This way, Sentur’na. Through these trees.
The ocean, in the east, sparkled, as if beckoning me toward it. But east was the way to Lapzur. I ignored the directions and went the opposite way. I couldn’t tell south from east or west.
The shansen’s men followed. I slid down a slope, skating across the leaves, and hid behind a rocky outcrop.
The men passed above me.
I waited until the rush of their clothing and weapons faded into the forest. Then I let out a sigh and sagged against a tree. Finally, safe.
A leaf dropped onto my shoulder. As I brushed it off, another fell onto my palm. I stared at it, its heartlike shape oddly familiar.
“A poplar leaf,” I breathed.
A rush of excitement bubbled in me, and I whirled to face the endless grove of poplar trees around me, when—
Someone grabbed me. A man in a tawny cloak, with a near-empty quiver of arrows on his back and a slender walnut staff in his left hand. The man who had intercepted the shansen’s soldiers.
He held me against him, so close I could feel his breath on my hair. I tightened my grip on my scissor bows, at my side.
“They’re gone,” whispered the man. “All clear.”
I spun out of his grasp and brandished my scissors. His eyes widened, and he backed away, raising his hands to show he wasn’t going to harm me.
His heels hit the trunk of a poplar tree, and the creamy little buds fell like snow over his black hair. Aside from his clothes and the walking staff he’d dropped, he looked no different from the other soldiers. He could be one of Khanujin’s men, sent to bring me back to the Winter Palace. And yet…
“Maia? Maia, it’s me.”
I didn’t put the scissors down. My vision was blurred from the men choking me earlier. My hands still throbbed with power.
“It’s me,” the man said again, softly this time. The intensity of his gaze tickled me, but not in an unpleasant way. He reached for my hands, his touch achingly familiar.
Edan?
I’d wished for so long that we’d be reunited again, and now here he was. But was this Edan my Edan? Or was he an illusion sent by Bandur to torment me?
I could not tell.
My hands trembled. I exhaled, the steam of my breath curling into the cold air, and I looked up at him. His expression was tense, lips pursed and brow knotted as my eyes roved over his face.
“Do you not know me?” he whispered. Hurt flashed in his clear blue eyes. “Maia.”
Maia.
Even my own name sounded strange to me, stranger than it ever had before.
I grasped my amulet, now cool against my chest and glowing with the silvery tears of the moon. Holding it calmed me.
Steadying my fingers, I reached out and touched his cheek. Slowly, I traced my fingers over the shape of his face, brushing my thumb over his thick eyebrows and down to the corner of his eye.
Its color, blue as the sea by home, convinced me. No ghost could take that from him.
Faster now, I swept my touch down to his lips, pursed with anticipation, then over to his nose and the small dent on its bridge, where it had been broken.
“You never told me what happened to your nose.”
A familiar grin eased the worry on his face, and his eyes flickered—tentatively, hopefully.
“A soldier broke it when I was seven or eight,” he said. “He’d been aiming for my teeth, but was so drunk he missed. Said my smile was too smug for someone my age.”
The ice around my heart thawed, and I wound my arms over his shoulders. “Edan. You found me.”
Relief bloomed in his eyes, and his shoulders, which had carried all the tension in the world, released. “I’d find you anywhere, xitara.”
Xitara.
In Old A’landan, it meant little lamb. But also something else—in a language I’d never learned.
“Brightest one,” I whispered. Brightest one, in Nelrat, the language Edan had grown up speaking.
He leaned in to kiss me, but I put my hand against his chest to make him wait. I wanted to look at him first. His chin was stubbly with little black hairs, something I’d never seen during our months of traveling together. He did the same to me, thumbing the dirt off my cheeks, his fingers following the lines of my cheekbones to my shoulders, to the chain that held my amulet.
A war broke out on his face, like he didn’t know whether he was happy to see me or pained by the state he’d found me in. Happiness won out, and he kissed me.
I placed his hand on my cheek. His fingers were warm in spite of the chill.
“I’m not sorry I lied to you,” I said. “You wouldn’t have left otherwise. The emperor would have killed you—”
“I know why you did it,” he interrupted. “I’ve had time to think about it, and I understand.” He took my hands. “Just don’t do it again.”
“I won’t.”
“Good.” His fingers brushed across my cheek to my chin, lifting it so our eyes were level. If the coldness of my skin startled him, he did not show it.
He kissed me, so tenderly that all the love I had for him flooded back into me. I returned the kiss, hungrily, almost desperately, parting his lips with my own and digging my fingers into his back. Bringing him closer.
Edan let go first. “There’ll be more time for that later,” he said mischievously.
The crooked grin on his lips faded when he saw I wasn’t returning his smile.
There was so much still unspoken between us.
“I’ve been looking for you for days,” he said. “Wandered off the Tura Mountains, then a hawk said it had seen you.”
I tilted my head. “You can still speak to hawks?”
“After centuries of being one, I still understand a squawk or two.”
I couldn’t tell whether he was being serious or playful. Or both.
I pointed at the staff he’d dropped. Edan had told me once that walnut had magical properties, so I knew it had to be special. “What’s that for? I’ve never seen you carry it.”
“It’s to help channel my magic,” he replied, picking it up. “Makes enchantments a little easier these days.”
A wooden hawk, roughly whittled, perched on the top end of the staff. Fitting.
“Come,” he said. “We’re not too far from the temple. We should go before more of the soldiers come looking for you. And for me.”
He must have seen me tense up, for he added, lightly, “If we hurry, we might make it back in time for dinner. For a temple that’s been forgotten for centuries, the food is quite outstanding.”