“You have more allies than you realize. The relic’s destruction is exposed enough that certain factions will find it more useful to protect what you represent than to eliminate it. Don’t be careless.”
“I’m never careless.”
The simple but not quite architecture of a smile teases at the corners of her lips. After all this time, I had thought I’d never see the expression on her face change. With Vaedrin gone, even she was loosening up.
“No,” she agrees. “You aren’t.” She adjusts the strap of her pack and turns toward the coastal road without looking back. “Don’t die, human.”
I watch her until the road curves, and she disappears from sight.
The sun finishes setting behind the western water while I’m standing there. Below the cliffs, Gullhaven’s lanterns are coming up one by one, gold light strung across the harbor like something deliberate. From up here I can see the inn clearly, the warm square of the windows, the low sound of voices carrying up from Brinna’s gambling night starting early.
Droza settles behind me without sound, the way he always does. He’s close enough that I feel the warmth he puts off despite the temperature of the stone he’s made of. He doesn’t say anything.
I have spent the last several months moving toward something or away from something, and in longer than I can clearly remember, I am standing still.
It occurs to me, quietly and without ceremony, that this is what it feels like to be somewhere I intend to stay.
16
DROZA
The celebration starts at sundown and takes over the entire harbor. Corvin has strung lanterns across every dock line and roof edge from the inn to the water’s edge, and the light they throw turns the square amber and gold against the dark. Brinna has had casks of ale rolled out since midafternoon. Someone has dragged a pair of fiddle players up onto the steps of the market and they have been sawing away at reels for the better part of two hours. The noise of it fills the harbor bowl and bounces off the cliff face until the whole town sounds like one living, breathing thing.
I stand in the square with my wings folded and watch all of it.
Selah is near the far dock with Rennic and two of the fishermen whose names I have never bothered to learn. She laughs, and it sounds open and free. She no longer looks like someone being hunted.
She has not looked that way in weeks, and I notice it every time as though it is new information, because it is. I spent every hour from the moment I woke inside that statue aware of the fear running through the tether like a thread pulled too tight.That thread is still there. It is warm now instead of sharp, and it carries so much more than fear.
Rennic says something, and she shoves his shoulder. He stumbles sideways with an expression of profound theatrical injury. Across the square, Brinna catches my eye and grins in the specific way she grins when she thinks she is being subtle, which she never is.
I look away from her.
Selah finds me twenty minutes later, appearing at my elbow the way she has learned to do, quiet enough not to startle me, close enough that the tether settles the moment she arrives. She does not say anything at first. She tilts her head toward the water.
“Come with me,” she says as she takes my hand.
The once beaten down watchtower was rebuilt in the weeks since the attack with pale new timber and fresh mortar still pale against the older stone. The stairs are solid under my weight, and we come out onto the platform into the open wind with the celebration noise falling away below us.
Selah leans against the rail and looks out at the sea. I stand behind her. The tether carries something quiet and certain, and after long enough I understand that she brought me up here deliberately, and I let myself understand why.
“Same place,” I say.
“Same place.” She turns to look at me. “Different everything else.”
She is right. The last time we stood in this tower, there were dark elves in the harbor and her hands had not quite stopped shaking. We weren’t sure if we would survive the night.
That uncertainty and fear is gone. There is only the wind, and the lantern glow below, and her looking at me the way she has been looking at like she is waiting for me.
“I don’t feel caught between things anymore,” I tell her. “The way I did. After I woke.” I stop, because I am not good at this kind of language, but she is watching me and waiting, and I owe her honesty. “You gave me something to be present for instead of behind.”
She steps up to me and puts her hand on my chest, over the carved markings that run beneath her palm. Her fingers trace the edges of the nearest one, slow and deliberate, the way she does when she is paying attention to something rather than simply touching it. I cover her hand with mine and feel her pulse against my fingers, steady and warm.
“Good,” she says simply.
I pull her in by the hand still pressed to my chest, and she comes without resistance, stepping into me and tipping her face up. She has been looking at me like this for weeks, and I am still learning what to do with it. I bring my mouth down to hers and kiss her with all the deliberate patience I have finally learned to allow myself.
She opens for me immediately. Her mouth is warm and soft, and she exhales slowly through her nose as though something she has been holding releases. The tether between us flares.
