Her work was almost done.
Daiva birds flew in great circles overhead.
She took Zahir’s face in her hands. He did not flinch at the feel of a daiva’s sharp claws on his neck, or his brother’s blood. He looked at her with grief and with utter trust.
“Will you come with me?” she said.
“I told you long ago,” he said. “I go with you. Always.”
She drew back from him. Held her hands before her. With great care, she shaped a new sigil. It was all she had left within her.
The sigil for flight.
As she felt the darkness unfurl and change around her, she embraced Zahir. Held him tight.
She thought how it must look to the nobles: the ghostly widow embracing Zahir, the great dark wings around him. They would remember the tale of how he flew from his father’s palace. They would remember his power. And Parviz—cursed, weakened, sitting upon a dais in a shattered tent—would no longer have the power to see Zahir dead. She felt that in her bones. And she was glad.
“I love you,” she said. “I thought, maybe, that you should know.”
For the second time in their lives, they flew.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
They landed on a vast expanse of sand beneath a blistering hot sky. Arwa felt the daiva release her and uncoil. She made a sigil of thanks on shaking hands—and collapsed to the ground.
The bird-spirits remained, circling overhead, uncomfortably reminiscent of carrion birds. Zahir said her name, his voice hoarse and shaken, and lifted her up in his arms.
“How—?”
“I didn’t want to die there,” Arwa said fiercely. Whispers were pouring through her. Whispers and ash. “Not there.”
“You’re not dying,” he said. “You’re not.”
“I thought you hated—inaccuracy.”
He made a choked sound. One breath. Another. He said, “You asked me not to make a sacrifice of myself. I expect you to extend me the same courtesy.”
Then he was lifting her up, up. She bit off a scream.
“Your shoulder,” he said.
“Just move me carefully,” she told him.
“I will,” he said. Slung her good arm over his shoulder, stooping to hold her weight. “We’re getting help,” he said. “I promise it.”
She tasted blood on her lips. Ash. She nodded, and stumbled along with him.
He walked, and time moved strangely, swimming in and out of focus. She dreamed a dozen dreams, that flickered through her mind, fractures of shadows.
“Arwa.”
“Yes.” She remembered. How strange, how the name fit. Her self fit her like an old familiar skin. “I am.”
“Arwa,” he said, aggrieved. He lowered her down. Collapsed beside her, flat upon the sand. She breathed in and out. The tide had ebbed. She knew herself again.
She was Arwa. She was.
“I am sorry,” Arwa managed to say, “about Jihan.”
“Don’t be,” he said.
“But you love her.”
“I do,” said Zahir. “But she’s made her choice. And I, mine.”
Arwa rolled her head to the side. She saw falling ash and a pale white sky.
“You should leave me,” she said. “I won’t… be me for long.”
“Don’t be a fool.”
“Zahir…”
Zahir swore, hefting her up once more. “Come on now,” he said.
They made it only a few steps before Arwa stumbled. Something had changed within her. Something had severed.
She raised her hurt arm. Slow.
“Arwa, please,” he said shakily. “Stop trying to move it.”
But she couldn’t. She raised her hand to the light. In the realm of ash, she watched the glass of her skin cloud with darkness.
“It’s too late,” she told Zahir. Mouth moving. She remembered how flesh worked, still. “I’m losing myself.”
She turned her hands once more. Her roots were withering, the bond between her and her flesh decaying to dust.
He lowered her once more.
It took her soul a second to follow her flesh back to the ground: a dizzying second of blankness, where her soul was suspended in nothing, a constellation of ash burning its edges smooth.
“The tale,” she whispered, touching his flesh with her hands of mirror-glass, his soul with her trembling, bloodied fingertips. She did not know where she was anymore. She was undone. “Aliye’s tale. Of the doe. I thought—I could escape it. But I took the arrow, I think. Does that make me the doe? The willing sacrifice?”
“Gods, Arwa. It is just a tale.”
“They’re never just tales.”
“Look at me.” He held her face in his hands. “I’m going to help you as I did in the caravanserai. Let me share the burden of your ash.”
“It won’t be enough.”
“It can be. It will be.”
“There’s too much,” she said helplessly.
He touched his forehead to her own. “You are in the realm of ash, even now, aren’t you?”
Ash. Sunlight. The gold of sand. The black and white of an ash sky.
“Yes.”
“Well then,” he said. “Well. There must be a trick to it.”
He closed his eyes, and then he was there in the realm with her, all gossamer and glass, holding her still. Expression grim, he wound his blood roots around her own, lifting them to grace her fingers, her ash-dark wrists.
“Let me take the weight of the ash,” he said. “Let me share it with you again.”
“It won’t be enough.”
“Arwa. Let me try.”
She said nothing more, as he drew the weight of the ash between them, through the bond of their twined roots, said nothing as the clamor of voices grew and grew. But when she saw gray darkness begin to cloud his hands, his arms, she swore and tried to draw back.
He held her fast.
“Zahir, no.”
“What are blood roots, Arwa?” he said softly. “We studied them together, didn’t we? A bond between body and soul. A conduit allowing the one to feed the other. The soul is shaped by the realm of ash. The soul shapes the body. But when mystics enter the realm together, when they share the strength of their roots… Arwa, that strength. What is that strength?”
“Stop thinking,” she told him. “Stop thinking before you get yourself hurt.”
“That really isn’t my nature,” he replied.
“Zahir,” she said. Winced, something climbing within her, a scream, a memory that wasn’t her own. “Don’t do anything foolish.”
“I told you, in the caravanserai, that if you were taken by the realm I’d do anything to bring you back.” He said it as if it were fact: a simple line from a book, indelible ink that could not be undone. “I told you it was fear that spoke, and it was. But it was true also, Arwa.”
He was still close. Clouded with the weight of her own dreams.
“The roots,” he said. “They share the body’s strength. Blood, heartbeat, life. And through them, I can share mine with you.” His hand curled tighter against her own, the roots furled between them.
“You can’t.”