“I’m sure he did.” Shayim folded her hands in her lap. “I will tell you thetruth, but first, I will speak to you of your power.” The woman leaned closer and pointed a finger at Nina’s chest. “You have seen the light, yes? The golden threads?”
Nina said nothing, but her stunned silence was enough for Shayim to continue. “That thread is a person’s life. Theirwill. It is the choices they have made and will continue to make. My attay allows me to See those choices like the quipu we use to send messages. Knots on threads. Even now, I can See what has led you here and that you will face many challenges ahead.” Her gaze drifted to Nina’s right, a hazy sheen settling over Shayim’s vibrant brown eyes. “But you,” she said, her attention snapping back to Nina’s face. “You can hold those threads in your hands and bend them toyourwill.”
Nina looked away, remembering all the instances of seeing threads of gold, faint yet present, mockingly close but impossible to grasp. The only times she had succeeded were when Sacha was in danger. That day beneath the raging sea. The boys in the market.
And in Kasik, in the forest when he had walked ahead of her, a light that had beckoned her closer.
All along, she had held power in her hands. She had touched it,usedit, and then just as easily disregarded it, preferring to believe that she was a child prone to delusion. She was mostly glad her illness didn’t affect her like Sacha, content to ignore and repress all hints of confusion and strangeness to make it easier for their mamay.
It was Nina who had been lying toherself.
The saliva in her mouth had gone thick and sticky. She swallowed. “I’ve seen it, but it never stays long.”
Shayim nodded slowly. “The more you use it, the more control you will develop, but there are also obstacles to consider, the first being internal. You are not an endless well of power. Using too much attay at once will drive you to madness. I spent most of my childhood in and out of consciousness as my body adapted to Seeing so many threads of life. The second thing to consider is external.” She gestured to Kasik. “He wears the achilla around his neck, as do all of the emperor’s men. It prevents the Ikara from touching their wills with harmful intent.”
A stone forged by the gods to offer protection from those who wish to harm us.The woman in the market hadn’t been lying. The stones did protect from harm, just not in the way Nina had thought.
“You can heal him, if you truly wish to, but if there’s even the smallest seed of doubt, the stone will protect him. Of course,” Shayim mused, “you could simply remove it. Or do nothing at all, since he is already at death’s door.”
Nina stared at Kasik, at the stutter of his breaths and the beads of sweat rolling down his temple. He had been so full of life not long ago, and now there she was with his life in her hands. How strange it was to have the power to choose, and what a privilege. The choices she had made that led her there were fraught with fear and obligation.Responsibility.She had lectured Kasik about how different they were, and all along, it might have been that they were exactly the same.
Nina had a duty to her sister, to her family. Kasik’s honor belonged to his emperor, and it was clear they were both willing to risk their lives for those they served. Now Nina was being given the chance to determine whether Kasik’s existence servedherpurpose. She could let nature take its course and be free of blame. Just another charge underthe emperor’s rule who had lost his life in service.
But would she be blameless if she sat back and did nothing, knowing she had the power to dosomething? Even if it didn’t work. Even if her efforts were in vain and she was only saving him to settle a debt.
Whatever the reason, the thought of losing Kasik filled her with dread. She told herself it could have been anyone and she’d feel the same, but Nina was beginning to understand that she had become too adept at lying to herself. “What do I do?” she finally asked.
“Close your eyes,” Shayim instructed. Nina let go of her distrust and denial, let herself float in the sea of renewal, and obeyed. Shayim continued. “Now focus on Kasik and your intentions for him. Imagine you can see his source of will and it will show itself to you.”
Nina took a deep breath. In her mind, she saw herself applying the medicinal paste to Kasik’s back, worrying over the heat of his skin and the streaks of infection that had begun to spread. She remembered the way his arms had held her beneath the tree, how she had felt protected in his embrace after the terror of facing the achiyanga. She imagined him whole and healthy once again.
“Ah, there it is,” Shayim murmured, and when Nina opened her eyes, the room was aglow with a golden wash of light from the threads burning at the center of Kasik’s chest. “To heal him, you will have to take control of his will. Convince it to bend to yours.”
It was what she had been trying to do with her words since the moment he came to collect her. A battle of wills that she had been consistently losing. But this was different, and Nina could see exactly what needed to be done and how to do it. Shayim had been right that the threads were will, but they were also the essence of life. The core of who a person was—their wants and needs, dreams and hopes, fears and secrets, all inextricably twisted together.
It was the light of a god, a kernel of their power in each and everyone of them, and Nina could grab on to it with fists clenched. She could squeeze and take and grind it into dust.
With that thought, Kasik’s light dimmed, but across from her, Shayim’s light stayed bright and malleable. “You don’t wear a stone,” Nina said, staring intently at her chest, mesmerized by the strength and possibility of that vibrant light.
“I do not require protection from the Ikara,” Shayim snapped, and Nina’s head jerked back to her face. “Now, focus.”
Nina breathed deeply and homed in on her intentions. They pierced through to Kasik’s will like a knife sharpened by desperation, igniting the dim threads until they were burning so brightly that Nina thought the whole world might see. Power coursed through her. Into her mind and heart and fingers until she was reaching out and trailing a hand through that burning light, fully expecting it to scald her skin.
His will was hers to command. And Nina finally fully understood that she had never been powerless a day in her life.
“Carefully command his body to heal,” Shayim urged. “A gentle encouragement toward life.”
But there was nothing gentle about the way Nina’s power moved. It was greedy.Hungry.The threads of Kasik’s will were spread out before her mind’s eye like a tapestry, and Nina was the weaver, her attay like a needle that slipped beneath the threads of flesh and bone and sinew, spreading until he was consumed with her will, with her desires come alive. She didn’t encourage so much as devour.
Right before her eyes, Kasik’s wounds began to heal. The dark of infection bled away to light. Torn sinew mended and fused from inside out. Skin was cooled and tension eased.
She wassavinghim. Attay coursed through her, the strength of life in her hands headier than any feeling. Never could she remember feeling so complete.
“That’s enough, Nina,” Shayim said, but Nina was lost to her efforts, drowned beneath waves of power and purpose and awe as the broken pieces of Kasik’s body mended. She felt like a god then, giving life and forcing fate to bow at her feet. The rush of it, the pure thrill of possibility—she could have reveled in it for eternity.
“Nina, that’s enough!” a voice insisted, but it was distant and unimportant. All that mattered was this attay at her fingertips. It felt like a well within her, vast and endless, and yet, she could see the end clearly. Realized only too late that she didn’t know how to stop, and as she poured all her will into healing Kasik, her own body began to shut down, as if it were being sucked dry.
She would have given her life for Kasik right then, just as she had given her life for Sacha, but strong hands grabbed her face and somehow also grabbed her attay and shoved it back into her body, where it wound into a tight spool, contently sated, and went to sleep.
