I exhaled sharply, leaning over the balustrade.
“We’re all doing our part,” Meera continued. “Our best. The situation is shit no matter how you look at it. We’re just … trying. Especially Dario.”
“What do you care?” I asked. “Why does it matter if I’m nice to him?”
Meera’s brows drew together, her hazel eyes thoughtful. “It doesn’t. I have no designs on this. It’s just, right now, we need each other. It would be nice if we were all getting along. If we all trusted each other a little more.”
“Fine.” I watched people moving through the small stone streets of the town beyond the hills surrounding the house. People were just going about their daily life. Hardly aware that so much evil lurked around them, above them. Was that unique to Korteria? Were the Bamarian’s just as unaware they’d been conquered? Soothed by Arianna’s lies?Comforted in the false belief they were safe because of Tristan’s vorakh testing?
“You know he won’t …” Meera started, and looked away. “Dario would never hurt you.”
“He’s a man,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “He can hurt me.”
“He could. But he’s one of the few that I know won’t.” She lifted her arm, and stroked the backs of the babies. Their bodies arched and curled, both of them opening their mouths and making tiny hissing sounds that were, admittedly, kind of cute. But only a little.
“No news about Lyr?” I asked.
Meera’s eyes grew distant and she shook her head. “She’s out there. She’s just … hidden somehow.”
The clock tower began to chime. My heart thundered. Another hour of my life gone. Stolen.
I shook my head. “I thought the whole point was that nahashim could find anything, anywhere.”
“They can. I even—” Her mouth tightened “I sent one on a mission to—to find Her Grace.” Lyr’s title, if she were married to Kormac. Meera wiped at her eyes, and blinked. “Nothing.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “Maybe the snakes are being intercepted, like you’re doing to Devon Hart’s.”
“But we would know, they wouldn’t be returning to us. They can find anything,” she said, like she was reciting something she read in a scroll. “There’s nowhere they can’t go. Nothing they can’t find. I mean, for Lyr to be unfindable— she’d have to—she’d have to not exist in our world. But she does.”
“She does,” I said. “She’s somewhere, somewhere out there in time or space.”
Meera frowned. “Time?”
“What?”
“You said time.” She squinted, her mouth open.
“Just a saying,” I said.
“No. It’s not. She’s somewhere in time. She’s—By the Gods. I think—I think I know where she is.”
I leaned in toward her.“Where?”
“The snakes keep coming back, and each time they turn around at the southern border here. Where Korteria and Khemet meet. The Moon Court.”
“So? Maybe they’re just being turned around by the Afeya,” I said, confused.
“But they should still be able to enter. Nahashim are from the old world, from Lumeria Matavia. Like the Afeya. They wouldn’t turn them away. They’d ignore them, or welcome them in. Not confuse them and send them back. I remember reading once that time moves differently there. That …” Meera frowned. “Oh, come on. No! I didn’t read it. The knowledge isn’t public. It was in one of my trainings to become Arkasva. That’s it!” She shook her head, looking wild, slamming her hands down on the banister. The snakes slithered up her arm, settling in tiny coils on her shoulders. “The Moon Queen married the Sun King, and it changed time in their realms. A day is a month there. And a month is a day.”
“And the last sighting of her was on the beach of Bamaria. With a water dragon,” I continued. Something that hadn’t beenseen by anyone on the shores of the Empire in as long as I could remember. They supposedly spent most of their time near the Afeyan lands. And Lethea. I encountered them on my travels there. But … if they also spent time near El Zandria and Khemet … almost a month had passed since Lyr’s last sighting. And the snakes were getting turned around the Korterian border. Turned around when they reached Khemet.
“She’s in the Moon Court,” I said.
Meera nodded breathlessly. “She is. Gods, yes.” She clutched her heart. “Yes. I knew it.” She shuddered. “I knew she wasn’t dead.”
My heart thundered, my own relief at the news washing through me in waves. I’d hoped she was okay. Prayed. But I’d barely allowed myself to think of her. Hope, I’d found, was a dangerous thing. Because it made you want, made you desire. And when you wanted things, you could lose them.
I’d been numb for a long time now. So long. After losing my home. My family. My freedom. And then … Seth.
