She sometimes wished, as she did then, that the tradition wasn’t to bury the veils with the bodies. Alashiya thought wistfully of her grandmother’s, and her mother’s, and those of theother women in her grove who’d been given back to Blight. Each garment was the story of a life, from conception to death, and she would’ve liked to hold them again. Especially now.
It was one thing to feel their spirits in the hyphae, to know their stories with a touch of the invisible web that connected them all, but it was another to run her fingers over the stitches that marked every great and terrible event of their lives, to feel their presence in the warp and weft of the fabric.
Alashiya touched the large empty spot at the end of the veil. It was framed by the other designs and clearly reserved for a centerpiece that she could never decide on. The shape of the negative space was a little odd — an upside down triangle, almost. She’d puzzled for years over what ought to go there, or if she should risk making the empty space smaller by adding more designs around the edge, which would change the shape somewhat.
But now her fingers traced the path around the border of that empty space knowingly.
A dragon could go here,she thought, throat tightening with emotion.If I wanted to, I could fit a dragon with its wings spread in this space without any trouble at all.
Violet and crimson threads, a hint of navy here and there… Yes, a dragon would look very fine as the centerpiece. But putting one there could mean many things, not all of them good. If she were to sew Taevas into her veil, would she look at it years later with joy or regret?
The silk was too fine formaybe’sorlet’s see’s.Once the needle had passed through it, the delicate fabric was forever altered, making any room for error or second-guessing almost non-existent.
Alashiya gazed at the empty space for a long time, her coffee cooling on the table by her elbow.Would I regret it?
It wouldn’t be such a strange thing to sew him in. No matter what happened, he’d made a mark unlike any other on her life — as Adon, but also as Taevas. Perhaps he’d earned his place there.
But if their relationship, such as it was, ended in heartbreak,would she wish she’d never sewn a dragon? She imagined it could be something of a memorial for hopes gone fallow, or a path she was too cowardly to tread.
He’d sworn to follow her wherever she ran, but that couldn’t possibly be an oath he would fulfill. Their lives were too different. How could he just expect her to pack up and leave with him, to strike out into such a hostile world with just his word on which to cling?
He didn’t understand. Hecouldn’tunderstand.
It all made perfect sense to her. She would stay, as she always had, and be the guardian of her grove’s memories, of the first Queen’s legacy. It was the safe option, and the only one that didn’t make her feel like she was stepping off a cliff just because a handsome man had asked her to. All things withered, including her proud line. She’d accepted a very long time ago that she would be the last.
And yet…
And yet she could see the dragon there in the empty space, and when she pressed her fingers against the cool silk, her ghosts’ whispers rose in a great swell of urgency, defying their usual calls for caution.Do it,their echoes seemed to say.Jump, Alashiya. You might just fly.
“What is this?”
Startled, she looked up to find a drowsy dragon frowning down at her, pillow lines creased in his cheek. He knelt before her chair, his hands on the armrests, and peered curiously into the chest. Her veil had spilled out of it in a waterfall of green silk.
“These are my heirlooms,” she explained, gently gathering the veil back into a protective coil. “I was feeling— I wanted to be with my family for a little while.”
Taevas glanced at her through the dense fringe of his lashes. She thought for a moment that he was going to press again, to insist on knowing everything in that infuriating, endearing way of his. Alashiya steeled herself for it, but he didn’t ask.
Instead, he said in his sleep-roughened voice, “It’s good you have these things. I don’t.”
“You don’t have heirlooms?”
“Only one,” he answered. “A tapestry. Almost everything we had, we sold or abandoned when my family fled the Collapse. What little we managed to save was burned when my mother defied Isand Jaak. The only reason the tapestry survived was because my father made me take it when he sent me away.”
The Collapse was something she knew well. It was the great age of calamity that had struck mainland Europe and Asia — a time of terrible disease, famine, and war. It was ultimately what had pushed her grove out of the God Forest, up through Europe, and ultimately to the UTA over the course of generations.
But she didn’t know Isand Jaak. The hair on her arms stood on end when Taevas said his name.
Alashiya tentatively touched the hard line of Taevas’s jaw. “Tell me about the tapestry.”
He tilted his head into her hand without hesitation. “Don’t you want to hear about the rest?”
“Yes,” she replied, offering him a small smile, “but I won’t pry. Especially before you’ve had any coffee.”
The crow’s feet deepened around his eyes, but his mouth didn’t curve in a real smile. Defying her weak attempt to lighten the mood, he said, “I’ve asked everything of you, Alashiya, and offered nothing because right now Iamnothing. If I can give you my story and have it be the real start of this thing between us, then I would like to.”
She recalled how he’d touched her the night before, and the long thread of familiarity that had connected them for a decade. “I thought we started ten years ago.”
Taevas moved his hands from the armrests of her chair to her knees. Despite his inherent grandeur, he looked subdued, somehow. Gentled. It was hard not to look that way, she guessed, when he was on his knees before her, his head bowed.
