He appears perplexed. “When you return home?”
My tongue is tied inside my mouth, so I say nothing else.
“You are so certain of this. Do you miss it?”
I nod because it’s true. Of course I miss the familiar, the place I grew up, the place I lived my entire life. I do miss my old store, and my few friends. But what I have found here is so undeniably perfect that nothing on Arshur calls my name anymore.
“The food here is good, but what I wouldn’t give for a pound of kibud.” Khesan sighs. “There’s nothing like that here.”
He’s right. Kibud is a sour, spicy sweet that I also find myself longing for. It was my favorite treat after a filling dinner.
“Our weather, too,” I say. “This snow is novel, but I won’t mind the warmth of the sun on my skin.”
Khesan frowns. “Why are you so sure that you will be the one returning to our homeworld?”
I curl my hands into fists, almost unable to say the words. But I have to.
“Because I will concede,” I say at last. “Because I will choose to go home, so that Fiona does not have to decide. So that it will not weigh on her conscience.” I swallow hard. “So that she can be free to be with you for the rest of time.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Khesan
Concede?
Shathar will voluntarily leave, voluntarily give up his life here with Fiona so that I may have her? So that I may stay?
My mind is too addled by the zik to fully process this. It is, perhaps, beyond my ability to understand.
“Why?” is all I can say. “Why would you do that?”
Shathar drops his head into his hands. “It will hurt her immensely to have to choose.” His voice is muffled. “So I will take myself out of the equation.”
I decide not to answer right away. I will think over the right thing to say first, which is not my strongest suit.
My eyes have been on Shathar all night. When Fiona left us alone, I was not irritated, as I had expected. Then he touched me of his own accord. The place where his hand coasted over my scales is turning warm again.
Now, as we sit alone together under the stars, I can smell it again: the scent of mate. And yet Fiona is inside, far away. Still, it remains, and I think that at last, it has clicked in my mind what it means.
“Shathar.” My voice comes out strong and sure. “I will not accept this from you.”
He lifts his head, eyes narrowing. “You don’t get a say in it. It is my choice to make.”
“And still, I won’t accept your concession. Because there is no win or lose. There is only…”
I hesitate to say it. Does he know? Does he understand? Does he feel it, too, how all of this was supposed to happen, and Shathar and I were meant to find each other just as much as we were meant to find Fiona?
“What is there?” he snaps, his fans rising in shocking anger. “Vakha, Khesan. The Frahma said it. Only one of us stays. But you are younger. You have more years left to you, years that you can spend with Fiona. Years that you can keep her company, so she’ll never be alone.”
He cracks as he reaches the end, and his shoulders slump.
“This is what makes the most sense, I think,” he says in little more than a whisper. “Then you can be happy, too.”
That’s what he wants for me. He must not realize it, then, that his selflessness toward me is a reflection of the bond we’ve formed.
He is clearly hurting, so I scoot my chair closer to his and loop an arm around his back. He stiffens, but I don’t release him, only bringing him in tighter against my side. After a few moments, it’s as if all the air has drained out of him, because he leans his whole body weight against me.
“I don’t think I would be happy knowing you had gone home for me,” I say to him in a soft tone. “The truest happiness I’ve found is being with you and Fiona. Sleeping together, cooking together, loving together.”
