“Find a healer… if you can,” I whisper. She flees the room, Amir in pursuit, likely to ensure his wife does not come to harm. And then we are alone, Notus and I. His form blurs behind a stinging haze of distortion as tears well, and fall. The air is sharp, edged. It hurts to breathe, and takes a monumental effort to lift my hands, rest them against the roughness of the South Wind’s ashen cheeks.
“Why?” I choke out. “Why would you do this?”
“Shh.” One large hand curls around mine, quelling the trembling that has spread outward from my core. “Do not despair.”
His eyelids flutter shut. The sight sends me forward with a sharp cry. “Notus!”
His eyes crack open, and I release a shaky exhalation. “I thought…” I can’t say it. I can’t make it real. “What should I do? How can we heal this?” I glance around. The smoke is quite thick now, making speaking, even breathing, difficult. I cough into my shoulder, swipe at my leaking eyes.
“You can’t,” he says quietly. “Death by a god-touched blade cannot be reversed.”
My heart, that diamond-encrusted organ, plummets to my feet and shatters into a thousand fragments. “No,” I whisper. “No, no, no, no… you’re immortal. You can pull through. It’s just a stupid blade.”
“It is god-touched.”
“But you—you’re the South Wind. You can doanything,” I whisper as the anguish hooks deeper. “I’ve seen it. You’re unstoppable, resilient—” My voice cracks, and I duck my head, my eyes so choked with tears the South Wind’s features have become a hot smear.
“It’s not fair,” I cry. “I just got you back, I—”I can’t lose you.Now that I will live, how am I supposed to accept this cost? My chest strains, andI press a fist against it, my face twisting as another broken sob bursts from my mouth. “Why do the people I love always leave me?”
“I’m not leaving you, Sarai.”
“Yes, you are.”
“No, I’m not, at least not willingly. Look at me.” He draws my chin upward, searching my gaze. “I’ll be right here. Always.” He touches two fingers against my heart. “Please listen to what I’m about to tell you.”
My fingers slide against his like the tightest weave, knotted into forever. “I’m not—”
“Please. I don’t have much time.”
My teeth clamp in an attempt to dam the scream that hammers against my locked jaw. Helplessly, I nod.
“I have… regrets,” Notus begins, the words sluggish and muddled. “Had I known my home was with you, I would have stood against Fahim. I would never have left you behind. You are my heart in every sense of the word. The woman I imagined I’d spend my days with.”
“It’s all right,” I soothe, wiping away a tear that squeezes from the corner of his eye. “I forgive you. I understand why you left.”
“I was weak. I thought your brother knew best, thoughtIknew best. In leaving, I denied myself the person that was most precious to me. And now I’m leaving again,” he whispers as the strength fades from his voice. “My one worry is who will look after you, if you leave Ishmah. Who will shelter you, reassure you? Who will love you?”
I wipe at the tears that drip endlessly. The truth is, I worry about that, too. I worry about being alone. How far will I drift this time before I’m able to pull myself from that black nothingness, if I have the strength at all?
But I won’t burden Notus with these thoughts. So I tell him all will be well. I reassure him that I can look after myself. I have Amir, Tuleen, Roshar. I have our memories. “I know who I am,” I say. “I’m not afraid.”
Some of the apprehension eases from his face at hearing this. I did the right thing, I think.
“Never forget that you are strong.” His fingers slacken, sliding from the hilt of the dagger protruding from his chest. The emerald pommeldulls beneath a coating of ash. “You are Sarai Al-Khatib,” Notus chokes out, the words garbled, blood trickling from his mouth. “Do not let the world tell you otherwise.”
“I won’t,” I sob, head bowed. “I promise. Just… stay, for a little while longer.” All the stories I wish to tell him, the laughter we might share.
Blood slinks over our grasped hands, slips down into the cracks between. “Tell me of your childhood,” I urge. “Tell me of your favorite sound in the world. Tell me… tell me what it was like to visit Ammara for the first time.” These things, which I believed we’d have the leisure to discuss. This future that will never be.
His expression pinches as he draws forth the recollection. “Ammara was beautiful. I had never come across a land so vast, so effortlessly raw. There was power here, power beyond my wildest imagination, though it came from no god that I could see.”
His chest judders, and he shifts his head toward me.
“And then I saw you,” he whispers, “and I realized the beauty I’d beheld in the desert was a pale comparison to the brightness of your smile, the intelligence in your gaze. You speared the very heart of me, Sarai. You still do.”
I cry harder, face pressed into his shoulder. “Notus.” My fingers curve around his wrist, the unyielding bone my only anchor against the ebbing tide. As I have learned, life will go on. The sun will rise, the moon will cycle, yet I fear a world that lacks the South Wind’s steadfast nature. “What can I do?”
“You can live your life, Sarai. Be happy.” He brushes the side of my face. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted for you.”
