They didn’t stop flying until the sky darkened again that night and the stars clustered above them. Even then, Torwin seemed agitated. Like he wanted to fly straight to the scrublands without stopping. Despite the creases of exhaustion next to his mouth, despite the dark smudges beneath his eyes, despite the way he hunched over a paltry meal of nuts and too-hard bread, he wanted to keep going, to put as much distance between them and the horrors they’d left behind.
As Asha watched him, she thought of Shadow. Torwin would have seen Jarek strike that killing blow. He would have felt the moment Shadow’s life winked out. He would be feeling the absence of his dust-red companion even now.
Asha didn’t know how to soothe such a hurt. Didn’t know if it could be soothed.
She sat close to him while they ate. Let her thigh fall against his. Smiled at him when he looked at her.
But even when he laced his fingers through hers or brushed his thumb across her cheek or stared at her like he couldn’t believe they were free, the silence still shimmered. And the space between them felt littered with loose threads. Threads streaming from an unfinished tapestry.
“I’ll stay up and watch,” she said after they set up the tent.
Torwin shook his head. “I won’t sleep anyway. You get some rest.” He grabbed his lute, then kissed her scarred cheek before heading toward a grassy dune. “Tomorrow will be another long day.”
Asha watched him walk away until the darkness swallowed him up.
She climbed into the tent.
After a moment, she heard a familiar sound. The glossy, golden sound of his lute. Asha sat perfectly still, listening. And then exhaustion overcame her.
Lying down, she closed her eyes and let Torwin’s song lull her to sleep.
The smell of smoke and ash woke her. When she sat up, Elorma crouched over a fire just big enough to illuminate his face.
Too tired to protest whatever it was he wanted from her now, she went to sit next to him.
“Aren’t you done with me yet?” Curling her knees up to her chest, she hugged them hard to keep from shivering. “I did what the Old One wanted. What else is there?”
Elorma smiled, his eyes reflecting the fire. The hollow places of his face were darkened by shadow. “Much more, I’m afraid. Your work is just beginning, Namsara.”
Namsara.
That name. It would take some getting used to.
Elorma cracked his knuckles and rose to his feet. “I’m here to bestow your final gift. The gift of a hika.”
Asha’s grip on her knees loosened. A hika. Like Willa was to Elorma.
“W-what?” she stammered.
Elorma ignored her. “A hika is formed just for you. Like your slayers were formed for your hands. Like the sky was formed for the earth. Come and look upon his face.”
But Asha stayed where she was, hugging her legs harder. “I’m an outlaw,” she said. “I’m guilty of regicide. Whoever you choose will be sentenced to a life of danger. I’d rather you leave him be.”
Beneath all these things, though, lay a deeper truth: Asha loved someone else.
She rose to her feet.
She never meant to look into the fire. She only meant to walk away.
But her gaze snagged on a face in the flames.
Asha stepped closer. A boy peered out at her. He had stars etched into his skin. He had eyes as sharp as her own two slayers.
Asha’s heart slammed against her ribs.
She stepped back.
The Old One knew just as well as she what happened when draksors coupled with skral. Those kinds of stories only ever ended in tragedy.
“You can’t do this to him.” Asha looked to Elorma. “It’s a death sentence.”
Being with Asha meant putting his life at risk.
“Death is no stranger to this one.” Elorma rose to face her. “And doesn’t he get a choice in the matter?”
He has no choice, she thought. If the Old One commands it, there isn’t a choice.
And Torwin had spent his whole life being forbidden from making his own choices.
“I can’t,” she whispered. “I won’t be another master he has to submit to.”
She turned away, her footsteps sinking into the cold sand.
“Ask him who he dreams of at night,” Elorma called after her. “Ask him who he’s dreamed of every night for the past eighteen years of his life.”
Asha stopped walking.
Torwin’s voice rose up in her mind. I used to think she was some kind of goddess, he’d told her in the temple room, explaining his recurring nightmare. I used to think she appeared to me because she was choosing me for some great destiny.
And then, again, in her brother’s war camp: They’re always about you.
Elorma stood behind her now. She could feel his shadow stretch across her back.
“Do you know why I recognized Willa the first time I saw her?”
Asha turned and looked up into the First Namsara’s eyes.
“Because I’d spent my life dreaming of her.”
When he smiled, it was as if two suns burned warm and bright out of his eyes. “Willa chose love in the end.” Very gently, he placed one strong hand on Asha’s shoulder. “Now it’s time for you to choose. Because, despite what you think, you do have a choice. And so does he.”
Asha thought of something her brother told her once. If Rayan hadn’t been selfish, Dax said, if he hadn’t pursued Lillian, they’d both be alive today. But saying that denied Lillian’s choice in the matter. It denied Lillian her power. And what’s more: saying that meant the only thing to be learned from their story was that death is stronger than love.
Asha didn’t believe that.
“And afterward,” Elorma said, “there’s more work to be done. Stories to be hunted down. A realm to be made whole again.”
The fire roared behind Elorma as he smiled tenderly down on Asha.
“You and I will see each other again soon, Namsara.”
The fire went out, plunging Asha into darkness.
She stood still for a long time, lost in the swirling storm of her thoughts.
Namsara.
The rare desert flower that could heal any ailment.
That’s what Asha was.