In a burst of force that shocked even me, I flung the men aside, sending them reeling a dozen paces back.
I scooped up my carpet. It was in shreds, a threadbare mess of knots that I only vaguely remembered weaving. I clutched it under my arm and ran.
This way, Sentur’na. Through these trees.
The ocean, in the east, sparkled, as if beckoning me toward it. But east was the way to Lapzur. I ignored the directions and went the opposite way. I couldn’t tell south from east or west.
The shansen’s men followed. I slid down a slope, skating across the leaves, and hid behind a rocky outcrop.
The men passed above me.
I waited until the rush of their clothing and weapons faded into the forest. Then I let out a sigh and sagged against a tree. Finally, safe.
A leaf dropped onto my shoulder. As I brushed it off, another fell onto my palm. I stared at it, its heartlike shape oddly familiar.
“A poplar leaf,” I breathed.
A rush of excitement bubbled in me, and I whirled to face the endless grove of poplar trees around me, when—
Someone grabbed me. A man in a tawny cloak, with a near-empty quiver of arrows on his back and a slender walnut staff in his left hand. The man who had intercepted the shansen’s soldiers.
He held me against him, so close I could feel his breath on my hair. I tightened my grip on my scissor bows, at my side.
“They’re gone,” whispered the man. “All clear.”
I spun out of his grasp and brandished my scissors. His eyes widened, and he backed away, raising his hands to show he wasn’t going to harm me.
His heels hit the trunk of a poplar tree, and the creamy little buds fell like snow over his black hair. Aside from his clothes and the walking staff he’d dropped, he looked no different from the other soldiers. He could be one of Khanujin’s men, sent to bring me back to the Winter Palace. And yet…
“Maia? Maia, it’s me.”
I didn’t put the scissors down. My vision was blurred from the men choking me earlier. My hands still throbbed with power.
“It’s me,” the man said again, softly this time. The intensity of his gaze tickled me, but not in an unpleasant way. He reached for my hands, his touch achingly familiar.
Edan?
I’d wished for so long that we’d be reunited again, and now here he was. But was this EdanmyEdan? Or was he an illusion sent by Bandur to torment me?
I could not tell.
My hands trembled. I exhaled, the steam of my breath curling into the cold air, and I looked up at him. His expression was tense, lips pursed and brow knotted as my eyes roved over his face.
“Do you not know me?” he whispered. Hurt flashed in his clear blue eyes. “Maia.”
Maia.
Even my own name sounded strange to me, stranger than it ever had before.
I grasped my amulet, now cool against my chest and glowing with the silvery tears of the moon. Holding it calmed me.
Steadying my fingers, I reached out and touched his cheek. Slowly, I traced my fingers over the shape of his face, brushing my thumb over his thick eyebrows and down to the corner of his eye.
Its color, blue as the sea by home, convinced me. No ghost could take that from him.
Faster now, I swept my touch down to his lips, pursed with anticipation, then over to his nose and the small dent on its bridge, where it had been broken.
“You never told me what happened to your nose.”
