“What is bothering you?” Shade asks, shifting to block the sun, knowing it haloes his body brightly enough Never still winces away like a human, though its eyes could handle almost any level of scorch. “Not a human, not even a sunderer.”
“You don’t know, maybe I love them now as much as you do.” Never says it looking past Shade’s shoulder.
Shade slowly smiles, crooked and uneven like the branches of a dogwood tree. “Do you love? What does love mean to a pattern of drifting leaves?”
Never rolls its eyes.
“So what is bothering you, Never?” Shade asks again.
With a sigh, Never shrinks its body a little, until it’s easy for Shade to open his arms and embrace it. Never buries its face in Shade’s chest, melding into robe and skin and bone, before pulling back. “Somewhere, out there, I’m wandering.”
Shade starts walking along a thermal stream, pulling gently at Never. “The you of this time.”
“I have no idea any of this is happening. What will happen. I’m not even thinking of you.”
Shade manages not to falter.
“By the time I return to you, it’s too late,” Never says quietly. The words are snatched by the wind. “She unravels you, spreads you thin, and turns you into the foundational design of Aharté’s Holy Empire. You spend four hundred years as a pulse, an anchor and energy source. I don’t even know if you know your own name.”
“Hmm.” Shade tries to imagine it, and it sounds relaxing. “It sounds relaxing.”
Never looks askance at him. “You’re going to do it, I know you, even though it’s been centuries, generations, miles, and entire circumnavigations of the world.”
“Why do you insist on teaching her to do it, then? Sundering?”
“I want…” Never reaches out to clutch at nothing. “I want…” It shakes its head. “I have known sunderers and they have been—they can… understand.”
“Understand you,” Shade murmurs. He wants to be the one to understand Never.
Never snarls and buries its head back into Shade. Shade looks out at the smoke and demolition of his city, at the gleaming silver towers of his own fortress in the distance, at the floating islands and a pod of cloud whales dipping up and down through thin sheet-clouds.
Never slips its mouth closer to Shade’s neck. “Have you ever tried to die?”
“Yes.”
“Then leave here!” Never snaps. “Leave and stop feeling so much. Roots can be poisoned, dug out, burned, but if you’re the wind, you can never be pinned down, caged, unless you want to be.”
Shade feels something tender twisting in his heart. Tender and longing, appreciative. He cups Never’s face. “It’s not that simple anymore. But I know what to do.”
“About what?”
“About you, and making you stay.” Shade kisses it with a smile, and licks at its teeth, and catches it into a bubble of light.
Is this the reason
Iriset wakes up to the steady, soothing noise of work and urgent conversation around her.
Ugh, her face hurts, and her whole body feels like it was squeezed by a huge hand and it’s all a mushy bruise. Her face is hot. Especially on the left side. Iriset groans, lifting a hand.
“No, not yet, don’t touch,” comes the soft voice of Eliri the Adept Hand. “The wound is packed and stable, but can’t poke at it. How does Iriset feel?”
“Punched. Squeezed.” Iriset opens her right eye. The lid peels away slowly. Sunlight, blue sky, drifting columns of smoke, and a force-web built on an octagonal, some kind of barrier. It’s like a four-point building schematic. She tilts her head to where a cluster of people move with intention, focused on something Iriset can’t see with this one exhausted eye. “Where?”
“Rivermouth fortress,” Eliri says, leaning into Iriset’s vision. “Temporary infirmary pagoda.”
Iriset gasps and sits, tries to swing her legs off the narrow bed.
“Iriset,” Eliri chides, but grips her elbow to help her sit.
