IT WAS LATE THAT night that the oracle finally asked for him—or rather, them, because she wanted to see him and Cyra at the same time.
Earlier, they had fallen asleep tangled up in each other, with light from the plants in the garden casting a soft glow through the curtain Cyra had drawn. The silverskin on one side of her head had been cool against his chest, where she insisted on laying to listen to his heartbeat.
He didn’t know what had come over him, in the garden, pulling her close when he knew it was selfish, that he couldn’t give her what she wanted, at her own insistence. He ought to listen to her, maybe even break things off with her completely, because there was no ridding him of his fate and no way of convincing either of them that things would be the same if he didn’t have death in service to her family to look forward to.
But the longing for her had pierced right through the haze that had settled over his mind the past few weeks, and he was too relieved at feeling something that he hadn’t had the heart to suppress it. And he’d gone on wanting her, even while they struggled closer and closer. Like there just wasn’t enough of her and never would be.
He couldn’t take her hand as they walked—it would only attract the beetles, and he wasn’t eager to have one of them perched on his face again—but he stayed close, so he could almost feel her. Her currentshadows were moving faster, darting across her throat and disappearing under her collar, and he wished he could do more for her than the mediocre painkiller he had given her before they left.
Pary led them to the top of the hill, but not to the large hall lit bright from within—down, to the lower level of the place, where the ceilings sloped too close to the top of his head for comfort, and the floorboards creaked with every step. He had to bend to pass through a doorway, and found himself in what looked like a kitchen. A woman not much older than his own mother stood there, her hands buried in a pile of dough. Her arms were freckled, and her hair was gray and curly, cut short around her head.
She smiled up at them when they walked in, with all the warmth he’d learned not to expect from oracles, who always seemed disconnected and harsh to him, even the falling oracle of Thuvhe, before his death.
“Cyra, Akos, welcome,” she said. “Please, sit.”
She gestured to the bench across the table from her. Akos did as she said, but Cyra stayed on her feet, arms crossed.
“Would you feel more comfortable with busy hands?” she asked Akos. “I know you have an affinity for making elixirs. There is plenty here to chop.”
“No,” he said, his face flushing with warmth. “Thank you.”
“Do you have a name?” Cyra asked, blunt as ever. “Or should we just call you ‘Oracle’?”
“Ah, forgive my rudeness. My name is Vara,” she said. “I sometimes forget that the people I know do not know me, in turn. Is there anything I can do to make you less hostile, my dear?” She nodded to Cyra. “Or are you content to remain this way?”
A faint crease appeared in Cyra’s cheek, the way it did when she was suppressing a smile.
“Fine, I’ll sit,” she conceded. “But don’t read too much into it.”
“I wouldn’t dare,” Vara said as Cyra perched on the edge of the bench next to Akos. Even sitting down, the two of them were taller than Vara, who was short and thick through the middle. There was something familiar about her.
“Are you related to Yssa in some way?” he asked.
“Well spotted, darling, yes. She is my daughter. A rather . . . late-in-life entanglement it was,” she said. “She gets her father’s frame. Tall and long-limbed. The rest was mine.” She broke a piece off the dough and popped it in her mouth.
“Now,” she said as she swallowed, “I’m sure you are wondering why I didn’t put on my traditional Ogran robes and meet you in the Hall of Prophecy like a proper oracle.”
“It crossed my mind,” Akos said.
“I would expect no less from the son of an oracle,” Vara said, still with that kind smile. “Well, really, let’s keep this between us, but I hate that hall. It makes me feel short. So do the robes! They were made for the last oracle, and he was much bigger than me. Besides—I thought, given the nature of what I have to discuss with you both, you might appreciate the more comfortable surroundings.”
Akos felt like he’d been dunked in cold water, suddenly. Given the nature of what I have to discuss with you.
“So it’s not good news,” Cyra said, wry. Leaning on sarcasm almost always meant she was scared out of her mind. The tightening of her hands around the edge of the bench suggested the same thing.
Vara sighed. “Oh, the truth rarely is, dear girl. What I have for you today is something we call ‘kyerta’—do either of you know the word?”
Cyra and Akos both shook their heads.
“Of course not. Who speaks Ogran but Ograns?” Vara’s laugh was like a thin trickle of water. “You see, we think of oracles as delivering the future only, and that’s most of what we do, yes.” She grabbed a fat metal cylinder from a shelf behind her, and used it to roll the dough flat. “But it’s the past that brings about the future—often it stays hidden, shaping our lives in ways we do not understand. But sometimes it must force its way into the present in order to change what’s coming.”
She broke the dough into three large pieces, and rolled them between her hands until they were long and thin, like tails. Then she began to braid them.
“Kyerta,” she said, “is a revelation that causes your world to shift on its axis. It is a profound truth that, once you know it, inevitably alters your future, though it has already occurred and should, therefore, change nothing.”
She finished the braided dough, and set it aside with a sigh. Dusting off her hands, she sat down across from them and leaned into her arms.
“In your case, this kyerta comes in the form of your names,” she said. “You have lived your lives as Akos Kereseth and Cyra Noavek, when in fact, you are Akos Noavek and Cyra Kereseth.”
She sat back from the table.
Akos struggled to breathe.
Cyra let out a peal of laughter.