She wanted Van alive.
She’d been obsessively picking over the scene for the better part of the day. Van bleeding red. Their eyes clear as they spoke before the end. When had the change happened? How much of their actions had been within their control?
Were their final words a confession that they’d die willingly for the Obé?
There was guilt, too—not just about how it ended but how little time Nova had spent understanding Van well enough to know these answers.
The moon was high, and the sounds of the foreign landscape piqued her fight instinct. Carefully—but nottoocarefully—she extricated herself from beneath Yemi’s head and replaced her lap with their lumpy sack of dwindling supplies. The wind was cold, but they couldn’t risk being seen with a fire, not this close to the Rakes and their new mountain of dead. Their only alternative was to keep moving.
She made her way to the water’s edge, shin deep in frigid muck, and tipped up corners of moldy, half-drowned boats, searching for anything intact and silently floating questions of how to kill gods and of sailing into the night on her own onto the water. What she wouldn’t give for certainty.
• YEMI •
Yemi woke shivering in the grass, staring at the endless night sky. Nova was gone.
She sat up in a panic, convinced she’d missed her window and that Nova had finally left her, when she appeared coming up the hill.
Yemi sighed in relief. “What time is it?”
“Late. Sorry there’s no fire. I didn’t want a beacon letting anyone know we were here,” Nova said. In the moonlight, Yemi could see she was wet from about the knee down and fairly pissed off about it.
“I’m not complaining,” Yemi assured her as she stood and collected her spear. “Did you sleep at all?” she asked.
“Sleep is for the royal and the dead,” she replied, which was a guardian’s way of saying,I’m exhausted, but this is the job.“Found a boat that won’t sink, probably, but I need help getting it free of the docks.”
Yemi nodded and followed her silently down the hill, trying to shake the feeling that something was wrong, to convince herself that Nova was only tired and nothing disastrous had happened while she’d slept.
The tide had come in, and the cluster of boats near the temple had loosened itself somewhat. They set about untangling one of the few intact dinghies with oars from its web of rope and rotted things and began hoisting it over to clearer water.
“What if she doesn’t show? Is there a backup plan?” Nova asked.
“I don’t know why she wouldn’t. But… I did tell Selah I meant to kill Ursla when I found her,” Yemi admitted.
Nova either dropped the boat or threw it down, and it thudded on the soft ground. Yemi jumped. The expression on Nova’s face was a degree of fed up she hadn’t seen before.
“At first, I just said it because I thought she’d tell me more if she thought I was eliminating a common enemy. But now I’m thinking… what if she refuses or sets the stakes too high? It might be the only way.”
Nova shook her head and began muttering to herself as she picked her end of the boat back up.
Yemi bristled. “Something on your mind?” She was used to being questioned, not ridiculed. Not by Nova.
She dropped the boat again, definitely on purpose this time. “You sound fucking insane, Yemi. Okay? You’re killinggodsnow?”
Yemi gasped. Insane?
“Glad there’s no honesty lost between us,” she replied bitterly. “Andyou’restill here.”
“Well, you’ve had more sleep than I have.Make better decisions for both of us,” Nova hissed.
Yemi bit back tears, rubbing hard at the side of her finger. “Do you not want to be here?” The question left her lips before she could finish the thought. “I—”
“I don’t!” Nova said desperately. “I don’t want to be here. ButItook an oath, so I’m fucked until Her Majesty unfucks us. Please pick up the fucking boat, Yemi.”
They stared at one another for a long time. Yemi didn’t know what she was waiting for from Nova, but some part of her felt like it should be an apology. On Nova’s face, she could tell that all that was expected of her was to pick up her end of the fucking boat.
She waited for Nova to blink and convinced herself that her features softened once she did. They commenced hauling the boat again, grunting with the effort.
“Explain it to me,” Nova said quietly as they inched toward open water. “Ursla dies how, exactly?”
