I WOKE UP TO BIRDS HERALDING THE DAWN WITH their songs. Hal lay pressed close beside me. My fever had broken, but my bones still ached. Even my hand throbbed dully when I finally sat up, though an examination of the wound in my wrist revealed no signs of infection. I thought the cloak of shadows might disappear as the horse had, but when the sun rose over the hills, it remained on my shoulders. In the light of day it looked like ordinary fabric, if unusually fine for someone as bedraggled as me.
“Your hair,” Hal said, touching the end of my long braid.
“It’s a mess, I’m sure,” I said. Riding a flying water horse halfway across the kingdom had probably turned it into an impossible tangle. Hal looked a little windblown himself, but he seemed to have at least had the presence of mind to pull up his hood during our ride.
“It’s not that. The color is changing.” Confusion was evident in his voice.
I pulled my braid around to examine it, and sure enough, several new silver hairs wound through the brown. How many years had I lost? Was there even a way to know? As for Hal, the time for anything other than honesty between us was over. He already knew what I was and what I could do.
“This is what happens when I use my blood magic,” I told him.
“It gives you fevers and silver hair? I can’t decide if that’s better or worse than my headaches,” he said, looking worried. He didn’t fully understand.
“It ages me. It steals years from my life. I don’t know how many.” I didn’t bother trying to hide my bitterness. I had no regrets about using my blood when it was the only thing I had in my arsenal, but this had only confirmed what I already knew—I needed to find Atheon and get the Fatestone before I ended up like Veric, or worse.
Hal stared at me. “Wait . . . you’re telling me that every time you use your gift, it kills you?”
“That’s about the shape of it.” I looked away and wound my fingers through a tuft of grass, trying to hide my vulnerability from him. If he asked more questions, it might force me to examine a part of myself I couldn’t make peace with, no matter how hard I tried. I didn’t want Hal’s pity.
“But—” he started.
“Come on.” I cut him off. “Let’s move before the sun is too high and it gets harder to tell which way is north.” Thanks to the water horse, we had a lead on Nismae and Ina that we couldn’t afford to waste. Judging by the lengthening days, summer solstice couldn’t be far away, which meant we had no more than three or four moons before the birth of Ina’s baby. Dragons healed quickly—it might take her even less time to recover from childbirth than most mortals.
I hurried to clear our meager camp in an attempt to avoid further conversation, but once we were trekking over the hills, Hal couldn’t help himself.
“Asra . . . shouldn’t we talk about this? Your gift making you age like that? What I wouldn’t give for an antidote to my headaches . . . or even something to make them less incapacitating . . . gods. But the price of your gift—it’s not reasonable.”
I pulled my cloak more tightly around my shoulders. I didn’t know how to have a conversation about my gift and the relationship it had with my mortality. Most demigods lived for centuries. I wouldn’t—unless I found the Fatestone. I sighed, resigned. He might as well know that there was more to finding Atheon than unearthing family secrets.
“There is a way to stop it from happening,” I said.
“How?” he asked. “If there’s something you can do, you have to do it!”
“The Fatestone,” I said with finality.
Hal stared at me wide-eyed, grabbing my sleeve and pulling me to a stop. “What?”
Without further explanation, I pulled Veric’s letter out of my shirt and handed it to him.
When he looked up after reading, his eyes were filled with shock.
“This is why you want to try and speak to the shadow god. This is why you asked me about Veric, isn’t it?” he asked.
I nodded. “He’s the only half sibling of mine that I know of.”
“‘The blood of Sir Veric can make you a king,’” Hal recited. “That stupid song was true—mortals sought his blood for the same reasons Nismae took yours.” He cursed a few times under his breath.
“I may not be able to do anything about my blood that’s already been stolen. But if I get the Fatestone, I can use my power without worrying about how many years it takes off my life. I have to find Atheon.” It was the only way to rewrite the past without sacrificing my life. The only way to stop Ina from killing the king. Most important, the only way to bring back the people of the village I had sworn to protect.
“I should have done a better job defending us at the lake. Maybe I could have called on one of the other children of the wind. Or even my father. If I’d known what it would cost you to get us out of there . . .” He trailed off, anguish in his expression.
“Ina had you cornered. You did everything you could,” I said. “And compared to what I’ve done, that escape of ours was relatively without consequences. My gift isn’t a thing that happened to me—it’s part of me and always has been. Nothing will change that.”
Hal handed Veric’s letter back to me with a furrowed brow. I met his gaze with a challenge in my eyes, daring him to feel sorry for me.
“Thank you for getting us out of there. You were amazing and I’m grateful,” he said.
An unexpected smile bloomed on my face, and for a moment I forgot the way my bones ached with every step.
“You’re welcome,” I said. The pain would fade—at least this time. A few strands of silver hair wouldn’t kill me. Not yet. And he knew that too.
“So, onward to Corovja?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said resolutely.
We crossed many hills and valleys, ignoring the rumbling in our stomachs, both of us glancing over our shoulders as though we expected Ina or Nismae to swoop in at any second, but the skies stayed clear and the sun grew warmer until we reached a town. It was little more than a few weathered houses alongside a narrow dirt track, far enough off the main trade route that it felt like a safe place to stop for a couple of days to regain our strength before pressing on to Corovja. The people greeted us with trepidation until we clarified that we were just travelers, not bandits or tax collectors—apparently their village had experienced problems with both. The more of the kingdom I saw, the less certain I was of the king’s objectives. Was he as negligent as Ina seemed to think based on his treatment of Amalska’s plea for help? Or was his answer to banditry taxing his people so that there was nothing left for the bandits to steal? And why did he want an amulet that would grant him eternal life?
Hal traded two days’ work in the fields for the things we needed—some soap, packs, and a few warm meals. The villagers thought the two of us were married, and though it made me blush scarlet the first time someone made the assumption, I found that I didn’t mind. I liked that it meant we shared a bed, chaste but close, his familiarity keeping me grounded. He was there to soothe me when I woke one night from a nightmare, murmuring gentle words to me and brushing the sticky hair out of my eyes. I clung to him like he was the only person who mattered, then tried to forget the intimacy of it in the morning, when daylight reminded me that we were only temporary allies.
With each day, the aches in my body slowly faded back into something more normal. While Hal spent a few days planting spring crops alongside the villagers, I occupied myself by teaching the children where to find herbs and what could be made with them, replenishing my supplies of the most basic poultices and tinctures that might be useful. The children’s incessant questions kept my mood from souring with the knowledge that Nismae had my satchel, journal, and silver knife—the only three material things that mattered to me. Dread raked its claws down my back every time I thought about what she’d do with them.
By the time we moved on from the little village, I was glad to be alone with Hal. We fell easily back into a rhythm of chores and routines as we traveled; he hunted dinner while I gathered herbs for seasoning and built our fires or shelter. He fixed breakfast and I cleaned up our campsites to erase all evidence of our passage. Knowing that Nismae had spies everywhere, we stayed clear of the main road even once we found it, exchanging the quicker pace of road travel for the shelter of the ever-taller trees so that it was harder to see us from the sky.
Deep in the mountains with Corovja only a day’s walk away, we made camp in a meadow full of swaying grass and bright wildflowers. After our night there, silver light had barely kissed the horizon when I woke to Hal stirring the coals back to life for our breakfast. Waking to the rush of the river brought a certain kind of bliss, the music of water singing me into the day.
I rolled onto my side and watched Hal from beneath lashes still heavy with sleep, admiring the strength of his arms as he nestled two large stones into the embers of last night’s fire. He readied a rabbit with confident hands, slicing and adding spices to the meat while the rocks warmed. As the rabbit cooked, he tossed horseroot with other greens and herbs. Finally, he arranged the meal on a leaf as large and round as a plate. Our food may have been scavenged from what we had at hand, but his care with it turned it into something truly special. The knowledge that he’d done it for me made a warm feeling spread through me, enough to counteract the morning chill.
The intoxicating smell of the rabbit had me half sitting up, but before I could call to him, Hal turned away from the fire and strode over to a patch of yellow clover blossoms just opening to greet the sun. He murmured something inaudible over the flowers and then severed a single stem. I lay back down and closed my eyes, turning my face into my cloak to hide the smile threatening to give my wakefulness away. His footfalls hissed through the dewy grass to where I lay, and then he crouched down beside me with the leaf plate in his hands.
I opened my eyes as if seeing him for the first time.
“Good morning!” The words were the same as every other time he’d spoken them, but when I looked at the plate he’d brought me, with the single yellow flower alongside my food, I knew that this time it was different.
Until this moment I hadn’t let myself see the way he had begun to look at me—as though my dirty face on the other side of our campfire in the morning was dawn breaking over the edge of his world.
I held his gaze. His eyes were so warm, so soft, so dark—as comforting as a starry summer night on the mountain. They were now as familiar as the place I had grown up and thought I would always call home.
I picked up the flower between my fingers and twirled it, the yellow center bright with pollen. A pointless thing, that tiny yellow flower beside my breakfast, but I knew when he cut it that it was meant to be a promise.
He smiled. Even on someone who had been raised a criminal, love looked so innocent. I smiled back, though somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind, Ina’s ghost rose unbidden, pressing the jagged blade of betrayal into my back. I pushed the thought away.
“Thank you,” I said. Then I traced the flower down his nose, leaving a trail of yellow dust on his brown skin.
It felt good to be loved.
It felt good, for once, not to be the one who loved more, who loved too much, who loved until she lost herself in something beautiful and reckless and dangerous that could only end in blood and death.