I CLAPPED MY HAND over my mouth to stop the sound, a horrible, forced laugh without any mirth in it.
Cyra Kereseth.
It wasn’t the first time I’d ever thought the name. I had daydreamed about it once or twice, leaving the name Noavek behind and taking on Akos’s name, someday in an ideal future where we got married. It was customary for the lower-status person in a marriage to change their name, in Shotet, but we could make an exception, to rid me of the label I hated. The name Cyra Kereseth had become, to me, a symbol of freedom, as well as a sugar-sweet unreality.
But Vara didn’t mean that my name was Cyra Kereseth through some hypothetical, far-off marriage. She meant that my name was Cyra Kereseth now.
The hard part was not believing I wasn’t Cyra Noavek. I had suspected it since my brother told me I didn’t share his blood, maybe even since my blood didn’t work in the gene lock that he had used to keep his rooms secure. But believing I belonged to the same family that had raised Akos to a soft heart and a knowledge of iceflowers—that was another thing entirely.
I didn’t dare look at Akos. I wasn’t sure what I would see when I did.
I took my hand away from my face.
“What?” I said, stifling another giggle. “What?”
“Sifa would tell the story better,” Vara said. “But unfortunately that task now falls to me, because it is Ogra’s future that hangs in the balance. When you were born, Akos, to Ylira and Lazmet Noavek, Sifa saw only dark paths ahead of you. And likewise, Cyra, born to Sifa herself, and Aoseh Kereseth, only dark paths ahead of you. She despaired for both of you.
“And then something happened that had not happened in quite some time—a new possibility presented itself. If she crossed your paths—if she switched your places—new possibilities opened up, and a few—very few, mind you, but a few—did not lead to doom. So she reached out to Ylira Noavek, a woman she had never met before and would never again meet, to present the solution to her. It was very fortunate, for her, that Lazmet had not yet been to see his child. It was likewise fortunate that the bloodlines in both your families are so richly varied that virtually any combination of features and skin shades wouldn’t raise eyebrows.
“They met just past the Divide, the feathergrass that separates Shotet from Thuvhe, and they traded their children, so that both might have a chance to avoid their darkest paths,” Vara said, with a tone of finality. Her fingers were dusted with brown flour, her nails bitten down to stubs. “Lazmet was told that he had been misinformed about the sex of his child. The messenger who had delivered the news was executed, but Lazmet accepted you as his, Cyra, and all proceeded as Sifa had hoped.”
I was caught in my imagining of the moment, my swaddled, infant form passed into Ylira Noavek’s hands, with feathergrass swaying in the background. I drew myself out of the fiction, suddenly furious.
“So you’re telling me,” I said, slumping forward over the table to point a finger at her. “You’re telling me that my mother handed me over to be raised by a bunch of monsters, and I’m, what? Supposed to be grateful, because it was for my own good?”
“It’s not up to me to tell you how to feel,” Vara said, her dark eyes soft. “Only to tell you what happened.”
I felt like a pot boiling over, all anger and hysteria bubbling up inside me, irrepressible. I wanted to shake the soft look from her eyes, or laugh in her face; I wanted to move, above all else, to escape the pain that now raced through every izit of my skin, covering me in dark patches.
When I finally dared to glance at Akos, I saw him stone-faced and completely still. It was unnerving.
“I’m sure I don’t have to point out to you that there is one bright spot in all this,” Vara said. “Your fates.”
“Our fates,” I repeated, feeling stupid. “What about them?”
“There is a reason the fates don’t name names,” Vara said. “The second child of the family Noavek will cross the Divide. The third child of the family Kereseth will die in service to the family Noavek. My dear girl, you are the third child of the family Kereseth. And I suspect your fate has already been fulfilled.”
I made a big show of putting two fingers against the side of my throat to check for a pulse. “Silly me, thinking I hadn’t died in service—”
I cut myself off.
But that wasn’t true, was it?
My brother had tried to make me torture Akos, there in the underground prison where he had captured us and forced us to our knees. I had drawn all my currentgift into myself, trusting in my strength to keep me alive. But that strength had faltered—just for a moment, just enough to be considered a death. My heart had stopped, and then started again. I had come back.
I had died for the family Noavek—I had died for Akos.
I stared at him, wonderingly. The fate he had dreaded, the fate he had allowed to define him since he first heard it spoken by my brother’s lips . . . it was mine.
And it was done.