in bed— knowing I needed rest so that I could be ready to make the best use of this precious training day. And yet, my thoughts wouldn’t quiet. All I could think about was what Kor had told me, and what I had agreed to—and when I could avoid thinking about that, I remembered.
I must have run through every single memory I had of Ben, from the first moment I saw his human face underneath me to when I’d practically run from him in the Oculus just now. It was like my vision had had a dark filter, not allowing me to see him clearly. And now, with the filter off…I was belatedly dazzled.
Ben…loved me.
All those looks he gave me, all those little touches, all those things he said, all those crushing hugs, all those little things he did to care for or protect me…I had put the down to just him being kind, protective, noble. And he was kind, protective, noble. But he had another motivation that glowed straight through them all, tying them together into a bright tapestry of…love.
I…had been a blind idiot. It was so painfully obvious now. No wonder Kor had been so frustrated with the two of us. Look at these two silly love-struck fools, too caught up in their own insecurities and fears to see how the other feels.
I had thought with foolish pride last night that I had finally seen Ben clearly. But I hadn’t. I had seen the darkness that he thought was far darker than it truly was and decided that was a completeness of being.
I should have known better. Hadn’t I been the one to say Ben had the largest heart I had ever known? It was like my subconscious had been screaming at me, Stop feeling sorry for yourself and LOOK AT HIM.
Look up.
Reach.
You didn’t truly see a person—truly see them—until you saw their absolute purest core that lay beyond the darkness, both above and beneath it, as the sun was to the void.
And now that I had seen Ben’s…I would never be the same.
How…could I have lost my heart and somehow gained it back, full and overflowing…in the same day?
There was one problem, though, and it cast a pall of clouds between me and the sun: Ben’s own inhibitions. And if Kor was right…they were far deeper and more insidious than mine. I had felt sorry for myself so many times in my life, thinking of how hard it was to move around, to have such a large family that needed constant work, and to feel lost and forgotten in all the shuffle.
And yet, now I was learning how lucky I had been. How provided for, sheltered, surrounded, loved. Any price I had paid in giving up after-school activities to babysit, all those times I thought I could scream from wanting some privacy, all those times I craved more individual attention from hectic parents.… Those things had hurt…but the pain was fading, and the prices no longer seemed so great.
Not in the face of the ones Ben had paid.
All his parents’ individual love, adoration, and attention hadn’t been enough to save him from the heartbreak of losing his mother and the burden of serving his people. If I had grown up feeling a bit squeezed, he had grown up in a crucible, with everyone on all sides trying to either change him…or kill him. And he, desperate to make himself not a monster, had tried to become everything that the good ones wanted him to be. But it was never enough, and his pain was too great to hold on to them—especially the ones with the most potential for more pain. So he cut them off, all in the name of serving them better.
Then circumstances had thrown us together, and he had latched onto me like a drowning man to a lifeline. I saw that now. I felt tempted to doubt the purity of his love because of it, but I shook off that shadow, refusing to let it drag me back. No. Ben loved me.
But…with that much love…how long was it before it became too much for him, and he let go of me too?
A quiet knock on the door made me jump—even though it was the volume carefully calibrated to test whether the occupant was awake enough to hear and respond.
From the closeness of the pull, I knew exactly who it was.
I scrambled out of my bed and to my feet, ran my fingers frantically through my hair to get rid of the worst of the bedhead, straightened my clothes…and took deep breaths to at least somewhat slow my pounding heart.
Calm down, I told myself sternly. He loves you.
That only made it worse.
This would be the first time I would truly look into his eyes with that knowledge. I hadn’t managed, back in the Oculus. I hadn’t been prepared, hadn’t had the space to process. That was why I was so distracted and half-hearted in trying to replicate my first ice wall, and given half the chance, that was why I had run.
Well, that…and to save myself from the horror of keeping up Kor’s charade alone. I’d tried to say true things, but I thought Ben still saw through me. I wasn’t much better at lying than he was.
Now, though, I had no excuses. I had to look him in the eye, knowing all that I knew now, without flinching.
I, an Earth-born amón…was going to stare straight into the sun.
I walked slowly to the door, trying hard not to tremble.…
And opened it.
Ben stood there, smiling down at me.
I looked into his gold eyes instinctively, and then thought, Oh.
It was the Oh that you think just before a totally unexpected tornado hits you.
And that was all my brain got out before it was scrambled.
“Ah, you’re awake,” Ben said naturally. “Good. Got the rest you needed?”
When I just continued to stare, his smile faded to concern. “Sarah?”
I shook my head sharply, wishing I could slap myself without looking even stranger. I faked a yawn and blinked blearily. “Oh, sorry. I guess…I’m not quite awake yet.”
His growing concern shifted to an apologetic smile. “Oh, sorry. Did I wake you? I can come back—”
“No, it’s fine,” I said quickly. “I was already waking up, so your timing is perfect. What’s up?”
His face became serious. Unusually serious. “I need your help with something. Something very important, and something only you can do.”
My heart picked up the pace again as my mind ran through all the terribly dangerous, exhausting, and painful things he could ask of me.
“I’ll do it,” I said immediately.
His eyes softened, and my heart sped. “You don’t even know what it is yet.”
I tried to make my shrug nonchalant. “Because it’s you asking…I’ll do it. What do you need?”
He grinned suddenly, all seriousness fading with a disorienting suddenness. “I need to you to teach me an Earthren recipe.”
I blinked at him. “Come again?”
His grin faded but didn’t entirely leave. “Sorry, I meant to tease you, but now I see that was in poor taste. I really do want you to teach me, though.”
“No, no,” I said, holding up one hand while I put the other over my slowing heart. “I think my sleepy brain is catching up. It was funny, really.”
In a retroactive, stress-released hysteria kind of way. I had to suppress a mad giggle for fear I wouldn’t be able to stop.
“But…you really want me to teach you a recipe? Like…a cooking recipe?”
He took a deep breath, sobering. And I was pretty sure it was genuine this time. “I recognize…that your family must be going through hellwinds right now. I don’t know what they must be thinking, but if they’ve given up hope and decided they’ve lost you.…”
My heart clenched and my eyes stung at the compassion on his face and in those golden eyes.
No one, not even Kor, had expressed any concern for my family. Except, of course…him.
He cleared his throat awkwardly. “I know…something, just a bit, of what they must be feeling right now. And when we reach them, they’re going to have a hard time believing that I did my best to take care of their daughter and sister while she was in my care. So…I want to be able to do something for them, to prove it to them in a small way. And the only things I know how to do well are kill things…and cook.”
He reddened a bit. “Since the first seems like a bad idea.…”
I chuckled, finally getting what he was after—and my heart melted.
What did I ever do to deserve a guy like this?
Well, technically, you still don’t have him, my pessimistic side said.
Shut up, my lovesick, starry-eyed side answered.
“That’s so sweet,” I said, finally crossing the threshold of my room to stand right next to him and beam up at him. “Sure, I can help with that.”
“Oh,” he said, looking a bit dazed.
My heart began pounding again as I realized, for the first time, the effect I had on him.
I, Sarah Lind…made Koriben Sunfilled, Heir of the dragons…flustered. Just as much, if not more, than he made me.
Would wonders never cease.
He looked away hastily, putting a hand on his neck. “Great. Good. Great.… Um.… What are we making?”
I frowned thoughtfully. “Well, it has to be something I know by heart, something that uses things we have here, and won’t take too much time.…”
I was mindful of how precious today’s time was.
“Don’t worry about time,” Ben insisted. “I’m getting hungry, anyway, which means you probably are too. And weren’t you the one saying we needed to celebrate and enjoy the moment a bit?”
I nodded absently, only half listening as I thought. “I think maybe…pancakes?”
“Olith?” Ben said curiously, saying the word cake in his language. “As in, olith you make in a pan?”
I smiled. “I’ll show you.”
creative, of course.
First, I wanted to write down the recipe so that I could reference it. I had our tried-and-true family recipe for pancakes down pat, but I quickly realized that replicating it here was going to be a slow process, and I didn’t want to keep thinking through the whole thing all over again.
But when I asked Ben for something to write with, he simply handed me a stylus just like Kor had.
It was surprisingly heavy, and I realized suddenly that it must be made of some kind of dark rock. It was cut in the shape of a writing utensil—no doubt designed for Ben’s much larger hands—and polished as smooth as a river stone. But a rock.
“Er.…” I said hesitantly. “This is cool and all that, but I was hoping for a pen or pencil and some paper.”
“Why waste the paper?” Ben asked curiously. “What’s wrong with that?”
“I’m all for saving paper,” I said hastily. “But I want to be able to carry the recipe around. If I just write it on the counter or something.…”
I tapped my kitchen counter demonstratively. “That’s great while we’re in here, but not when we go to the storage rooms.”
“But I’ll have my tablet for that,” Ben said, still confused.
I blinked at him. “Excuse me? You have a tablet?”
“Yeah,” he said. Then he pulled it out of thin air and laid carefully it on the counter in front of me.
It was…a tablet. In the original sense. In the sense of a rectangular…rock.
I blinked and held up the stylus. They were the same shade and smoothness, with only the slightest of white striations to disturb the perfection and hint at their shared origins.
“They’re made of the same aldstone,” Ben explained, guessing something of my thoughts. “Then magically imprinted on each other to make the bond unique. Whatever you write with this…”
He gently took the stylus from me and scribbled a handful of characters in their rune-like script on the counter. Then he tapped his…tablet.
“…I can bring up on this.”
Just as he said, the gold letters slowly appeared on the dark stone, fading into being like ink seeping through paper. I looked between the letters on the counter and the ones on his tablet: they were perfectly identical.
Ben put his finger on the tablet again. “It’s the same thing as with the archivals. In fact, the tablet, in turn, is connected to my personal archival. Whatever is stored on here, I can back up there, once I return.”
He blushed. “Which, given my track record with breaking things…I try to do as often as I can. This is my third tablet. But fortunately—or unfortunately, for the sake of the records I’m supposed to be keeping for posterity—I don’t use it that much. So…I haven’t lost much after breaking or losing each one. The archivists just shake their head and get me another one.”
“Neat,” was all I could say. Really, I was a bit in awe. It was yet another piece of evidence of what I had already long ago concluded: dramá culture might look simple—almost Medieval, even—on the surface. But through magic and ingenuity, they had a level of sophistication in some things that we Earthren couldn’t match.
“I can get you a pen and paper if you want,” Ben said, reddening. “But if you write it with this…”
He offered the stylus a bit hopefully. “…then I’ll have it forever.”
When I only smiled softly, he looked away and said quickly, blushing again, “I mean…as a reference. For making this pan cake. Again.”
I…had seriously been blind before. But then, I had been turned inward. Self-pity and insecurity did that, after all. To truly see clearly…you had to get out of your own way.
I took the stylus from him without another protest.
As I hovered the stylus just under the word already on the counter, curiosity pricked at me.
“What did you write, just now?” I asked idly as I began listing the ingredients on the countertop. The tip of the stylus glided smoothly and soundlessly, so it couldn’t have been completely stone. Unsurprisingly, my “ink” was white with a silver sheen.
Ben didn’t answer long enough that I glanced up from writing out the recipe to look at him.
He was fully red now. “‘Sarah.’”
When I only blinked, thinking he was addressing me, he quickly clarified.
“Er, that is…I wrote your name…in Drona.”
The first thing he had thought to write in demonstration…stored now on an archival stone that would go down in the public record of his life one day…was my name.
At one point, I would have dismissed that as coincidence or mere kindness. Now, even though I responded the same way I would have before by merely nodding and returning my attention to my task…my chest constricted, and tears pricked my eyes again.
The question burst out of Ben, as if he couldn’t hold it back. “How is it spelled? Or…written?”
Without looking up—because if I did, he might see how much I knew—I left aside the ingredient list and raised the stylus to rest on the same “line” but a few spaces after the runic Drona version of my name. Then I wrote it out, letter by careful letter.
Sarah.
“Oh,” Ben said, blinking at it as he leaned in. “That’s so…smooth. And pretty.”
I could see why he thought that. I’d been showing off a bit. I didn’t normally write my name in cursive unless I was signing something—and even then, it was usually illegible. But this had been my finest cursive work since middle school.
“Thank you,” I said with a smile as I traced the first gold letter with a finger. “I like your version too, though. There’s something strong about it.”
The three letters—if I had separated them correctly into three—were all angles and edges, triangles, squares, and lines and dots. They had fortitude, as if meant to stand the test of time.
The two versions of my name couldn’t have been more different.
“As it should,” Ben said with surprise. “In Drona, it means sera.”
He said my name again slowly, but with emphasis and concentration, as if trying hard to get more than just the meaning “hey, you” across to me. And so he did.
Valiant.
I gaped at him. It was a small thing, really. What was in a name, anyway? Especially in another language. And yet.…
“You’re kidding. Valiant?”
“Of course I’m not kidding,” he said with a frown. “From the moment you told me it, I thought it was perfect.”
He didn’t just think I was strong. He thought I was valiant. Every time he had said my name, he was calling me…valiant.
From the moment he’d met me.
He cocked his head. “What does it mean in…your language?”
“English,” I supplied absently. “It doesn’t mean anything in that, though; it’s just a name. It comes from Hebrew, which is much older. In that language, it means ‘princess.’”
I blinked, making the connection for the first time.
“Princess?” he asked intently, scrunching his face as if trying to pierce through the meaning his blood was trying to convey to him.
I shook my head. “You don’t have a word for it. The closest equivalent is…well, what you are. Heir. Except, the female version.”
“Oh,” he said in satisfaction, figuring out the puzzle. “Well, that’s perfect too, isn’t it?”
“A little too perfect,” I said dryly, refocusing on recipe-writing.
“You still have a choice, Sarah,” Ben said gently.
Goosebumps went down my arms at him saying my name. Would I ever be able to hear him say it again and not think of what that meant to him?
I sure hoped not.
“What does your name mean?” I asked, turning the focus onto him.
“Oh, Koriben? It means ‘oath binder.’” Ben then gave the same sort of grimace I had after saying “princess,” as if he, too, were making a connection he hadn’t before.
“I like it,” I said as casually as I could, keeping my focus on writing. “It suits you, too.”
It might explain a bit of his commitment to making and keeping promises. No matter what they cost him.
“Thanks,” he said in surprise.
“Which is the ‘Ben’ part?” I asked, trying to hide my intensity. That part mattered to me. I wanted to know what I was telling him every time I said his preferred name.
“Binder,” Ben said with a shrug.
The pull hummed between us, thrumming like a plucked string at his own casual mention of the word.
That gave me pause. I stopped writing for a moment, worried I would slip and make some garish error in this timeless public record of my family’s favorite pancake recipe. I had been writing this slowly for a reason. Well…given the many distractions, more than one reason. But this was the main one. After all, this was my first official contribution to the store of dramá knowledge. It wouldn’t be my most momentous, but it was my first.
Oblivious, Ben went on. “Kor and I share the first part, which is common in male names: Kor, ‘oath.’ Except his name, Korinth, means ‘oath keeper.’”
Nothing to read into there.… Probably.
“Except you go by ‘Ben,’ and he by ‘Kor,’” I said, trying to keep the conversation casual. I was still recovering from the pull’s vibration.
Was there anything to their choice of nicknames? Particularly Ben’s?
“Well, yeah,” Ben said with a chuckle. “‘Kori’ for me and ‘inth’ for him aren’t exactly easier to say, are they?”
So no, then. Just coincidence, finally.
I answered with a chuckle of my own. “I guess not.”
Ben hesitated, then asked with a bit of pink, “Does…my name mean anything to you?”
I paused again. “Koriben, no. Not to me. But Ben.… That’s short for another Hebrew name borrowed into English: Benjamin.”
“What does that mean?”
I was by no means a Hebrew expert or name etymologist, so the only reason I knew the answer to that question was because I’d once gone through a phase of looking up the meanings of every person I knew, and I had an uncle on my dad’s side with that name. He’d always been my favorite uncle.…
OK, I was trying very hard now to not make this weird in my head.
I focused on the answer to Ben’s question. “Benjamin means ‘son of the right hand.’ Kind of weird, if you think about it. Strangely close to rightwing.”
“Not rightwing,” Ben said tightly.
I was surprised by his tone into looking at him. His expression was controlled. “Hand. The Monarch…is often called the Right Hand of the Tree. The one the Tree can trust to go and do in Her place what She cannot. I am the son of Her Right Hand.”
I blinked at him. “‘Ben.’ Son.”
Or even, adding in an English twist…sun.
I shook my head and refocused on the recipe. Again.
“Interesting,” I said.
“Interesting,” Ben agreed in the same tone.
We were quiet for a minute while I finished. Then, with mutual relief, we both got to work.
I had to talk through every single ingredient to give Ben an idea of the qualities I needed in each and then find the closest equivalent. The flour we had in the storeroom wasn’t wheat, but Ben assured me it had gumming properties like gluten and would rise with a powder that must have acted like baking soda. The eggs we found in the chilled section of the cold storage room were enormous, making me wonder if dramá raised ostriches or something; I only grabbed one of those and was sure we wouldn’t use all of it. We could make scrambled eggs with the rest.
After debating for too long about this ingredient or that and proportions of each, we gathered our finds and brought them to the kitchen. The measuring got tricky, since dramá didn’t use cups and tablespoons, so I just tried to add whatever looked and felt right.
“This is all very experimental,” I warned Ben as he stirred for me. “Don’t get your hopes up.”
He chuckled. “Avvi would always say that, no matter how it turns out, food is the best adventure, especially when you go on it with…”
He cleared his throat. “…er, the people you are close to.”
I smiled, leaned against the counter, and just tried to freeze this moment in my mind forever: Ben standing there, a streak of flour on his beard, an unconscious smile on his face, peace in his golden eyes. Diligently stirring whatever crazy, doughy mess we had made together. The only thing that could make this better was.…
“Could you sing something?” I asked impulsively, before I could think better of it.
He looked at me in surprise, coloring a bit. I expected him to refuse outright, but then his eyes grew thoughtful. Calculating, almost. “Do you…like it when I do?”
“A lot,” I admitted. “You have a good voice.”
His lips slowly pulled into a smile, his eyes flashed with a challenge. “I’ll sing if you sing with me.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” I asked in surprise. “I highly doubt we know any songs in common.”
“I’ll teach you,” he chuckled.
So, as we stood together and I showed him how to pour and flip pancakes, he taught me a jaunty love song. Turned out I was the least composed of the two of us as he coached me through the words and melody; the romantic theme didn’t seem to strike him as deeply, thank goodness—probably from familiarity. I tried to focus on the cheerful tune and not the meanings and avoid looking at him, and eventually I settled in. I could tell the song was meant to be danced to from the way Ben’s feet began to tap and his hips shift to the rhythm.
That should have been my warning.
By the time I poured the last of the batch into four small rounds, I was able to remember some of the lines. So, as I sang comfortably along with Ben, I didn’t realize he had dropped out until it was too late: I had already sung a full line of the other lover’s response. I looked up at Ben in mild alarm, but he just grinned widely as he answered with the next line. I laughed, and the next time it was my turn, I picked up the song, and we sung the duet as I finally understood it was meant to be sung.
Then, the moment I flipped the last of the pancakes and he turned off the hot plate…
…Ben snatched my hand and spun me.
“Ben!” I spluttered, but I was laughing too much to make the irritation convincing.
Thank goodness he didn’t expect me to focus on two new things at once, because he carried the entire rest of the song as he danced us around the kitchen. I kept up as best as I could, but I knew I couldn’t be doing anything right. Still, somehow he didn’t seem to care. His eyes simply glowed, and his hands gently guided me through spins and turns and lifts.
He ended the song with a lift, and this time, he didn’t put me down. He kept me up there with him, his nose nearly brushing mine. His eyes didn’t just glow.
They burned.
I swallowed with difficulty through my panting breath, and my eyes widened. My heart pounded even faster than it had during the dance—and it had already been beating fast. Instinctively, my arms wrapped around his neck, even though I wasn’t sure that was what I was supposed to be doing at all.
But all Kor’s warnings were flying out of my head. This felt too right, too inevitable. Turning away—unthinkable.
I could see the glow of my own eyes for the first time reflected in his.
“Sarah,” Ben whispered, voice edged with something that made me shiver. The way he was looking at my lips made them burn and part in anticipation. “Can I—”
“When are you two going to be done already?” Yvera said irritably as she strode into the kitchen. “I’m starv—”
She froze when she saw us.
I looked at her anxiously. This had been exactly the scene I had been trying to avoid. For all our sakes.
But to my shock, it didn’t play out at all as I had expected.
Yvera…snorted. “Fine. I can wait.”
Then she grabbed a fruit from the bowl on one of the tables and cast us an irritated, pointed look that said, Hurry the torch up, will you?
Then, biting in, she strode out.
And Ben, far from dropping me and running after her…hadn’t even looked her way. Or looked away from me, even though I noted that the fire in his eyes had died.
“Er, Ben?” I said, clearing my throat awkwardly. “I think…you had better put me down.”
He only raised an eyebrow. Where were his blushes and stammers now?
“Because of Yvera, or because you don’t want me to hold you?”
With all of Kor’s warnings rushing back in, I didn’t know what the right answer was. “Um…because of Yvera. And just…not now.”
Ben sighed but nodded, as if he had been expecting that answer.
He gently lowered me back down. I worried I’d hurt his feelings, but he gave me a reassuring squeeze on my shoulder and turned to walk back to our pancakes, whistling the tune to the song we had just sung.
I followed him in a daze.
From the way my lips were still burning at just the memory of being so close to his…I was pretty sure that the pancakes could taste like sawdust, and I wouldn’t notice.