We’d won. Bandur was now trapped on Lapzur—forever, I hoped. I watched as the island receded behind us, blanketed by sea and mist until it became as small as a grain, a speck. Then nothing.
* * *
“You should rest,” Takkan said as we settled into the crook of Khramelan’s wing. He ripped his sleeve to begin wrapping my arm. “You need to heal.”
I parted my lips to protest, but Takkan cut me off. “I might not be able to cast sleeping enchantments, but I have a spell of my own.”
I was mystified until he smiled and began to sing:
Let the sleep spirits come
to dance in your dreams.
May you dance with them
and awaken to a brighter world.
It was an old lullaby every child in Kiata knew, one I hadn’t heard in years. Takkan’s voice was magic, and it was what I needed.
For once I was obedient. I laid my head on his lap and let him cast his spell.
Dawn opened over the Cuiyan’s pale waters. Khramelan had hardly said a word during the entire flight, but I recognized my homeland’s shores long before I saw the fishing skiffs and shrimping boats dotting the sea and before the scent of summer pine sharpened in my nostrils.
It was the sun upon my brothers’ feathers—its light tender and familiar, the same as it’d been a hundred other mornings when they were cursed. Its warmth seeping under their wings and lingering on their crimson crowns was what told me we had returned to Kiata.
I was half awake when Khramelan flung Takkan and me carelessly onto land. It was a rude awakening, and I nearly rolled off the cliff into the sea.
Takkan grabbed me by the arm, pulling me safely away from the brink. As my hair whipped about me in whorls of silvery white, I flew into his arms, laughing and laughing and unable to stop.
He was trying hard to look stern, to smother the clumsy smile that threatened his seriousness—and failing adorably. I didn’t care that my brothers, who had landed on the same cliff, were barely a stone’s throw away. I didn’t care that Kiki was soaring above us, yelling orders at her new little legion of paper subordinates to poke the passing pigeons. All I cared about was Takkan.
I grabbed him by the collar—and kissed him.
Our lips were cracked from the wind and the cold, our hair mussed and windswept and badly in need of washing, and I was sure my breath was anything but sweet. And yet, as he pressed me against him, deepening our kiss with the same rawness and passion, I wished for every day to begin just like this.
“Someone must be feeling better,” remarked Takkan when we finally surfaced for air. “What was that for? Not that I’m complaining…”
“For being you,” I replied, planting more kisses on his nose, his cheeks, his teeth—by accident. We laughed together. “For being mine.”
Takkan sat up and leaned on his elbow. With one strong arm, he pulled me close. “I was always yours. You just took a long time to see it.”
“So I did,” I murmured, a beat from kissing him again—
“Are you finished?” Khramelan interrupted.
Like children caught making mischief, Takkan and I quickly snapped to attention. I sprang to my feet just as Khramelan landed.
Sunlight dappled his back, gilding his scales. He tipped his head to face the sun directly. Taking in its warmth as if he hadn’t felt it in years. And I realized he probably hadn’t.
The pearl lurked in his shadow. Like his eyes, it was still broken. I started to ask him about it, but before I had the chance, he tossed a piece of glass at my feet.
“This is yours,” he said gruffly.
It was the mirror of truth.
“Don’t get in the habit of scattering your belongings in Lake Paduan. You won’t get them back.”
“Thank you,” I said as I dusted the shard and wiped it on my sleeve.
Khramelan was moving toward the edge of the cliff, his wings already spreading, when I ran after him.
“Wait!”
He growled, and only narrowly did I avoid being hit by his wing.
I staggered, wisely leaving some distance between us. “My brothers…,” I began. “The pearl turned them into cranes so I could reach Lapzur. Please, change them back.”
Khramelan barely glanced at the six cranes waddling in the sand. “What you did with the pearl is none of my concern.”
“But—”
“You humans are all the same. I do you one favor, and you ask for another.”
My jaw locked. “It isn’t a favor. They risked their lives to help save you.”
“Their lives will be better spent as cranes than as men.”
Fury boiled in my throat, but I swallowed it, knowing it’d do no good to lash out at Khramelan. He’d only fly away, and my brothers would be trapped forever as cranes. So I chose my next words carefully. “Humans treated you like a monster, and you hate them,” I said. “I understand that. They were the same to Channari.”
Khramelan didn’t flinch this time when I spoke my stepmother’s name. Undeterred, I ventured a step toward him. “You were friends. A long time ago.”
“Your stepmother made the mistake of thinking so,” he replied. “It cost her.”
“So I’ve heard,” I said, remembering Ujal’s words. “I’m sure she hated you. But you must have deserved it.”
At that, Khramelan fell silent.
Sensing an opening, I said, quietly, “Why did you kill Vanna?”
Khramelan gave me a dark look. “Channari and I had an understanding,” he replied, speaking through locked teeth. “I promised her I would not harm the Golden One, and that I would not claim the pearl in her heart until she died. I am immortal, after all. A few decades of waiting is inconsequential.”
“What happened?”
“Obviously, I didn’t wait.” Khramelan stared straight into the sun. “I was tricked into attacking Vanna. Channari failed to protect her sister from me. She had a chance to kill me, but she hesitated. Another one of her mistakes.”
My eyes fell on a stab wound in his chest. Unlike the wounds he’d incurred while fighting Bandur’s demons on Lapzur, this one had not healed. It was deep and old, pale against his night-black flesh, and gravely close to his heart.
So that was how Raikama’s spear had broken.
“It still hurts from time to time,” said Khramelan thickly. “As you say, I deserved it.”
I was quiet, filled with pity and remorse for all the wrongs of the past—and a sad wonder that they had all led to this moment.
But a few things still didn’t make sense. “If Vanna died, shouldn’t the pearl have gone to you?”