CLOUDS GATHERED ALONG the horizon, their gray backs brushed with pink and gold. The sunlight was already spilling over the mountain, igniting the snow. After being so long in darkness, the sight made my eyes ache. I lay still, overwhelmed.
“Hey.” River lifted me upright, his voice low and urgent. “Kamzin. Stay with me.”
Stay with him? Where else was I going to go? Then it occurred to me that he had interpreted my stillness as a sign of dire health. I made no move to discourage the notion—I felt breathless and bloodless, as if I were suspended in ice.
“Let’s get this off.” River unbuttoned my sodden, ice-crusted chuba, drawing it over my shoulders. He stopped suddenly, as if realizing what he was doing, and an unfamiliar color entered his cheeks.
He was blushing. I blinked. I had never seen River blush before—it wasn’t something I had thought he was even capable of.
“Azar-at,” he called. I couldn’t see the fire demon—it was beyond my range of vision—but I felt it when River’s hands on my arms grew warm, a warmth that spread across my body. The moisture rose from my clothes and skin in a cloud that was borne away by the wind. I began to shiver again as I dried. The warmth remained when River removed his hands.
I stood slowly. I felt strange. River had never used his magic on me before, and the sensation was . . . befuddling. It felt different from Chirri’s magic, or Tem’s. Was that because it came from a fire demon?
The power is Azar-at’s, he had said, but the magic is mine.
The warmth lingered on my skin, on every inch of me. He returned my gaze, and I realized that he could feel the spell too. I looked away, color spreading across my own face. As I did, my gaze fell on the tunnel, or the place where the tunnel had been. And I felt the chill of water like knives burrowing into my bones, and saw Mingma’s remorseless face looming over me.
I pulled myself to my feet, stumbling only slightly. Then I began to march away, very fast, not looking back.
“Kamzin?” River had to jog to catch up with me. “Slow down; you don’t have your strength back—”
“This is the way back to camp?” I said, not slowing.
“Yes, but—”
“Good.” I clambered over a boulder, banging my knee. That didn’t slow me either. “We’ll gather up our things and set out for the Ngadi face. If we move fast we can reach it by nightfall.”
River grabbed my arm, but I threw him off. “You want to give up?”
“I’m not giving up,” I snapped, my tone so ferocious that River took a step back. “You can’t give up when you had no hope of succeeding.”
“Kamzin—”
“They’ll win, River.”
“Who will?”
“The witches.” I stopped and faced him. “This is their mountain. They have the power—they trapped Mingma and his men, turned them into evil things, just like they are.” I saw Mingma’s face again, rising toward me out of the water, saw him trapped there in the darkness as minutes turned to days, and days to years—I shoved the image back, because it was too much. “Do you know who Mingma was?”
He gazed at me, silent, his mouth a thin line.
“He was a great man. My father’s library is filled with scrolls about his heroism. He drew half the maps of the Empire. He was fearless, brave. And the witches defeated him without even raising a finger.”
River rubbed his eyes. He was still soaked, I noticed, though the cold didn’t seem to trouble him.
“This is their world,” I went on, “and it doesn’t want us here. What will happen when we reach the summit? When we find their city?” I shook my head. “Tem was right. This expedition is madness—we’re much better off returning to base camp and figuring out another way to defeat them.”
I watched him, waiting for him to argue with me. To say that we couldn’t return, that there was no other way to defeat the witches. To talk me out of leaving.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
I started. “What?”
“I should never have agreed to this,” he said, seeming to speak half to himself. “I shouldn’t have brought you this far. You should have stayed back at camp, where you were safe.”
Something was rising in me, something darker than anger. I could have hit him. My desire to get off the mountain as quickly as possible was all but forgotten.
“You should have left me where I was safe?” I said. “As if I’m some frightened child? Where would you be if you had left me back at base camp? Dead, that’s where. Have you forgotten how I saved your life? Your recklessness would have—”
“My recklessness?” Suddenly, River seemed as furious as I was. “You’re the one who decided to go for a late-night stroll, right into an army of ghosts! Why on earth did you leave the cave and the protection of the warding spells?”
“I was looking for you!” I snapped. “Why did you leave the cave?”
“To chase the ghosts away, of course. How do you think I felt when I returned and found you gone? When I realized they had taken you, that you could already be dead?”
I stared. “I don’t know.”
River glowered at me. “You’re an idiot, Kamzin.”
We glared at each other, and I felt as if I would hit him. That infuriatingly handsome face wouldn’t be so perfect with a black eye or a missing tooth. My entire body seemed to pulse, as if the warmth he had pressed into my skin had turned to fire and was consuming me. Then, suddenly, he pulled me into his arms, pressing his hand against the back of my head so that my face was buried in his shoulder.
I folded myself into his embrace, as if I were not holding him but melting against his body. As wondrous as it felt, it was also strange, because he was River Shara, and the Royal Explorer, and the most powerful shaman I had ever met, and I knew I shouldn’t be doing this. And yet he was also just River, who had become my friend and who I now trusted with my life. He ran his fingers through my hair, brushing it off my face. He was gripping me so tightly that I could barely breathe. I didn’t mind. I lifted my face to his and kissed him.
River’s magic still brushed my skin, but the warmth that overwhelmed me didn’t come from that. This kiss was different than the half-drunken kiss we had shared on the cliff. That kiss had set my heart pounding, but this one was as heady as a barrel of raksi. Kissing River reminded me of dark forests and night skies. It was nothing like kissing Tem, or any of the village boys I had kissed because someone dared me. As different as night from day.
It lasted only a moment, and then River drew back. His hand was still pressed against my face, his thumb and forefinger framing my eye.
“What?” I murmured.
River stepped away, a familiar veil dropping over his expression. “We need to get you back to camp. Make sure that water didn’t give you frostbite—it can set in without you noticing.”
I stared at him. He turned to walk away, but I grabbed his arm. “Why do you keep doing that?”
“Doing what?”
“Pretending you don’t care about me. That I’m just some assistant you hired to carry your bags or cook your dinner.”
“I do care about you, Kamzin,” he said, a knife edge in his voice. “That isn’t why we can’t do this.”
“Why, then?” Anger rose within me again, and I had to grip the sleeves of my chuba to keep from lashing out. I had almost died. And somehow that had broken something, some reluctance or fear that had prevented me from voicing what I felt. I was frightened, and exhausted, and furious. I would make him talk to me. I would make him admit what I knew to be true—that he felt the same about me as I did about him.
“Is it because you’re of noble blood, and I’m not?” I demanded. “Because after this is over, I’ll go back to my village, and you’ll go back to some palace in the Three Cities?”
“No. If you were someone else, any other girl, I wouldn’t think twice.”
I made an exasperated sound. “So the reason you won’t kiss me is because you care about me?”
River let out a sigh of relief. “Yes! That’s it exactly. I’m glad you understand.”
“I understand that you’re a lunatic,” I growled. “But I already knew that.”
My hand was still on his arm, and his face was only a foot from mine. The veil had slipped, and his expression was an odd combination of confusion, anger, and longing. So I pulled him closer and kissed him again.
He hesitated at first, but then suddenly he was kissing me back, with a forcefulness that took me by surprise. I was lifted off my feet and propelled backward until I was pressed against the rock face. I wrapped my arms around him, tightening my hold, heedless of the uneven rocks pressing into my back. River ran his hand over me until I found myself cursing the layers of clothing that separated us. It was as if the feeling that had been building between us all this time had exploded, and we were both giddy with it. I wanted him to kiss me until the snow melted, until Raksha was worn to nothing by the ice and the winds.
“Would you like me to give you two a moment?” said a voice.
River pulled away sharply, and I slid down the rock, landing with a soft oof in the snow. Standing behind us, framed against the distant peaks and valleys, was Mara.