“What happened?” he asks. “Where did you go?”
I can’t help but smile at the memory. “I saw myself,” I say. “As a child.” That precious girl, so lost and so small.
“I don’t understand.”
“I—” How to explain? “When I was younger, I would sometimes go to this imagined place inside my mind. I would sit by the river and keep myself company. It was where I found tranquility, where I couldjustbe. But this time, I wasn’t alone. A young girl was there, sitting by the river—me. And she was desperate for connection.”
A tear tracks down my cheek, which Notus wipes away with his thumb. I didn’t realize the ways I had neglected myself. I’d unconsciously made myself small in order to gain Father’s approval. I’d hammered my corners and smoothed my uneven patches. But I wasn’t me.
“How could I have been so blind to my own needs?” I whisper hoarsely. “Sitting with that part of me, holding her—it was incredibly healing.”
Notus reaches for my hands. He wraps them inside his own, and draws them to his chest, flattening them to his heart, whose rhythm beats alongside my own. “I’m glad you were able to get closure,” he says. “You are worthy of kindness and compassion and love. You deserve peace in your life.”
For so long, I’d believed the opposite. My upbringing was the most ruthless knife. It carved me from impenetrable stone. But this shape was never mine to decide. Now look at me. A woman who doesn’t know herself, and likely never has.
“I know Father meant well,” I whisper, and the grief, still fresh from his passing, hollows my lungs. “But sometimes I wanted to scream for how little he knew me.”
“I know,” Notus says, likely thinking of his own childhood. “It hurts when those we love fail to see us. But we’re all trying the best we can. Your father loved you as much as he could for a man carrying the weight of a realm. Don’t let the resentment harden you.” Reaching out, he cradles my cheek in one large palm. “I would not see your light dimmed.”
“No.” I shake my head. “I have hardened myself for too long, I think.”
The South Wind studies me for a long while. This is perhaps the first bit of contentment I have experienced in… I’m not sure how long. Years, to be certain.
“I’m proud of you, Sarai. I know you’ll find peace, one way or another.” Then he brushes his mouth across my cheek.
I lost myself in the labyrinth, yet I found myself, too, in pieces, which I collected and placed lovingly into something given order and shape. Something resembling my true self. Now I must decide what comes next. Peril still threatens Ammara, somewhere beyond the door at the end of the light-filled passage. Prince Balior, and the beast, a threat I fear is too powerful to conquer. But I am not alone.
Reaching toward the South Wind, I ask him, “Will you walk with me?”
Something gentles in his expression. “Sarai,” he says. “That is something you never need ask.”
31
THE SKY IS A CHARREDruin, its sapphire expanse blotted out by smoke and shade that climbs, and writhes, and sparks red. The churning squall boils upward. It is teeming,alive. Through its screen, Ishmah’s glittering rooftops waver behind a haze of slithering heat.
The labyrinth doesn’t deposit us in the palace courtyard. Rather, we emerge from a cave on the outskirts of the capital, Ishmah spread below us like crumbling coals. I estimate we are some miles from the city. Despite the distance, the screams are unmistakable. The smoke seems to have originated in the western part of the city, an industrial area where most of the workshops and forges are located. Meanwhile, amassing shadow sits as a denser layer below the fumes, squatting like a territorial dog over the palace. The sight chills me.
Somewhere inside the city is my family: Amir and Tuleen and Roshar and even Haneen, whose stories dragged me from those darkest days of grief. Ibramin, blessedly, will have reached Mirash by now. Those that remain, the South Wind—they encompass the whole of what I love.
Slowly, I turn toward the god who has captured my heart. How depleted he appears now, on this threshold between peace and war, darkness and light. “How confident are you that you can defeat Prince Balior and the beast?”
He lifts a hand to his face, expression pinched, and drags at the corner of one eye. “The beast drained much of my power, as you know. And neither my sword nor the wind works against it.”
Indeed, I’ve never seen Notus appear so weary. A nervous flutter captures my heartbeat in an irregular pitter patter. “That doesn’t exactly answer the question.”
He regards me for a long, drawn-out moment. In the end, he speaks only one word. “Sarai.”
It’s difficult to swallow. Miles we stand from Ishmah, yet the reek of smoke stings my nostrils, thin gray wisps skating over the sweltering earth. “Your sword couldn’t harm the beast inside the labyrinth, but what about outside of it? Whatever hold that place had on the creature is no more.”
He tears clawed fingers through his hair with a sigh. “I don’t know.”
I’m aware of what we face. I’m aware that tomorrow may not arrive for many, myself included. But… I’d hoped Notus would be strong enough to vanquish our foes. With limited residual power, he will need to take care of how much to use, and when.
I nod despite the fright cramming my chest. We will need all our strength to rid Ammara of this great evil. Our options are dwindling, few, but all is not lost. Not yet, anyway. “Now that the beast has been released, do you think it will do Prince Balior’s bidding?”
Notus shakes his head. “It will take time for it to relearn the shape of what it once was. Until then, it has likely fled to a safe place until its transformation is complete. The good news is that it will be unable to use its power until it has transformed back into its humanoid form. However, we still have the darkwalkers to contend with.”
“And Prince Balior’s army,” I add. “How much power would you need to take them all out?”
