As though sensing my wonder, the East Wind murmurs, “Ammara.”
“Excuse me?”
“We have passed beyond the boundaries of Marles and now travel over the realm of Ammara.” A slight tilt of his wings steers us northwest. Our combined shadows ripple below.
“It’s…” But the words disintegrate. They are too trivial to properly venerate this unending plain. I am eclipsed in its greatness. “Have y-you visited?”
“On occasion.”
Gradually, Eurus descends closer to the sand. I marvel at its palette of hues: red and ochre, yellow and tawny and gold. Now that we’ve left the higher altitude of Marles, sweat springs beneath my arms and at the backs of my knees.
“I was traveling back from Ammara when I was captured,” he replies, in subtle surrender to my thirst for knowledge.
And just like that, all the desert’s brightness dulls, as if coated in a fine layer of dust. “Oh.” I remember the day of his capture. Lady Clarisse had returned to the estate with a manic grin crimping her mouth as two men carried the hooded stranger through the back door. I didn’t know then that she had captured a god. I thought he was just another immortal, same as all the rest.
Eager to redirect the conversation—for this is, indeed, a conversation—I say, “What business did y-you have in Ammara?”
The East Wind angles upward, and a powerful flap of his scaled wings sends us soaring ever higher. “If I answer,” he growls lowly, “will you stop asking questions?”
I nod.
“I was visiting my brother, Notus.”
I stare at him. “You have a brother?”
“I have three.”
Of course. That oil painting I stumbled across in his study portrayed four men, yet only one with wings. Could they be the Anemoi that her ladyship mentioned? Might his siblings also possess power over the wind? And if what he says is true, then Eurus is not the only deity occupying the mortal realms. “What is Ammara l-like?”
“Dry.”
The urge to roll my eyes is strong. Somehow, I temper it. “Well, itisa desert.”
“What I mean,” he says, “is that Ammara has been fighting a drought for more than two decades. The annual floodwaters have ceased. Crops are in decline. The people suffer.”
Unsurprisingly, there is little compassion from him. He is simply stating the facts. “For someone who hates to venture f-from his island, you seem to know a lot about Ammara’s state of affairs.”
“I should, considering I was the one who took Ammara’s rains.”
I startle in his arms. “You s-stole the rains from Ammara?”
“I stole nothing,” he clips out, arms tightening at my back. “It was a fair trade. Their king was desperate, and I needed those rains to strengthen the protections around my island. He could give me that, and in exchange, I granted him his heart’s desire.”
The storm, I realize. Eurus stole Ammara’s rains to feed the massive storm enveloping his manor.
“You’re saying you d-d-doomed an entire realm to suffering because you needed morewater?” It is absurd. It is sickening. “Those are life-giving rains. Y-you stole them.” And likely took advantage of a poor mortal king. The man’s desperation must have been immense, to willingly condemn his kingdom. I wonder what Eurus provided him in return.
He scoffs. “Not water.Power.And you would not understand.”
Oh, I understand. It is clear the East Wind lacks any consideration for others, any compassion at all. He values influence above all else.
The reminder that I am but one more pawn on his board fatigues me. I rest for a time, though I am never able to relax fully in this god’s embrace. When I open my eyes, the desert has been replaced with a vast tract of forest. We bank hard, veering toward a clearing on the outskirts of a small town. Eurus cups the back of my head as his wings flare out, slowing our descent. He touches down with all the care of a seamstress threading the eye of a needle.
The relief of returning to solid ground cannot be understated. I love the solidity of the earth. I love the bedrock and soil, the plains and mountains, valleys and hills. Change is slow with feet on the ground.
Eurus jerks his chin, and I follow at his heels, eyes wide as we venture down a busy market street.
It is not the shops I notice first, but the people. They are dressed in browns and whites and greens—shades of the earth. They clad their bodies in sturdy cotton and lightweight linen. There is no delicate silk or lacy frills, nothing extravagant about their manner of dress. The bright click of heels has been replaced with heavy boot tread.
