Serik purses his lips and holds his ground, but a relieved sob bursts from my mouth and the last of my apprehension washes away like snowmelt in the springtime.Thisis what I wanted.Thisis what I dreamed of. The thought ofthismoment carried me through each excruciating day of my imprisonment—all seven hundred and forty-three of them.
I trip across the lavish room I am usually forbidden to enter, past a velvet divan and floor-length looking glass, and bury my face in Ghoa’s neck. She smells of horses and leather and iron, of snow and grass and wide-open air. Her arms are harder, her hair longer—nearly to the middle of her back now—but she’s still Ghoa.MyGhoa. Sister, mother, and friend, all in one.
“You came,” I cry. “Finally.”
“Look at you.” Ghoa pulls back to examine my face—this time she doesn’t even flinch. “So grown-up. What happened to my little Enebish?”
She tries to pat my cheek, but I bat her away. “I was sixteen when you brought me here. That’s hardly little. Your eyesight must be failing you in your old age.”
“Old age? I’m only five years older than you! That isn’t so many.”
“It’s a lifetime. Look at all those new wrinkles.”
She massages her forehead with a laugh. “Such a wicked tongue! Need I remind you that I’ve saved your life?Twicenow.”
“Not out of kindness,” Serik interjects.
Ghoa stiffens, and for half a second, hurt clouds her eyes. I reach for her hand and give it a gentle squeeze. So she knows I don’t share Serik’s sentiment.
In addition to securing my sanctuary at Ikh Zuree, Ghoa saved my life ten years ago when my village in the southern deserts of Verdenet, one of the Protected Territories, was sacked by Zemyan raiders. She found me in the ashes, trying to drag my parents’ bodies from our smoldering hut, and even though there were hundreds of survivors swarming the warriors like beetles on a trash heap, she chose me. She brought me back to her parents’ estate in Sagaan and convinced them to accept me as another ward, alongside Serik. She taught me how to use a bow and ride a horse and paraded me before the king, cheering like a proud mother, when my Kalima power presented at the stroke of midnight on my eleventh birthday.
“You realize that’s why she saved you,” Serik whispered that night when I’d returned from the Sky Palace. His quilt was pulled up over his face as if he were asleep, but the bitter accusation hissed across the room. “Not because she loves you, but because she knew she could use you.”
What are you talking about?I wanted to snap back, but I forced myself to be kind. He was still licking his wounds after being recalled from the war front. “Ghoa didn’t know I would be blessed with a Kalima power.”
“Didn’t she? You were the only one from your village with blistered palms and singed hair. The only child who performed a feat of bravery noble enough to potentially qualify for the power of the sky.”
I didn’t let Serik’s bitter grudge with Ghoa poison me back then, and I certainly won’t let it ruin our reunion now.
I squeeze her hand tighter and restring my smile. “Tell me everything. Where have you been? What have you seen? Two years is an eternity. The king couldn’t have needed you all that time.”
“TheSky King,” she corrects me, enunciating his official title, which I’ve never used. Not even when I was one of his most decorated warriors. A mortal king cannot justdecideone day to usurp the Goddess. But Ghoa looks at me pointedly until I let out an exasperated breath. Fine. “The Sky King couldn’t have needed you all that time.”
With a pleased nod, she drops into the straight-backed chair and begins untying her boots. “He most certainly did. The Zemyans are still battering our eastern border with legions of depraved sorcerers. You’d think they’d eventually realize the feud between Ashkar and Zemya is archaic and unnecessary. No one believes in the First Gods, so holding a grudge is senseless. Especially sincetheyattacked us first. We’re not even asking them to drain their enchanted hot spring. They can meddle with their wicked magic all they’d like, so long as they do it on their own lands and leave us be. But Empress Danashti is envious and fearful of how large our nation has become with the Protected Territories. She can’t stand to see us surpass them in greatness.”
I nod sagely, even though I only agree with half of Ghoa’s claims. Empress Danashtiisspiteful and paranoid, but can she be blamed for not trusting Ashkar when we’ve swallowed every other neighboring nation in the past two decades?
Not to mentionsome of usstill believe in the First Gods.
“You should see the war front. It’s horrific,” Ghoa continues, her face grave as she tosses her boots aside.
“It’s always been horrific,” Serik cuts in with a flippant wave of his hand. “Quit trying to goad us with details that haven’t changed in centuries.”
He has a point. We’ve been at war with Zemya since the birth of the First Gods and the beginning of time. When the Lady of the Sky and Father Guzan bore the first humans, a boy and a girl—Ashkar and Zemya. While Ashkar developed divine gifts from his parents, Zemya couldn’t move the clouds or bend the light. People whispered that it was due to her churlish nature. While Ashkar was warm and generous and quick to smile, Zemya was short-tempered and competitive. Not wanting to be outdone by her brother or forgotten by her parents, she found other ways to make herself powerful.
She manipulated metals found deep in the earth to forge weapons of unfathomable strength. She learned incantations that allowed her to snag colors and patterns from the weave of the world itself to conjure illusions. Zemya was so excited to show her parents her progress, but the Lady of the Sky and Father Guzan were horrified. They banished her to the blistering sands by the sea, hoping the lashing winds and isolation would foster obedience. But Zemya denounced her parents and redoubled her efforts, ripping more and more magic from the earth, which she siphoned into a hot spring and encouraged her children to drink, giving them power without discretion.
Then she sent them to attack Ashkar and his descendants.
“It’s worse than ever before,” Ghoa insists. “The Zemyans are like roaches. You stomp them and they do not flatten. You freeze them and they sleep until the ice melts. Again and again they rise from the dust with darker and deadlier tricks. They slew half of the 121st battalion just last week, outside of Chalida.”
“How?” I demand. “What happened?”
She purposely draws out the tension until I’m practically salivating. “They used their sorcery to disguise themselves as members of our own army. Then they circled around to the back of our ranks and slaughtered a good many of our infantry before we realized what they were up to.”
“How did you defeat them? How did you differentiate friend from foe?”
“How do you think?” Ghoa flashes her teeth and the temperature in the room plummets. “The Zemyans are weak due to their corrupt magic, so myself and the other Ice Heralds flooded the air with bitter cold. The imposters fell to the ground, their twig-thin bodies shivering and their bone-white skin nearly blue. Dispatching of them was simple after that.”
