Bright afternoon sunlight shone through the windows, casting a rainbow pattern on the carpet of Ryuu’s library. Through the window, Aina could make out the highest buildings in the city. Smoke from pollution curled above them, casting a gray cloud over it all. She much preferred that to smoke from flames.
Aina had spent most afternoons here after Bautix’s failed takeover of the Tower a week ago, whenever she wasn’t working at getting jobs for Mirran and her new employee, the boy she’d recruited from Thunder. Here, she could stare through the window and hope to see Teo, Tannis, and Raurie return. Every small movement on the path ahead made her look up, expecting to see them, but it was usually a security guard pacing in boredom. A few days after Bautix was dead and the fighting ended, the three of them had left the city, refusing to tell her where they were going. She curled her hand—her good hand—into a fist around the arm of her chair. After thinking Teo was dead, the last thing she wanted was for him to disappear with no indication of when he’d return.
The squeak of a chair nearby made her jump. In the reflection of the window, Ryuu and Lill sat next to her at the table in front of the window.
“You know,” Aina said with a sly grin, turning to face them. “If you tell me where they are, you won’t have to deal with me hanging around here all day waiting for them to show up.”
Lill shrugged. “We don’t mind the company.”
“You’re quite entertaining when you’re impatient, actually,” Ryuu added.
She let out a grunt of frustration, but after a few seconds, her frustration subsided. Ryuu and Lill knew where the others had gone, but they didn’t seem worried, so everything was probably fine.
Probably.
“We have something to tell you, though,” Ryuu said, leaning forward and folding his hands together on the table. Lill scooted her chair closer and placed a hand over his, sending him an encouraging smile. This close, it was hard to miss the burn scars on Ryuu’s shoulder and Lill’s left hand, sustained at some point during the fighting. Then Ryuu took a deep breath and said, “We’re moving. To Kaiyan.”
Aina blinked. “You what?”
“We’re moving to Kaiyan,” Lill repeated, her smile only growing wider.
“Yes, I heard you,” Aina said, shaking her head in disbelief. When neither of them started laughing to indicate that it was a joke, she knew it was real. Voice softening, she asked, “When did you decide that? Why?”
“I took a few days to think about it,” Ryuu began. “After she took back the Tower, Mariya asked me if I wanted to join the Sentinel, and I—”
“He looked like he wanted to run away screaming,” Lill interjected.
“It’s not for me,” Ryuu finished with a shrug. “So instead, she offered to recommend me to the Kaiyanis king as an apprentice of his architect, as long as I agreed to make some business and diplomatic connections while I’m there. I’ll probably stay for a couple of years.”
“And I’ve always wanted to see Kaiyan,” Lill said. “My father has family in the capital, so I’ll bring them his ashes, stay with them for some time, and travel from there. I want to be away from Sumerand for a while.” Her eyes trailed toward the window and her shoulders tensed slightly as she spoke. “It’ll be easier to move on if I’m away from here.”
“What will happen to the mining business, Ryuu?” Aina asked. “Will it all be restored?”
“There is damage, but it’ll survive,” he said slowly, looking down at the table as he spoke. “My advisors think the mines just got attacked in the fighting, and I don’t feel the need to give them any more details.” He grimaced then, and Aina remembered him standing in the mouth of the tunnel, a grenade in his hands as he faced the onslaught of Kohl’s fighters. “But I’m glad it happened; my parents always cared more about the city and the people here than a business. The advisors will be in charge of operations until I return. And when I come back, I’ll have enough skills to steer the business in a new direction. Something that my brother might be proud of.”
A long beat of silence passed while Aina took in all they’d said. Though she’d only known Ryuu for a couple months and Lill less than that, she no longer knew what her life looked like without them.
But at the same time, she could see the ghosts of the recent battle in both of their eyes. Her own memories rose up then, making her shudder slightly; the fire at the Dom, the bodies of Johana, Kushik, and Markus spread on the floor, her hands covered in both Teo and Kohl’s blood. She couldn’t blame Ryuu and Lill for wanting to get away from it all for a while.
“I’ll miss you while you’re gone,” she finally said.
“I’ll miss you too,” Ryuu said. “But you’ll be busy, I’m sure. You and Tannis can finally run the tradehouses properly, with Kohl gone.”
She nodded, a brief surge of excitement flooding her at the thought. But it was quickly doused. She and Tannis had finally gotten the prize they’d fought for and no one stood against them, but it didn’t feel like the victory she’d envisioned it would be. Something felt off about it all.
Her conversation with Arman Kraz when she and Tannis had recruited Thunder to fight at the Tower came back to her then. The chaos is what we take advantage of, he’d said. Don’t do too good a job of getting rid of the chaos, or else we’ll have nothing left.
The tradehouses had first formed in the wake of the old civil war, steered by Kohl, full of revenge and a desire to prove himself. While the newly formed Sentinel had wrestled the country into some kind of order following King Verrain’s death, plenty of people had taken advantage.
Her question was how she would handle the chaos, and if it’d be different from the rest. She had a chance now to take the tradehouses in a different direction; a chance to not follow in Kohl’s footsteps. But she didn’t know how exactly she would handle it yet, so she shook the thought away.
The door opened then, and Aina didn’t bother looking up, knowing it would be a maid or butler offering them tea or reporting something to Ryuu. Maybe one of his advisors had stopped by.
But when no one spoke, and no expensive shoes clicked across the wood floor, her eyes flicked up.
Teo, Tannis, and Raurie stood in the doorway. They all looked exhausted, like they’d traveled for days, but pleased with themselves.
Aina shoved her chair back, ran up to them, and pulled them each into a hug, holding Teo for a few seconds longer.
“Finally!” she said, letting go and shaking her head. “Where were you? Nobody told me anything!”
“You managed to keep it a secret from her the whole time?” Raurie called over to Ryuu and Lill.
“She didn’t threaten to stab you?” Tannis asked in disbelief.
“Oh, she definitely did,” Ryuu replied.
“But we knew she wouldn’t,” Lill added with a wink.
They all laughed then and Aina rolled her eyes. But a smile tugged at her lips too as they moved toward the table and pulled out chairs. Raurie and Teo walked a little slower than the others, and Aina felt a twinge of pain in her left arm. The pain had started on the burning ship, stabbing jolts that came when she least expected it, numbness and tingling, occasional difficulty to command her fingers to do anything. She had no idea if it would fade with time or not, but she had a good guess where it had come from.
If you use it to kill, you might lose the ability to heal, the Sacoren Gevann had explained. The Mothers had given them a choice, in allowing them to use the magic in violent ways, and now they had their punishment. Ryuu and Lill’s burn scars might never go away. Raurie had sustained a bullet wound to her leg the day of fighting and now had to move gingerly on that side. Teo, although he’d never used the blood magic himself, had been saved by it when he should have died. Her poison had attacked his lungs and heart. Now he was sometimes short of breath and took more careful steps. Since he’d never used the magic himself, she hoped his aftereffects would go away soon.
As for her own … it might be difficult to fight with her left hand from now on, but she wasn’t too worried. The Mothers had told her to embrace her weakness—and she had, learning to use her own strength, to only need herself to win—and perhaps they knew she wouldn’t need to fight much more in the future.
Looking around at the group, Aina asked, “Will someone finally tell me where you three went?”
Teo reached over to take her hand, brown eyes bright with whatever secret he kept. “I’ll show you.”
She couldn’t really be mad at him when he looked at her like that.
After leaving the library, she and Teo exited the mansion, passed the maple trees near the entrance, and walked across the grounds. The grass was wet beneath their boots, the sunshine hot on their shoulders—and no taste of ash in the air.
Breathing it in, her frustration disappeared. With the battle over, there wasn’t a need to be hurried and impatient and panicked anymore. With Kohl gone, her fear had no place either. It was strange getting used to it, but she hoped the feeling would last.
“Are we going to the mines?” she asked Teo, blushing a little at the fact that they were still holding hands. She hadn’t even noticed.
He shook his head with a mischievous grin. “No, much closer than that.” Lifting a hand, he pointed at the cemetery ahead.
Aina raised an eyebrow, but Teo just laughed and led the way forward. They reached the tombstones and walked between rows of them for a few minutes before Teo came to a stop. Memories of Kohl would crop up all over the city, and especially at the Dom, even though it looked completely different than when he’d been there.
After a few minutes of walking through the cemetery, Teo stopped in front of a tombstone and pointed at it. Wondering which rich person was buried here and why Teo wanted to show her their grave, she read the names.
For a moment, she was certain she’d stopped breathing. Then she blinked, shook her head, and read the names again. Rafael Solís Galán and Manuela Santos Plata. Only her parents’ names, no dates or messages, but a small, white shard was embedded between the two names.
They knelt in front of it, and Aina reached out a hand to touch the stone warmed by the midday sun. Brushing the object between her parents’ names, she noted its smooth surface. Porcelain.
“I hope you like it,” Teo said quickly, a hesitant look in his eyes like he feared he’d made a mistake. “Raurie told me how her parents used to burn the bodies of Inosen who’d been killed and place their ashes in a hidden shed near the mass graves. A few days ago, when I left with Tannis and Raurie, we went there. We had no idea if we’d find them, so I didn’t want anyone to tell you. Tannis said that she’d found the pieces of that porcelain horse that used to belong to your mother. It was broken, and she assumed you did it, but she knew you’d probably regret it later, so she took a piece of it for you. Ryuu had the idea to put it here.”
He’d barely finished speaking when she pulled him into a tight hug. Tears pricked the corners of her eyes, but she didn’t mind them falling now.
“It’s perfect,” she said, pulling slightly away as the sun crested to a position directly above them. “It’s amazing that you were able to find them. Do you think we’d be able to bring back more? The ashes of people who died during the war?”
“We can tell Mariya Okubo,” he said slowly, his forehead creased in thought. “If she wants to announce it to the public, people could go look.”
His voice trailed off, and she reread the names, thinking of everything that had led to this moment—and who’d been by her side for it all.
She and Teo looked at each other at the same time. The sun lit his eyes a warm copper tone. It scared her, to sink into this comfort, to be at someone’s side without fear—but she wanted to.
“How do you feel?” he asked in a slightly cautious tone. “You killed Kohl. You’re free of him now.”
The words themselves were hopeful, but she could sense his real question—did she feel free?
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. Then her gaze turned to the rest of the cemetery. “I came here with him, just a few times. But it’s enough to make me remember. It’ll be like that all over the city, everywhere I go.” Her voice tightened with the realization—she didn’t know if she’d ever actually feel free.
Kohl was a ghost wherever she walked, a scar on her heart that would always be there. She tried to believe he would fade over time and she’d stop looking over her shoulder, stop hearing his voice in her head, but she truthfully didn’t know if that was possible.
“It’s okay if you don’t know,” Teo said, reaching a hand forward to touch her jaw—and she remembered a time Kohl had gripped her chin so hard, she thought it would break. She tensed, forcing her way through the memory, and thought instead of how different this was. Teo’s touch was warm, his grip gentle, his eyes filled only with love. Then he said, “There are two things you know for sure: He’s gone.”
Aina breathed in deeply, as if she could heal herself with those words alone. “What’s the other thing?”
“That I’m here for you.” The softness of his voice made her tension slide away then, and she leaned into his touch. “Just because you’ve been hurt doesn’t mean you’re broken or have to punish yourself somehow. You deserve love like anyone else.”
Her heart swelled at his words—no one had ever told her something like that, and she desperately wanted to believe it.
“I want to figure this all out,” she said. “With you, Teo.”
She leaned toward him then, weaving one hand through his hair. Teo placed his hand on the back of her head and drew her into a kiss.
But she felt like he was holding back; like he was afraid of hurting her.
She ran her fingers through his hair, cupped the back of his neck and pulled him closer to her—to show him he didn’t have to be careful with her. To show him she trusted him. She wasn’t a fragile piece of porcelain that might be easily broken, but if there were anyone’s arms she wanted to fall apart in, they were his.
He kissed her jaw, trailing kisses toward the back of her ear and then down her neck, one hand on the back of her neck and the other at her waist. His warmth seeped into her, like the sun shone on her from all directions. When he pulled her closer, she leaned into his embrace, feeling safer than she had in years—and wanting to stay there.