“Zahir, then,” said Arwa, turning her attention back to him. “There is no soldier in the Empire who doesn’t fear being at the heart of the next Darez Fort. Perhaps if I warn the soldiers, they will release us, before the nightmare can consume us all.” Even to her own ears, it sounded like a weak possibility. “We can hope.”
“You and your foolish hopes,” he said.
“They haven’t failed us yet,” she replied.
“What a fine time for them to do so, then,” he said grimly.
“I need to see if the nightmare is in their eyes,” she said, pressing onward. “I need to see it, because I will recognize it. I know the nightmare in all its forms. It haunts me. And I hope—my truest, strongest hope—that if I stare the nightmare in the face, the ash will show me a way to dispel it. And if it does not, and if the soldiers do not let us run for our lives… well.” She swallowed. “We’re all going to die anyway.”
He leaned forward. Touched the ground before her hand, as if he wanted to grasp her but wouldn’t. Couldn’t.
“Don’t do this,” he said. “Stay here. Think. If the answer lies in the realm of ash, then Eshara and I are well placed to help. We can study, we can enter the realm more safely, together—”
“How long until the captain takes another head, kills another heretic?” snapped Arwa. “How long until the nightmares make us turn on one another in a blood frenzy?” Neither of them looked at Eshara, though it was a near thing. “And where will we perform a ritual, in this place? I won’t live through a Darez Fort again, Zahir. I won’t. I can’t.”
She was the one who breached the gap between them, who grasped his wrist, holding him fast. She felt the beat of his pulse against her fingers and saw something in his face—something strange and raw and lost.
“Arwa,” he said.
“I saved our lives, Zahir. And all we had then was foolish hope. I think…” An exhalation. “There is more in me than either of us knows. There is more in me thanme. My ancestor’s ash may give me the answer to save this place. It may not. But when the nightmare came to Darez Fort, I hid and wept as my husband and his men died. Now the nightmare is here, now I know what it is and what it can do, now I have a second chance to be strong, how can I not try to save us?”
“She’s already speaking like a thing cursed by fear,” muttered Eshara.
“This isn’t right,” Zahir said. “You can’t do this.”
“I will. I can.”
“It places you in terrible danger, youknowthat.”
“We’re already in terrible danger. Just this once—”
“Therisks, Arwa—”
“We have a mission, Zahir. And the safety of these people—”
“It is not your responsibility to die as your husband died,” he said sharply. “You lived through Darez Fort once, you owe no one anything—”
“Don’t you care?” she asked, knowing even as she spoke that her words were unfair, untrue. “Do you truly want the nightmare to take us, without hope, without a fight?” She swallowed. Tried to soften her voice, feeling the trembling heat of his hand in her own. “I am sorry, Zahir. But if you’re afraid, I—”
“I am afraid foryou!” His voice was vicious. His pulse burned beneath her hand. “If anything happens to you here and I live, I will read every book, every tome, I will trick death itself to bring you back. I will become something terrible, not for your sake, but mine, because Icannotlive in a world without you in it.”
“You don’t feel so much for me,” she whispered.
He blinked. Blinked again. It was as if clouds parted upon his face.
“No. I don’t. I.” He shook his head. “Something is wrong.”
He pulled away from her grip. He touched his fingers to the back of his neck. Shaken.
“Fear,” he said. “This is my fear. And yet it isn’t. We are—none of us—acting like ourselves.”
Eshara had lowered her blade to the ground. Her face was gray. Distantly, Arwa could hear someone weeping.
“No,” Arwa agreed. “We’re not. You called me your partner, Zahir. Do you remember?”
“I do.”
“Then trust me,” she said softly. “Allow me to take a risk. At the very least, accept that I have the right to risk my life on my own terms, when death waits for us here, no matter what we do. Let me have that.”
