Linn lowered her gaze. “I am sorry if I overstepped earlier, shi’sen. I merely—”
Ruu’ma cut her off. “Listen to me carefully, Ko Linnet,” she said, and clasped her hands together, in a familiar gesture. “Action, and counteraction—this is the principle we in Kemeira live by. Do you know how it came to be?”
Linn shook her head.
“From the very first Temple Masters, who communed with the gods and spirits and all that is magic in this world. You see, this principle was derived from them. The Heart has the ability tocreate the flow of magic…to control it, as well as to destroyit.”
Linn frowned, mulling the words over. “ ‘The ability to create the flow of magic…as well as todestroyit,’ ” she whispered, and suddenly, it felt as though someone had lit a lantern in her head.
“Do you understand?” Ruu’ma raised an eyebrow and gave her a significant look. “Healer Wennin spoke to me about your query—about your wielder friend whose power was stolen by the Reins of the Sea. To save her, you must destroy the vesselthat holds it. The wielder must be present. Otherwise, the power trapped in the siphon may simply dissolve into the grand flow of energy.” Ruu’ma paused, eyes heavy. “You must hurry—she is not long for this world.”
Linn’s chest was suddenly tight. “Ana is dying?” she whispered.
Ruu’ma inclined her head. “A wielder is not meant to live without their power.”
The monumental task finally settled around Linn’s shoulders. It took her a moment to remember to breathe.
“Shi’sen,” she whispered, her knees suddenly weak. In spite of everything she’d gone through, in spite of all that she had fought for, the whispers of her Wind Masters came back to her in this moment.A wingless bird,they’d called her, after Enn had been taken and she’d stopped flying. The old fears welled in her chest, spilling from her lips. “I cannot…I am nobody important—”
The Temple Master took her hands, and Linn fell silent with surprise. “A sparrow’s wingbeat may cause the biggest of storms,” Ruu’ma said, and slipped something cool and hard into Linn’s hands. Gently, she wrapped Linn’s fingers around it and stepped back. “Be the sparrow, Ko Linnet.”
Then, the Temple Master stepped back and strode into the darkness.
Linn uncurled her fingers. Nestled in her palm was a small wooden tablet with the Kemeiran insignia of a dragon on the front…and a series of strange symbols and jagged lines on theback. In the very center was the Kemeiran charactershin—heart.
She stared at it blankly for a moment, her conversation with Ruu’ma swirling in her mind, before holding it out to Kaïs. He examined it, then drew a soft breath. “It’s a map,” he said. “A mapof Northern Cyrilia—I recognize the port of Leydvolnya. And that…that must be the ocean. The Silent Sea.”
It clicked for Linn, then. “Shin,” she whispered, tracing a finger over the engraving. “Heart.” She looked up at Kaïs, a shiver running down her spine. “Kaïs, this is a map to the Heart of the Gods.”
Understanding bloomed in his face; he clasped both hands around hers, cradling the small wooden tablet. “She wants us to find it,” he said quietly.
“Ruu’ma shi’sen says it is the way to control magic. She wants us topreventMorganya from finding it. We have seen what using the gods’ magic—alchemical power, whatever it is you wish to call it—has done to this world. Blackstone, siphons…it must all be destroyed and kept out of human grasp.” Her throat tightened as she pieced together another part of the puzzle. “The Heart must be used to destroy the siphon that holds Ana’s Affinity. But Ana must be with us, or her Affinity will be gone—forever.”
“Ana is hunting down Sorsha and the siphons. So we must bring Ana to the Heart as quickly as possible,” Kaïs said simply. “Save Ana and save the world.”
It sounded so foreign to her, so grand, like something she would never have thought herself to be a part of back when she’d first set out on this journey. Saving the world was usually left to princesses and heroines, not a girl trafficked from her homeland, robbed of her freedom and her voice.
The edges of the map dug insistently into her palms; Kaïs’s voice was steady as he spoke. “Then let us go,” he said quietly, “and put an end to it all.”
Linn looked into Kaïs’s face and met his quicksilver gaze. Nor, she realized suddenly, were the tales of heroism ever reserved forpeople like him: a boy stolen from his kingdom and coerced into fighting for an empire that oppressed him and his kind.
But perhaps that was exactly why they needed to do this.
Linn nodded and this time, she reached for his hand. He twined his fingers around hers, his gentle steadiness warm in a way that filled her with a golden glow in this hour of night. “Together,” she whispered.
Several hours later, Linn stood at the railing of the trade ship, watching the shores of her home draw farther and farther away, the ocean lapping in to fill the space in between. She remembered taking this exact journey eight years ago, when she’d chosen to leave behind her homeland in search of her brother. The path she’d chosen had not been kind, and it had irrevocably changed her as a person. But it wasn’t the gods, Linn thought, who had gotten her through each grueling, hopeless day of being indentured in a foreign, frozen land. It wasn’t the gods who had helped her survive.
All along, it had been her.
She had no idea what they might return to, what might have happened with Ana or Daya or Shamaïra. But for the moment, in the quiet, shared space between her and Kaïs, they would have strength enough.
Be the sparrow, Ko Linnet.
Ramson held Ana in the morning light, a soft golden glow spilling like honey over the curls of her hair, the curves of her shoulders. He watched her almost greedily, his eyes raking in the contours of her face, from the sharp edges of her jaw to the crook of her nose to the bold slash of her eyebrows. Even in sleep, her mouth was a stern line and her brows creased.
He could spend forever like this, and forever would be too short. Here, stretched out by her side beneath the twisted bundle of furs and blankets, the world silent and still all around them, it almost felt as though they could have it all.
She sighed, her eyes fluttering, opening. It was simply enough, to watch her lie peacefully with her head tilted to the window, the dark stroke of her lashes shifting as she took in the world beyond the glass.
