I BENT TO TOUCH the path beneath our feet. It was smooth, flat stone—white, a color uncommon to Ogra. This place was packed with glowing things, in the gardens, and pools, and flitting around in the air.
Pary led us toward one of the larger buildings. We had landed at the bottom of a hill, so it would be a climb to get anywhere, and I assumed the oracle resided at the top. The air tasted sweet after the stale panic inside the transport vessel—I never wanted to travel during an Ogran storm again—and I gulped it down, keeping pace with Pary, with the others behind me.
As we passed through one of the gardens—most of the plants were held away from us by a mesh fence that had a current running through it, I noted—Yssa spoke from behind me, with a tone of controlled fear. “Pary.”
I turned back to see a large beetle, almost as long as my palm, crawling on Akos’s cheek. Its wings had bright blue markings, and its antennae were bright, searching. There was another one on his throat, and a third on his arm.
“Stay still,” Yssa told him. “Everyone else step back from him.”
“Shit,” Pary said.
“I take it these insects are poisonous,” Akos said. His Adam’s apple bobbed with a particularly hard swallow.
“Very,” Yssa said. “We keep them here because they are very bright when they fly.”
“And they avoid anything that is a particularly strong conduit for the current,” Pary added. “Like . . . people. Most people.”
Akos’s eyes closed.
Frowning a little, I stepped forward. Pary grabbed my arm to stop me, but he couldn’t stand to touch me; his grip slipped, and I kept walking. Inching closer, and closer, until I was right in front of Akos, his warm breath against my temple. I lifted a hand to hover over the beetle on his face, and, for the first time, thought of my currentgift as something that might protect instead of injure.
A single black tendril unfurled from my fingers—obeying me, obeying me—and jabbed the beetle in the back. The light inside it flaring to life, it darted away from him, and the others went with it. Akos’s eyes opened. We stared at each other, not touching, but close enough that I could see the freckles on his eyelids.
“Okay?” I said.
He nodded.
“Stay close to me, then,” I said. “But don’t touch my skin, or you’ll turn us both into poisonous insect magnets.”
As I turned around, I made eye contact with Sifa. She was giving me an odd look, almost like I had just struck her. I felt Akos behind me, staying close. He pinched my shirt between two fingers, right over the middle of my back.
“Well,” Eijeh said. “That was exciting.”
It was the sort of thing Ryzek might have said.
“Shut up,” I replied, automatically.
There were beautiful, expansive rooms on the hill. Grand spaces, the furniture covered with protective cloths, the planks of the wood floors stained in different patterns, the tiles painted with geometric designs in sedate greens and muted pinks. The warm Ogran air flowed easily through each space we walked through, most of the walls built to fold back. But Pary didn’t take us to any of them.
Instead, he brought us to the series of buildings where we would stay overnight. “She wants to see each of you separately, so it will take some time,” he said. “This is a peaceful place, so take advantage of the opportunity to rest.”
“Who gets to go first?” I said.
“The oracle’s esteemed colleague, Sifa Kereseth, of course,” Pary said, inclining his head to Akos’s mother.
“I am honored,” Sifa said, and they walked away together, leaving me, Akos, Eijeh, Cisi, and Yssa.
“Anything we should know?” I said to Yssa. “You used to live here, I assume? You seem to know as much about it as Pary does.”
“Yes. Pary and I both worked here, once, before I was sent to be an ambassador,” she said. She switched into Shotet. “I’m afraid I have nothing useful to say except that the oracle is far more than she initially seems, and if she wants to see each of you separately, that is because she has something distinct to say to each of you.”
Akos repeated this in Thuvhesit to Cisi, on a slight delay. I had never seen Cisi look quite this way—not frightened, exactly, but tense, like she was bracing herself.
I didn’t often think of Cisi’s fate, but I thought of it then. The first child of the family Kereseth will succumb to the blade.
The little buildings where Pary had told us we could stay were arranged in a circle around a garden, and all the walls were open, so it was easy to track who came and went. Sifa didn’t return from the oracle, but Pary came to collect Eijeh, who was increasingly making me feel like I was in the presence of Ryzek again.
Akos joined me in the garden, after ensuring there were no killer beetles flying around. Still, he stayed close to me, closer than he normally would.
“What do you think she’ll say?” I asked him.
He sighed, and I felt it against my hair. “I don’t know. I’ve given up trying to know what oracles are going to say to me.”
I laughed. “I bet you’re tired of them.”
“I am.” He stepped closer, so his chest was against my back and his nose was in my hair, tilted down so I could feel his breaths against the nape of my neck. It would have been simple to move away. He wasn’t holding me there; he was hardly touching me, in fact.
But so help me, I didn’t want to move.
“I’m tired of everything,” he said. “I’m tired all the time.”
He sighed again, heavily.
“Mostly,” he said, “I’m tired of not being near you.”
I found myself relaxing, shifting back so I was pressed against him, a wall of heat all the way down my spine. He rested his hands on my hips, his fingers creeping under the hem of my shirt just enough to dull my pain. Let the damn poison beetles come, I thought, as I felt a kiss on my neck, right behind my ear.
This was inviting further pain, and I knew it. His fate wouldn’t let him choose me, and even if that wasn’t the case, I suspected the deep well of his grief wouldn’t let him choose anything at all. But I was sick of doing what was good for me.
He kissed where my neck met my shoulder, lingering, his tongue tasting my skin, which was likely salty from sweat. I reached up and buried my fingers in his hair, holding him against me for a moment, and then twisting my neck so our mouths collided. Our teeth clacked together, and normally we would have drawn back and laughed, but neither of us was in a laughing mood. I pulled at his hair, and his hands tightened around my hips so hard it was just on the good side of painful.
I had buried myself in rage since the destruction of the sojourn ship, and since the illusions between him and me fell away. Now I buried myself in wanting him instead, twisting into him, grabbing his body wherever my hands found purchase. Want me, I told him, with each clutch of my fingers. Choose me. Want me.
I leaned back for just a moment, just to look at him. The straight line of his nose, and its scattered freckles. His skin was the color of sandstone, and the powder people used to keep their skin from shining, and the envelopes my mother had used to send letters. His eyes were insistent on mine, their color exactly like a storm rolling in over Voa, carrying in them the same apprehension, like even now he was afraid I might stop. I understood. I was afraid I might stop, too. So I pressed into him again, before I could.
We stumbled together toward one of the rooms, stumbled out of our shoes. I yanked a curtain across the space exposed to the courtyard, but really, I didn’t care if anyone saw, I didn’t care if we were interrupted, I just wanted to take and take and take whatever he would give, knowing that this might be the last time I let myself.