horseshit line Rasia had ever heard. “Doesn’t matter what I want.”
Rasia understood when someone wasn’t interested in her, but she couldn’t wrap her head around the fact that Kai clearly wanted her but was holding himself back for these flimsy, ridiculous excuses. She waited for Kai to say something more, but only the lapping waves against the hull filled the air.
Fuck it. If she couldn’t have his everything, she would rather have nothing at all.
“You know what? If you want Nico so much, you can have her. Once we cross this lake, get off my ship—and take your mutt with you.”
Kai scoffed. “So that’s it, Rasia? You’re going to push me away like you’ve done everyone else?”
“Excuse me? You think I chose this? You think I chose Shamai-ta, the only person who ever truly understood me, dying from a fucking rock to the head? You think I chose jih abandoning me for that insufferable shroud? They left me.”
“You’re wrong. All Jilah has ever wanted is to be your friend, but you’ve never given her the chance. Kibari Oshield cared enough to be at your bone toss. And your jih didn’t abandon you. He offered to go out on the windship with you that day. I remember. You are the one who refuses to forgive him, all because he chose to carry Jilah-shi’s name.”
“Keep Ysai-ji out of your fucking mouth,” Rasia snapped, then shoved at him in her anger. Jih was none of Kai’s fucking business, and he was wrong.
Zephyr dropped an arm in Rasia’s path, grabbed her by the shirt, and threw her.
Rasia slid across the deck, and the great palm mast caught her, shaking. The ship dipped, and a large splash of water hit against the hull, splattering droplets along the deck.
All three of them watched the water roll, sliding into bumpy grooves, and stretching to the other side. They watched, frozen, as the water dried out in the sun.
“You are going to get us all killed,” Zephyr accused, turning to Rasia as she pulled herself to her feet.
“You’re the one who threw me halfway across the deck!”
“Zephyr,” Kai hissed, “stay out of this.”
“Kai and I are not waiting until we cross this lake to get off this ship,” Zephyr said. “We are turning around right now.”
“Over my dead body.”
“Done.”
Metal whistled through the air as Rasia unsheathed her khopesh blades, and Zephyr lifted his sword from his back. Rasia had already proved she had the advantage on the windship, so no doubt Zephyr had some trick up his sleeve. Kai shouted something, but Rasia wasn’t focused on him anymore. She was focused on the distance—how many bounds it would take to reach Zephyr, the range of that sword, and played all manner of approaches through her head.
Zephyr grabbed Kai by his caftan and slid him back, before lunging forward.
Rasia spun around the mast to avoid his attack. She whirled with her own blades and missed his head, cutting into the wood. The blades stuck, and Zephyr rammed his knee straight into her injured ribs.
Rasia heard a crunch. The pain knocked the wind from her, and she bit down on her lip to keep lucid. She released the hilt of her blades, still stuck in the mast, and grabbed her dagger from her belt. She stabbed her dagger into the flesh of his thigh. Once. Twice.
Zephyr took a hopping step back. He pulled the dagger out of his leg and tossed it across the ship.
Released from where Zephyr had her pinned against the mast, she landed on her feet with a hiss. Her lower rib might have broken, again. She felt the bone move when she grabbed the handles of her swords, and with considerable exertion, she pulled the blades out of the wood.
Zephyr wasn’t playing around this time, and that one blow might have won the fight. Rasia wasn’t going to be able to slip through his defenses with speed anymore and would need to use the windship to her advantage. But she’d already shown her hand days before, and Zephyr knew it.
“Zephyr!” Kai snapped at him, furious, as he rushed between them.
Zephyr shoved Kai aside and pursued Rasia relentlessly. He battered her back against the railing, pressing his blows toward her right side. Each time, the rib pain stabbed sharper and sharper, and each time Rasia got slower. Their swords clashed, ringing through her arms, and Zephyr’s sheer strength overcame her block to send Rasia sprawling to the deck. Her swords slid from her grip out of reach.
Zephyr lifted his huge sword, casting a shadow.
Hands hooked under her armpits, and Kai dragged her out of the path of Zephyr’s blow. That big, stupid, monstrous sword stabbed a hole through her poor windship.
Kai stood in front of her, arguing with Zephyr, but Rasia only heard the rush of blood in her ears. She seethed as she climbed to her knees and grabbed two daggers out of her sandaled boot. This close, Zephyr couldn’t swing his sword, leaving him wide open.
She rose, and unabashedly, used Kai as a shield. She thrust the attack under Kai’s outstretched arm and ripped into Zephyr’s bicep. She attacked with the second dagger, aiming to slice across Zephyr’s stomach. Kai turned to stop her, and she pushed him out of the way.
It happened in slow motion.
Kai’s feet slipped.
His eyes widened in surprise.
He reached for her as he toppled back.
The moment Rasia’s brain calculated the angle of Kai’s fall to “oh shit,” she dropped her daggers and grabbed for his outstretched hand, missed, wrapped her arm around a leg only for it to slip through her fingers.
Kai disappeared into the murky waters of the Yestermorrow Lake.
The shock of it all would hit Rasia later, but she had never been a person to stand around when the ground vibrates.
Rasia raced toward the equipment hatch and pulled out her longest strip of rope. She knotted one end to her waist, ignoring the pain of her ribs, and tied the other end to the windship mast.
Zephyr’s big dumb block of uselessness stood there, horrified.
“Move,” Rasia demanded. Zephyr got out of her way. Rasia ran forward, vaulted her foot against the railing, and dove into the water.
The Grankull cheered Rasia’s name through the streets, over the rooftops, and across the wingfields. Rasia had done it. She’d slain the dragon, and now the Grankull was singing her name-songs. She dropped down from the deck of the ship, and strangers patted her on the back, gave her tearful hugs, and wreathed her with adoration. They draped her in flowers and silk. Rasia danced. She twirled on the haters, the naysayers, and the disbelievers who called her Rabid Rasia. Now, they’d never call her out of her name again.
The crowd parted, and Rasia stood face to face with Kiba-ta.
“I’m sorry,” Kiba-ta said. “I was wrong.”
Rasia grinned, then continued to dance.
The crowd parted, and Ysai swept her up in a spinning hug. Jih apologized for ever doubting her. He promised that he would never ever, ever leave her again. They danced in the alcoholic rain showers and feasted their bellies full.
The crowd parted, and Rasia’s breath caught in her throat.
“TAH!” Rasia shouted, sprinting forward, and the crowd and all its strangers melted into a wave behind her. Rasia tackled Shamai-ta into a hug. He smelled of dust, fresh air, and honeyed dates. His laughter boomed like wind during high speeds. He held her, his most precious thing in the whole world.
“I’m so proud of you, Raj-po. So, so proud.”
The Grankull inked her legend into the papyrus scrolls. Then, gleefully, Rasia made dust of their heroes. That night, when they slept with throats hoarse of her name, Rasia climbed into her windship and sailed away.
Fuck ‘em all.
Wait.
Shamai-ta was dead, his name written by her own hand into their windship mast. His voice, the distant one she was beginning to forget, came back to haunt her, to remind her: Always remember, the lake is a lie.
Rasia opened her eyes to the opaque waters of the Yestermorrow Lake. Her eyes burned at the sight of Kai’s hazy figure falling deeper down the impenetrable depths. She swam toward him.
“Han, permission to set sail?”
Rasia stood at the helm of her own kull. She didn’t recognize the faces assigned to the scout and oars position, but she knew they’d all fought and bled together on many hunts. They followed her command without hesitation. She smiled to see Kai standing behind her at the steer, bright and brilliant. They all waited for her response, all waiting on her permission to begin yet another adventure. Where would the wind take them this time?
No.
Rasia batted away the image. She wanted only one thing right now. Rasia fought the weight of the water. She fought the burn searing her lungs. She fought the deceptions of the lake. Each battle took more and more energy out of her, but each victory brought her closer.
Rasia reached out.
“I’m sorry, Raj,” Ysai said as they sat atop their rooftop. “You were right about Jilah. It’s over now. I should have never let her come between us. I should have listened to you. Let’s return to the Desert, just you and me. What do you say?”
Ha! Like that was ever going to happen. Ysai was far too up Jilah’s cunt to climb back out of it now. Stupid lake. Is that all you’ve got?!
Rasia sailed a windship on the ocean. No! Rasia hiked distant white-capped mountains. No! Rasia discovered lands beyond her wildest imaginations. No! Rasia saved the world. No! Rasia knew what the fuck she wanted.
She closed her hand around Kai’s wrist.
Kai smiled at her from the railing, and his eyes forged gold. His hair flied around his face like a bright stream of fire. The wheels creaked beneath them. Their breakneck speed drummed the wing-sail. The entire Desert and beyond, waiting for them to explore.
Together, they laughed. And Rasia was happy.
The lake surrendered. The weighted resistance lifted from Kai’s body, and Rasia yanked him into her arms. She spun, toward the nebulous sun, and threw the rest of her strength into one great tug of the rope.
Her vision blacked out, and water filled her lungs. Drowning.
At least Rasia got what she wanted in the end.
Rasia searched through the training fields looking for tah, all while hiding from the sentries. The kulls were practicing pitching and unpitching a wing-sail, competing against each other for the best time. Tah always said that drilling the motions into your body was important so that when you were out in the field and the ground vibrated, you reacted without thought.
Rasia sprinted under the sails.
“Hold on, you little colt.” A hand grabbed the back of Rasia’s shirt and lifted them into the air. Rasia kicked the air, ready to bite, then grinned cheekily to find it was Kenji-shi. “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”
“School is dumb. Where is tah?”
“Apparently, you’re not the only one skipping today. Your tah decided to drop in on Kiba-kull at work.”
Rasia scrunched their nose. “Nasty.”
Kenji-shi chuckled and tossed them over his shoulder. He signed “water break” to his kull.
“But I don’t want to go back to school,” Rasia whined.
Kenji-shi rummaged around the bins where the kulls placed their belongings. He reached into his packed lunch, and Rasia brightened when he procured a bright orange apricot.
He handed Rasia the fruit and sat beside Rasia while they ate it. Rasia munched at the apricot gratefully. This is why they liked Kenji-shi. He didn’t try and drag them back to school like their tajihs.
“Why don’t you like school?” Kenji-shi asked. He shielded Rasia when a gust of wind swept up from the pitching of a nearby windship. Rasia continued to munch happily.
“The teacher says I’m dumb, but tah says they don’t know shit. Tah says he didn’t need school to make a name for himself, and they don’t teach anything important no ways. Tah says once the hunting season is over, he’s going to take me out to the Desert and teach me himself. So, if school don’t matter, why I have to go?”
“Hard to argue with that logic,” Kenji-shi said, nodding his head. “What about friends?”
“They’re stupid too. They’re mean and think I’m weird. But tah says to fuck the little shits. I don’t have to change for anyone. I’m perfect just the way I am. I asked Ysai to skip with me, so we can play together, but he’s still mad at me for breaking that stupid basket he made. Said he was going to give it to some girl at school, but why? That girl is ugly and has stupid hair.”
An amused smile stretched across Kenji-shi’s face. “I worry about you sometimes, kid. Between you and me, I think your tah spoils you way too much.”
“Tah says I’m hi-lar-i-ous.”
“That you are.”
Rasia crunched the last of the apricot, spraying juices in the air. When they finished, Kenji-shi held out his hand. Face wet and sticky, Rasia placed the apricot seed into his palm.
“No one is perfect, little stallion. We all start off like this seed here. We’re planted in the ground, then we grow. But the apricot isn’t any more or any less because it has changed shape. It’s still an apricot. It’s still itself. That goes for you too, Rasia-po. Life is change. There are times where you’ll have to grow and change shape, but that doesn’t make you any less yourself. The bad changes you prune off, and you let the good changes bear fruit. Grow what makes you happy.”
“. . . but I’m not an apricot. I’m Rasia!”
Kenji-shi smiled, and asked, patient, “Will going to school make you happy?”
“No,” Rasia said. Definitely not!
“Will being nice to those kids who are mean to you make you happy?”
“No!”
“Will apologizing to your jih so he’ll play with you next time make you happy?”
Rasia blinked. “Oh.”
Rasia liked talking to Kenji-shi. Kiba-ta always forced Rasia to apologize to Ysai whether they wanted to or not. And Shamai-ta always told Ysai to forgive them because Ysai was the oldest. But Kenji-shi always explained why things were important.
“I’ll apologize to jih,” Rasia promised.
Kenji-shi beamed, and Rasia dipped their head, suddenly bashful. With a thumb under their chin, Kenji-shi raised their face and wiped at their sticky cheeks with his dampened shroud. He adjusted Rasia’s own half-shroud, and then when finished, knocked Rasia on their forehead.
“Grow what makes you happy, and you’ll always be yourself.”
Rasia sucked in air.
She tightened her grip around Kai’s chest as the rope pulled her up, and up, and out of the water. With leather gloves, Zephyr hefted them both over the railing. A burn, something sharp, scratched her thigh, as she flipped over and flopped onto her back, coughing up water, with the sting of it in her nose and burning through her lungs. Kai lay motionless in her periphery, and she crawled, ribs in agony and body rattling, to reach him.
Zephyr pumped at Kai’s chest, each compression a forceful pound Rasia feared could crush him. A gurgle, then Kai coughed up water. His eyes snapped open, glowing gold for a flash before burning out white.
Panicked, Rasia lunged for his wrist. Kai’s heart thudded against her fingers, but Kai failed to respond to either Rasia or Zephyr’s pleadings. Rasia feared the lake had given back a shell and stolen all the good parts for itself.
Kai was always warm sleeping next to her, grinding against her skin, at night without a fire. But he was shock cold now. Empty. As if all the light of him had been left behind in the lake’s murky depths. His eyes gazed lost, and Rasia remembered tah’s eyes after they dug him out of that collapsed building—alive but not alive.
“He’s still breathing,” Zephyr said, singularly focused on the rise of Kai’s chest. But breath was not life. Rasia knew that intimately.
Her tah had been breathing through the coma, but he never woke again. The strongest person she knew, who cherished her more than anything in the world, couldn’t make it back to her. What chance did Kai have?
Rasia stared down at Kai and shivered at the ghost of his lips on her skin. She bent over at the sore memory of laughs curled tight under her ribs. Even when they were fighting, even when they disagreed, he still considered himself her friend. Her first friend. And she’d killed him.
Rasia hadn’t meant to push so hard.
She hadn’t meant to.
“He’s not waking up,” Zephyr said, frustrated. “Rasia, what do we do? You have more experience with the lake than anyone else. Why isn’t he waking up?”
Zephyr reminded Rasia she couldn’t afford to break down now. When the ground vibrated, all Rasia knew how to do was act. Rasia forced herself to look at Kai as a problem to solve.
“His clothes are still drenched. We need to take them off. The water might still be affecting him,” Rasia said.
Zephyr immediately stripped him, then Zephyr pulled off his own torn and bloody shirt to dab the water from Kai’s skin. Rasia stripped out of her own clothes, just in case.
After Kai was laid out dry in the sun, they both stared at him, watching, hoping. Kai didn’t look right, lying like that. Kai always curled up in deep sleep. She’d often woken to Kai coiled in the smallest corner possible. Looking at him now rubbed Rasia the wrong way. He was laid straight out on his back as if someone had arranged his corpse on a funeral pyre.
Rasia shouted at him, “Kai! Wake up!”
Kai didn’t move.
Angry, frustrated, and a little scared, Rasia slapped Kai hard across his face. No movement. She raised her hand again, but Zephyr caught her by the wrist.
“Rasia, that’s enough.”
Rasia fought against Zephyr’s iron grip until all the heat drained out of her and she surrendered. For the first time in Rasia’s life, she didn’t know what to do. She’d never encountered this in any of the legends. As far as she knew, Rasia and Kai were the only ones to have ever escaped the Lake of Yestermorrow after being fully submerged, and the closest analogy she could find were the faded memories of her younger self at five-years till.
“Why aren’t you like him?” Zephyr asked.
Rasia didn’t have the answer to that question. Kai was the magic one. He was the one that weird and unexplainable shit happened to.
“I don’t know. I think . . . this isn’t a physical problem. It’s a mental one. When tah put my hand in the water, I had dreams after. Maybe that’s why Kai won’t wake up. The dreams are too strong. We need something stronger to pull him back. Do you know his favorite food or song or something?”
“No. Don’t you?”
Rasia blinked, blankly.
“You’ve been fucking him and didn’t care to learn anything about him?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be best friends with his jih? Why don’t you know anything?”
“I know Nico’s favorite food, and her favorite song.” Zephyr paused, in realization. “We need Nico. She’ll know how to pull him out.”
“Without Kai, we don’t know where Nico is. She could be days behind us.”
“We need to turn around,” Zephyr argued.
“No. We are closer to the other side than back the way we came. I know a place with water, and it’s defensible. We make camp there.”
Zephyr’s eyes hardened as he loomed over her with all the immensity of the mountain he embodied. “How do I know you’re telling the truth? How do I know you’re truly willing to stop?”
Rasia sneered, showing her teeth. “You think I dove into those waters just to watch him die? Fuck you.”
Rasia turned on her heel and stomped away, pacing, where Kai still lay composed like the dead. In her periphery, she caught sight of tah’s name carved into the date wood. Was Rasia going to have to carve Kai’s name there, too?
Sight blurring, she screamed. Rasia went running and slammed her shoulder into the mast. The ship shook.
“Why the fuck did you leave me!?” Rasia demanded, collapsing in a heap that hurt her ribs. She clawed at the deck and glared at the bright gold waters of the lake.
Taunting her.
In a mindless rage, she grabbed at her swords and raced toward the waters. As if she could stab the lake. As if she could wrestle it, and slay it, and rescue back Kai’s light.
She hit the deck hard when Zephyr tackled her, one bound from the railing. She fought at him blindly but found herself pinned to the deck, her wrists bruised and twisted till she let go of her blades.
“Let me go,” Rasia screeched. “Let me go!”
Zephyr held her even tighter. With nowhere to go, and nothing to do, it hit her like a storm. Rasia broke into tears, sobbing and quaking in Zephyr’s stupid arms.
What had she done?
The storm left her drained and limp under Zephyr’s hold. She couldn’t even muster the energy to knee him in the dick, so she lay there, numb. Through the flood, Zephyr had maintained an iron hug around her. Rasia didn’t know when she’d begun hugging him back.
“I’m sorry,” Rasia whispered. “I’m sorry. For everything.”
Zephyr’s grip loosened. Pain flared in the absence of his weight. She had all kinds of tricks and maneuvers to take down mountains like him. But Zephyr looked at her, the same height as she, just as broken and crumbled and humbled into dust.
“Me too,” Zephyr said, crying ugly. “I’m sorry too.”
Sometimes, no one won.