I face her. “No, what?”
“To what you’re thinking,” she says. “Absolutely not. It’s suicide.”
I arch an eyebrow. “I didn’t know you’d miss me so much. I’m touched, Gam.”
She inhales and stares in the middle distance like she’s suffering, but amusement shines in her eyes. They are sky blue and wide set.
“I can take or leave you,” she says, “but someone else doesn’t feel quite the same.”
I grin despite myself.
“Then help me survive—where is their burial ground?” I ask. “I doubt they keep their bodies where they live. Frozen or not, that’s fairly grisly.”
She sighs. “Staraheli is in a glass coffin inside a mausoleum at the cave entrance. Both the mausoleum and the cave mouth are guarded day and night.”
Well, that’s not ideal.
“My darling, there is a reason Staraheli still has his head,” Gambria says, turning serious. “Khitan, and Loptra in particular, would love nothing more than to display it. It can’t be done.”
It’s a good thing can’t and won’t are different things.
“Not with that attitude,” I say.
She rolls her eyes, but the ghost of a smile lights her face. She has a quiet beauty. Fallador’s whole family did. Past tense. The royal family of Gaya was slaughtered and thrown into the sea after Joon declared they had broken the colonial treaty. As if that paper wasn’t signed at the point of a sword.
I stare out the window, thinking about how to get to Staraheli’s corpse. Mausoleums are typically sealed, but if the body is in a glass coffin and guarded, then perhaps not. Sora and Euyn can take care of something as simple as a few guards as I smash the glass and cut off his head.
We can do this. One step closer to Quilimar. Another closer to freeing Gaya.
I watch the snow fall on the sleek buildings. There’s less gilding here than in Vashney or Quu, but it’s still foreign. Thoughts of Gaya, of the fields and the black woods return. It never snows on the island. Our houses are stucco and black timbers, not this.
“This place couldn’t be less familiar, could it?” I ask.
She shrugs. “It’s home.”
I whip around. “Gaya is home.”
“Oh, Mikail, it is not.” She looks truly sorry for me. “We have changed.”
“What do you mean?”
“You and me and Fallador—we are now from but notofGaya. We are both the lands that adopted us and Gayan, but that is not the same as Gaya being our home.”
I stare at her in disbelief. As much as I have pretended to be Yusanian, I have always known that I am not. I am not a part of Yusan now, nor will I ever be.
“That’s ridiculous,” I snap. “I am Gayan. As are you. Your cousin is the rightful ruler of the realm!”
“The former realm.” She shakes her head, her curls bouncing as she stands and walks closer to me.
My eyebrows rise as she gently rests a hand on my shoulder. It’s very strange, since she is not a gentle person.
“We have not been there since we were children,” she says softly. “Even you haven’t been back. I am certain it is much changed in nearly twenty years. We love the Gaya of our past, as we should. But that Gaya is gone. It disappeared when our boats set sail.”
I try to let her words slide off me, but the barbs sink in. “I hope you’re wrong.”
“But that’s so rarely the case.” She smiles a full-lipped grin.
I’m shaken, so I change the subject. She can’t be right. She just can’t be.
