When I reeled back from that, he took some pity on me and kissed my wet cheeks again before looking over my body for missed injuries. Once satisfied that I was only wounded in spirit, he turned to the huddle of chained, weeping priests and the souls of the dead, who were beginning to drift away into the Underworld.
The grimace on his face said that he blamed them for getting caught only a little less than he blamed the Fallen for catching them.
“What did you do?” I asked, thinking of the flash of light that cut through Death’s control over the dead.
Taran’s jaw tensed, and he answered reluctantly.
“Napeth’s power over them is like a lock. I opened it.”
“Did you know you could do that?”
He shrugged like that was unimportant, uncomfortable with the question. I would have pressed more, but one of the dusk-souls broke away from the cluster of glowing figures and slowly approached us. It was the same one who had driven her spear into the first Fallen, but it still took a long moment of looking through the green flame to recognize a short, slender girl with her dark hair cut into a sleek cap.
“I wondered if I might see you here,” said Hiwa, oddly serene. “Though I didn’t think it would be like this.”
“Maiden’s mercy,” I whispered in horror. I reached out a tentative hand, but my fingers were singed when I tried to touch her. This day had been an avalanche of heartbreaks, but this one threatened to collapse the rest of my soul.
Taran took a step to put his body between us, crowding me back.
“Who’s this?”
“Don’t you know me?” Hiwa asked in her soft voice. “It’s me. I’m still me.” She appeared to concentrate, and the green blur of her form momentarily solidified into that of an acolyte in Genna’s saffron.
“It’s our friend. Hiwa ter Genna,” I said, voice cracking into fresh tears. I was unsteady on my feet, and Taran put an arm around my waist to pull me protectively against his side even as his face creased in dismay at this dead stranger who knew him.
Hiwa didn’t seem to notice his distance or my grief. “And you’re alive again! Oh, Taran, I’m so glad.”
“I’m sorry,” Taran said after a moment, at a loss for words. “We were in the rebellion together?”
“Of course,” Hiwa said, brown eyes beaming up at him through a haze of flame. “I had such a crush on you. I think you knew. You were always very patient with me.”
I hadn’t known, but Taran had always been much more sensitive to that sort of thing than me. He made a soft noise of concern, because he couldn’t remember now.
Hiwa flicked her eyes to me, almost playful. “I’m glad I never did anything silly about it, but it was terribly unfair that he didn’t fall in love with me. I saw him first, after all.”
“You did,” I agreed softly.
“Iona was going to ask me to officiate at the wedding, which would have been a wonderfully tragic and romantic moment for the two of us,” Hiwa confided in Taran, her voice still soft and sweet. “I was already working on my speech when you died. It would have made you cry. I’m sorry I won’t be there now.”
“Hiwa, how—” I tried to turn her to a different subject, but Taran held up one hand to quiet me, a line appearing between his eyebrows.
“I would have cried?” Taran asked.
“Yes,” Hiwa said, rocking back on her heels.
“Because you thought I was in love with the bride,” he guessed with half-lidded eyes.
Hiwa looked at me in muted confusion, then at Taran. “I knewbefore Iona did. Every morning when you woke up you’d look around for her, and you didn’t smile until you found her.”
Taran made a derisive noise in his throat, releasing me to stalk a few feet away as though embarrassed. I took his distance as a reprieve and reached for Hiwa’s hand, even though it felt like clutching a pot straight from the oven. This might be my last chance to see her, and the fire didn’t really burn here in the Underworld.
“What happened to you?”
I’d thought she’d be safe when I stole the boat to follow the dawn. She still had some family, and she should have returned to her hometown on the western coast when I left.
She smiled brightly. “I heard about a bad outbreak of the spotted sickness at Lubridium two weeks ago and went back to help.”
That simple sentence told me so much. The spotted sickness usually struck during winter, when people were in close quarters, not spring, when farmers were out in their fields. When the spring rains didn’t come, people must have gone to the new capital to beg for help.
