Rasia had little time to soak in her hard-earned victory. The moment the battle fever left her, she wasted no time instructing everyone on how to butcher a dragon. The dragon’s bulk created too much drag, so they wrapped it in a package of its own wings to glide smoothly atop the sand. They had the dragon hitched to the warship by sunrise, then they unbolted the damaged ram and left that dead weight behind.
Ever since they left the Dragon’s Coast, they’d been rowing their arms out. Rasia rested for three days, primarily because at one point she had collapsed in exhaustion, and then she took shifts with everyone else. She didn’t care if she broke another rib. The dragon didn’t matter if they didn’t make it back home in time. Despite days of the same grueling pace, no one complained.
But as the moon grew full and the days ticked down, the truth became harder to ignore.
Rasia threw her calculations against the wall of the Han quarters, hoping she had missed something the first, second, or third time she did the math. (Different answers every time because math wasn’t her strong suit, but did every answer have to be so wildly off the mark?) She stormed out of the quarters and snapped at the kull to finish their break and get back to the oars. She ascended the steps to where Kai guided the warship through too gentle winds. She glanced down as the others stretched and shook out their arms, preparing for yet another relentless drive that wouldn’t be enough.
“We’re not going to make it, are we?” Kai asked. Rasia wasn’t surprised he had figured it out. He had a windeka’s sense in his bones and was better at math with enviably precise calculations.
“No, we’re not. We were on schedule, but the dawnward winds have come early this season. With the dragon’s weight and the shift in wind, we’ll miss the deadline by two days. Or three. Either way, it’s not looking good. We were so close, Kai. So close.” Rasia tightened her hands on the railing. “I have to tell them. That’s my responsibility, right? I’m the Han. I’ve failed them . . . I just . . . I was hoping I was wrong. But I know I’m not.”
Kai kept his face toward the horizon, continuing to steer as he nonchalantly mentioned, “What if I told you I could get us back home before the end of the deadline?”
Rasia raised both brows and turned to scrutinize him. He combed back the hair that the wind had blown into his face. “What are you talking about?” she asked.
“I can control my magic.”
She jerked away from the railing and straightened to stare at him. She tried to remember all the past instances of Kai’s magic. They had been accidents, hadn’t they?
“When? How? Why haven’t you said anything before?”
“Since the Yestermorrow Lake,” he admitted. What the fuck? This whole time and Rasia hadn’t noticed? Kai glanced at her out of the corner of his eye and shrugged. “If everyone knew, I feared they would pressure me to use it against the dragon. If I used my magic against the dragon in any type of way, I knew you would regret it. You would always wonder if we could have succeeded without it. It would have agonized you. When people asked, I wanted to be able to say that we did it—no shortcuts, no cheats—that we did it on our own.” A small smile lifted at the corner of his lips when he finally faced her. “We did it, Rasia.”
Those four words swept her off her feet and flipped her world around. She fell into the sky, and she wholly and unequivocally embraced the descent. She leapt into his arms. He caught her solidly, no wobble, and she kissed him to soften the landing. She laughed, breathlessly, buzzing helplessly with giddy excitement. She floated on his faith in her, and she never wanted to walk the ground again.
“Kulani,” Rasia branded the word to his lips. “Kulani.”
Many people committed years to each other before ever daring to use the word. She didn’t need years. At that moment, she knew. He could have chosen the easier path. So many people would have done so if given the option. But he chose her path. He faced down a dragon with her, and they did it on their own.
A throat cleared insistently above them.
Kai and Rasia reluctantly pulled apart enough to glare at Zephyr, who crossed his arms and asked, “Are we leaving or not?”
“Why do you got to stop them?” Azan complained, from where he sat on the oar bench watching the show. “That was hot.”
Rasia returned to her feet, weak-kneed, having yet to get her ground legs back. Kai turned to Zephyr and explained, “I think I can use my magic to get us home.”
“Then what are you waiting for?” Zephyr asked.
Kai glanced at Rasia, uncertain. “Is it okay with you?”
She understood what he was really asking. How much magic was she willing to use to finish her Forging? “Fuck that. If it weren’t for the Council and their stupid hit on Nico, we would have made it back with plenty of time. Let’s go.”
“I’ve never tried something this big before, but just in case, you should hold onto something,” Kai advised.
He moved to the space in front of the wheel and gripped the half-wall in concentration. Rasia considered Kai’s advice and cheekily locked her arms about his waist. Zephyr repeated the order to the others.
“Let’s finish our Forging,” she encouraged.
Kai nodded. Under her arms, she felt him take a deep breath. His skin warmed under her hands. His gold eyes glowed brighter. A deep grumpy bass rumbled through Rasia’s ears.
The entire Desert woke up, as if it had been sleeping for thousands of years, and only now it had reason to stretch itself awake. The sand dunes undulated like ocean waves, and then a tsunami of sand roared from behind and launched the entire warship and its dragon load into the air.
As if the very Desert carried the warship in the palm of its hand, they sped forward when the Desert stretched its arm across the sky. They flew over the Graveyard, joined formations of birds over the Lake of Yestermorrow, followed herds of ibex leaping across the gorge, skipped over nesting skinkos, and swayed past the oasis. The Grankull rose out of the sand in the distance.
“Stop!” Rasia called out.
They stopped, suspended briefly, before the Desert begrudgingly placed them back onto the ground. They landed light as a feather without nary a jostle. Then the Desert shifted, turned over a blanket of sand, and went back to sleep as if nothing had ever disturbed it.
They all stared in awe. Zephyr’s jaw seemed to have come unhinged. Neema placed a hand before her face, and Azan laughed breathlessly. It took a moment, even for Rasia, to gather herself. The sand had come alive in the shape of Kai’s hand and had ferried them across the Desert in the space of a drum. She had no words. She had witnessed a god walk.
“Why did we stop?” Kai asked, confused. “I could have gotten us closer without anyone seeing.”
Rasia cracked open stiff fingers from around his waist. She leaned against the steer and pressed a hand to her racing heart. This was how she felt when her tah first brought her to the Dragon’s Coast, or when she climbed to the tallest peak of the Desert to claim the top of the world, or when she experienced the eye of a sandstorm for the first time. She felt this overwhelming sense of awe that only nature in all its grandiosity could invoke.
“Rasia?” Kai asked, uncertain.
“That—” Rasia stuttered. “That was awesome!”
Kai soon had his arms full of Rasia. He didn’t hesitate to pull her closer and then whisked them away atop a breeze of wind to the Han’s quarters. Rasia blinked and looked at their sudden change in surroundings. To her perception, they were just standing at the steer, but in actuality Kai had teleported them off the deck with his magic.
Her eyes narrowed, calculating, “Why didn’t you do that to the warship?”
“I wanted to impress you.”
Rasia laughed, and Kai’s magic whipped around them, tousling things off the shelves, and upturning wicker baskets. He had held it in for so long. It felt good to finally breathe all the magic to the surface, and Rasia stood unafraid at the center of the calm, with all the world raging around them. Utterly fearless. Kai swept her onto the bed, planting kisses. They’d been hustling so fast across the Desert, neither really have allowed themselves to feel the triumph of their victory over the dragon. But Kai felt it now, mixed with the thrill of his magic and the exultation of ‘kulani’ on Rasia’s lips.
With a flick of his hand, the strings of her pants came undone. Another flick, and her pants were swept clean off. He wrapped her legs around his head and dove into her wet heat. Her fingers clawed at his scalp.
“Kulani.”
The word vibrated through his chest. He couldn’t say it. Kai had this lock on his throat, this deep-seated fear that if he said the word aloud, the world would come tumbling down around him. For now, he kept the word in the joints of his bones where it would be safe. He hoped to show her, instead, everything that he felt. He hoped to fold them into one weave, subsist off nothing but her fire and sex, and suck out her soul.
Kulani. His soulmate. His.
She tensed, tighter and tighter, till finally shuddering and melting into a puddle of soft limbs. He withdrew and reached down between them. Rasia joined his fingers, stroking to finish him off, together. Kai didn’t resist as both his climax and magic punched out of him. The walls shook. Distant shouts raised alarms. The warship floated back to the ground.
Kai wiped his hands at the edge of the bed, and they collapsed, breathing. They both wallowed in the release. It felt a lifetime since they’ve had sex.
Then he remembered why.
“We broke the ‘no-sex’ rule,” Kai mumbled out, embarrassed, and covered his face with his forearm. They were supposed to have waited until after the Naming Ceremony. It was not that he didn’t understand Nico’s alarm for his recent lack of self-control. It alarmed him too, sometimes. Even though he knew their recent tryst had no chance of seeding her, certain dangers still existed. What if he bruised her and made a suspicious mark on her thigh? The Grankull might find out, and it could be all over for the both of them.
Rasia grinned cheekily. “We gave an admirable effort.”
Kai playfully pushed her, and she laughed. He liked it when she laughed on top of him, when he could feel her joy in his chest.
“You’re right,” she said, and punctuated the laugh with a sigh. “It’s about more than seeding now. One stray mark and we could be in trouble. We’ve got to be more careful, especially now we’re so close to home. But fuck, I needed that. I can’t wait when we don’t have to worry about this shit. When I’m officially on gonom, and we don’t have to hold back, and I can write my fucking name on your skin.”
Kai couldn’t wait for that day either. Now that they had slayed the dragon, that day wouldn’t be too far from dawning. He could almost reach out and touch it with his fingertips.
“Why did we stop?” he asked.
“No point in being back before we’ve got to be. Once we return to the Grankull, we go back to the shrouds and the caftans and the no touching until the Naming Ceremony. Now, we’ve got three whole days before the deadline. We’ve got time to enjoy ourselves.”
“We’ve already enjoyed ourselves too much.”
Rasia laughed and kissed up his neck. Then she lifted on her elbow and eyed him, expectantly. “Magic. Explain.”
Of course, she wouldn’t let him get away without an explanation. He pressed his hands to his face and breathed in a deep sigh. “You were right.”
“I am always right. But what exactly am I right about?”
“Kenji Ilhani was not the first vision the Yestermorrow Lake showed to me. I wanted answers too. I wanted to know the truth about my magic. I wanted to know why I am the way I am, and why neither healer nor historian could figure out what was wrong with me. Then the Lake gave me the answers I wanted, and I didn’t believe them. Not even afterward. Only when I became desperate and didn’t have any other choice.”
“What did you see?” she asked.
“I was born a twin. I had a twin that didn’t survive the childbirth, but their magic didn’t die with them. It passed to me. The reason my magic has never been right isn’t because it’s broken, it’s because I have too much of it.” Kai released a self-deprecating laugh. “I thought it was horseshit. How did I know if what the waters showed me was true or if they were just answers I desperately wanted?”
“Your tah is a twin,” she said, connecting the dots far faster than he had been willing to. “Your cousins are twins. It makes sense. You’ve said before that you’ve been unable to feel your magic, but when you think about it—you take a gourd and fill it half-way, you hear the water sloshing around. But fill it up full, you can’t hear anything because it’s so near to bursting. There’s no space to move. Shake it up enough and water starts leaking from the top. That’s why your magic did all those random things. You were leaking.”
Kai nodded slowly. He had come to the same conclusion, eventually. He turned over on his good shoulder to face her. “I have two elements—both wind and sand. Two. That’s unprecedented. There has never been an Ohan in the history of the Grankull with two. That would mean . . .”
Rasia leaned forward. “Say it.”
He looked at her, eyes wide and scared of the implications. “That would make me the most powerful magicborn to have ever lived.”
She smirked, smug and immensely pleased. “Of course, you are. You are my kulani.”
He snorted at her. “Your ego knows no bounds.” Then he said more seriously, softer. “I don’t feel powerful.”
One by one, Rasia locked her fingers with his. He didn’t pull away, and they both stared at their interlocked grip. His hands were long and corded with a strength that hadn’t existed a blink ago. He had gone from malnourished bones and skin to a lean youth with a pebble of muscle from rowing the warship oars.
“You look healthier than you were before,” she said.
“I was sickly because a human body is not supposed to hold so much magic. You were right. Out of everyone in the Grankull, you were right. I needed to eat. Magic requires energy to function and without a sufficient amount of food, it fed of off me instead. I need to eat five times more than the average person.”
Rasia’s eyes widened at that number. “How powerful are you?”
Kai could make the Desert walk, and it hadn’t exhausted or chilled him as magic does to Nico when she performed huge displays of it. It frightened him that he couldn’t imagine the borders of its potential. His eyes opened wide and round as he answered, “Powerful.”
“Shit.” Rasia laid back and clicked her tongue, thoughtfully. “Wait until the Grankull hears of this.”
“No. They can’t know. No one can know. We have to tell the others not to say anything about my magic.”
“What? Why not?”
“I’m not going to eat five rations more than everyone else. It’s different out here where we’ve had plenty of food, but the Grankull can barely sustain more than a ration pack. I’m no different than that baby dragon, except I understand better. I can’t starve out the Grankull.”
“But you’re my kulani. I’m not going to let you starve. We can hunt outside of the Grankull and smuggle in what we need. And when you try out for the kulls and become windeka, you’ll be out in the Desert again and you can eat as much as you want. You are the most powerful magic-born to have ever lived. Don’t you want to know what you’re capable of? Experience your full potential?”
“I don’t think the Grankull could ever support my full potential,” he said, honestly. “Sometimes it’s okay not to always be everything. I’m okay if this is all the magic I’ll ever be able to do.”
“But—but—how could you live like that?” Rasia sputtered as she sat up. “Why would you ever want to live . . .” She scrunched her face. “Less than? You shouldn’t have to limit yourself because of the Grankull’s stupid rules. You deserve to live every bit as amazing and as brilliant as the person you are. Don’t dim your light because you’re too bright for people to look at. Fuck that.”
“Rasia,” Kai soothed as he stroked his hand down her arm. “I’ve slayed a dragon without my magic. I don’t need it.”
“What about the other part?” she snapped. “What about the part where your magic feeds off you? You also need food to keep you healthy.”
The thought had crossed Kai’s mind, but he had thought it a small sacrifice. He never wanted to be so bright that he inadvertently blinded people. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Fuck you.” Cross-legged, Rasia slapped her knees. “The way I see it, there are two issues here. You don’t want to be defined by your magic. I get that. If it’s not you, it’s not you. Regardless, it affects your health as well. Despite your guilt, you need to eat. We can keep your magic a secret if you want, but you allow me to do whatever I’ve got to do to keep you fed.”
“I can’t possibly ask that of you.” He crushed his hands to his face. “I don’t want to be a burden to you.”
“Lani,” Rasia said, and Kai’s heart tightened at the endearment. She tugged his hands away from his eyes. “You are not a burden. You are my kulani. You are my ride-or-die. Anyone who fucks with you, fucks with me. It’s you and me, always.”
The bones Kai threw all those nights ago sailing away from the oasis have finally landed. They’ve clicked into place. This was real. It was not a dream he had stuffed down and hidden away. It was not an illusion of the Yestermorrow Lake.
His soulmatch was a star of boundless laughter and twinkling mischief. She was sharp edges that melted in his hands. She was the wild gust under his wings. She was the Han to his windeka, and they sailed worlds together.
Kulani. A kull of two.