They landed on a vast expanse of sand beneath a blistering hot sky. Arwa felt the daiva release her and uncoil. She made a sigil of thanks on shaking hands—and collapsed to the ground.
The bird-spirits remained, circling overhead, uncomfortably reminiscent of carrion birds. Zahir said her name, his voice hoarse and shaken, and lifted her up in his arms.
“How—?”
“I didn’t want to die there,” Arwa said fiercely. Whispers were pouring through her. Whispers and ash. “Not there.”
“You’re not dying,” he said. “You’re not.”
“I thought you hated—inaccuracy.”
He made a choked sound. One breath. Another. He said, “You asked me not to make a sacrifice of myself. I expect you to extend me the same courtesy.”
Then he was lifting her up, up. She bit off a scream.
“Your shoulder,” he said.
“Just move me carefully,” she told him.
“I will,” he said. Slung her good arm over his shoulder, stooping to hold her weight. “We’re getting help,” he said. “I promise it.”
She tasted blood on her lips. Ash. She nodded, and stumbled along with him.
He walked, and time moved strangely, swimming in and out of focus. She dreamed a dozen dreams, that flickered through her mind, fractures of shadows.
“Arwa.”
“Yes.” She remembered. How strange, how the name fit. Her self fit her like an old familiar skin. “I am.”
“Arwa,” he said, aggrieved. He lowered her down. Collapsed beside her, flat upon the sand. She breathed in and out. The tide had ebbed. She knew herself again.
She was Arwa. She was.
“I am sorry,” Arwa managed to say, “about Jihan.”
“Don’t be,” he said.
“But you love her.”
“I do,” said Zahir. “But she’s made her choice. And I, mine.”
Arwa rolled her head to the side. She saw falling ash and a pale white sky.
“You should leave me,” she said. “I won’t… be me for long.”
“Don’t be a fool.”
“Zahir…”
Zahir swore, hefting her up once more. “Come on now,” he said.
They made it only a few steps before Arwa stumbled. Something had changed within her. Something had severed.
She raised her hurt arm. Slow.
“Arwa, please,” he said shakily. “Stop trying to move it.”
But she couldn’t. She raised her hand to the light. In the realm of ash, she watched the glass of her skin cloud with darkness.
“It’s too late,” she told Zahir. Mouth moving. She remembered how flesh worked, still. “I’m losing myself.”
She turned her hands once more. Her roots were withering, the bond between her and her flesh decaying to dust.
He lowered her once more.
It took her soul a second to follow her flesh back to the ground: a dizzying second of blankness, where her soul was suspended in nothing, a constellation of ash burning its edges smooth.
“The tale,” she whispered, touching his flesh with her hands of mirror-glass, his soul with her trembling, bloodied fingertips. She did not know where she was anymore. She was undone. “Aliye’s tale. Of the doe. I thought—I could escape it. But I took the arrow, I think. Does that make me the doe? The willing sacrifice?”
“Gods, Arwa. It is just a tale.”
“They’re never just tales.”
“Look at me.” He held her face in his hands. “I’m going to help you as I did in the caravanserai. Let me share the burden of your ash.”
“It won’t be enough.”
“It can be. It will be.”
“There’s too much,” she said helplessly.
He touched his forehead to her own. “You are in the realm of ash, even now, aren’t you?”
Ash. Sunlight. The gold of sand. The black and white of an ash sky.
“Yes.”
“Well then,” he said. “Well. There must be a trick to it.”
He closed his eyes, and then he was there in the realm with her, all gossamer and glass, holding her still. Expression grim, he wound his blood roots around her own, lifting them to grace her fingers, her ash-dark wrists.
“Let me take the weight of the ash,” he said. “Let me share it with you again.”
“It won’t be enough.”
“Arwa. Let me try.”
She said nothing more, as he drew the weight of the ash between them, through the bond of their twined roots, said nothing as the clamor of voices grew and grew. But when she saw gray darkness begin to cloud his hands, his arms, she swore and tried to draw back.
He held her fast.
“Zahir, no.”
“What are blood roots, Arwa?” he said softly. “We studied them together, didn’t we? A bond between body and soul. A conduit allowing the one to feed the other. The soul is shaped by the realm of ash. The soul shapes the body. But when mystics enter the realm together, when they share the strength of their roots… Arwa, that strength. What is that strength?”
“Stop thinking,” she told him. “Stop thinking before you get yourself hurt.”
“That really isn’t my nature,” he replied.
“Zahir,” she said. Winced, something climbing within her, a scream, a memory that wasn’t her own. “Don’t do anything foolish.”
“I told you, in the caravanserai, that if you were taken by the realm I’d do anything to bring you back.” He said it as if it were fact: a simple line from a book, indelible ink that could not be undone. “I told you it was fear that spoke, and it was. But it was true also, Arwa.”
He was still close. Clouded with the weight of her own dreams.
“The roots,” he said. “They share the body’s strength. Blood, heartbeat, life. And through them, I can share mine with you.” His hand curled tighter against her own, the roots furled between them.
“You can’t.”
“I can,” he said. “If there is one thing I know, Arwa—one thing at all—it is the nature of the soul and of sacrifice.”
“Those are two things.”
“You already sound more like yourself,” he said gently. He brushed his fingers over her face, the roots wavering between them.
“You don’t know what it will do to you,” she told him.
“Shorten my life, I imagine. We’ll keep a record of the outcome.”
“I saved your life,” she said furiously, “and now you want to part with it?”
“We know better than most that death isn’t an end,” he murmured. “And no. I want us both to live. That’s all.” His voice was so soft. “Arwa, if I am yours, then don’t leave me behind. Let me try to save you. If we are partners in this work, then trust me. Trust my will. Let us go together.”
She stared up at him, thousands of voices pouring through her, wearing her thin. But it was a strange truth: as they wore her away, peeled artifice away from her, she found that all that remained was the softness of his eyes. The promise she had made him.
You are mine.
She nodded. “Do it,” she said.
He closed his eyes then. Exhaled.
She had seen him consume ash. But she had never seen anything like this. She saw the surface of his skin shift, the facets of its glass surface moving. It reminded her of how the nightmare had moved—reworking its flesh in response to her fears, ferally clever.
But Zahir was not reshaping in response to her fears.
He was pouring his strength into her. His life. His blood.
The roots wound between them. Their hands—their dreamed skin—fused together. Beneath them the ground of the realm splintered and shifted. Their realms were melding too. Joining into one.
In the place where their realms were now joined she saw their roots coil and spread. He placed her against them, letting them bind her tight. Her soul was bound close to the mortal world, by his life and her own. Body to soul. Soul to body.
Just a tale, he’d called it. But she had seen this tree in the hermitage and the pleasure house and the House of Tears. Vast branches. Deep roots. A sacrifice written into the world.
She raised her hands to the sky, watching the light pour through them, dappled with shadow. She felt the roots, deep and strong, holding her steady: his heartbeat, his breath. His soul, his dreams.
He collapsed to the ground beside her. His distant lungs drew breath, and she called his name, and drew him into her arms. In the land of the dead, they were holding each other, and they were alive.
“Zahir,” she said, her voice a fading echo. “I thought the dead had me.”
“No,” he said. He was beside her, his soul ashen and glass-cold, his skin burning with warmth. “The dead can’t take you. Not while I am living. Not when I can guide you home.”