But my eyes burned with a familiar, devastating heat, and when he reached for my hand, still buried in the sand, I recoiled.
I swallowed. “I’m not saved yet.”
Wrenching my hands out of the sand, I raised them. My fingers were unrecognizable, more like claws than hands.
Edan’s face showed no surprise.
Which surprised me.
“Did you know this would happen?”
Shadows eclipsed his face. Rather than answer, he took my hands, claws and all, holding tight when I tried to pull back. He kissed my fingertips, the hard curves of my nails.
“Bandur is gone,” he said, as if that would reassure me. “You aren’t bound to the isles any longer.”
I turned my head before he could kiss me again. My lips were cold, no matter how he tried to warm them with his own. Even when he touched the small of my back, tilting my chin up to face him, I couldn’t bear the scarlet glint of my eyes reflected in his.
“You should leave. Before I become—”
“No. Maia.” He raised his wrist, showing me the red thread still affixed there. “We are bound, you and I, in this life and the next. Wherever you wish to go, I will follow.”
I wondered—wheredidI wish to go? I wanted to see Baba and Keton, but the thought of telling them the truth—of what was happening to me—that was more than I could bear. It would hurt them to know what’d happened to me. I’d rather spare them the pain.
Emperor Khanujin, no matter how much I despised him, needed me. It would take a demon to stand against Gyiu’rak, and so long as there was still Maia in me, I needed to help. I needed to save A’landi. I only hoped it wasn’t too late.
I pushed Edan gently to the side and angled him to face me. I had my answer, but I knew he wouldn’t like it.
“In our next life, do you think you’ll still be you?” I asked him instead. “Will you be a cattle herder’s son and me the daughter of a tailor once more? Or will you be someone else entirely—and I’ll have to find you again?” I cocked my head. “Maybe in the next life you won’t even like to read.”
“Oh, I doubt that,” replied Edan wryly. “Somethings can’t change. Though the young Gen used to think books were better off used as tinder to roast carrots. My family was poor, and there was no civil exam to better yourself like in A’landi.”
“You’d have done well on the exam,” I said. “Maybe you’d be a high official. Or a minister, like Lorsa.”
Edan wrinkled his nose. “At least a governor.”
That made me laugh, and I tried to imagine what he’d been like as a boy. “So the monks taught you to read, after your father left you with them.”
“Yes, but I wasn’t at the monastery long. The soldiers came for me, for every able boy within a hundred miles.” Edan grew quiet. “Sometimes I think the only reason I survived those wars was that I was too young to even carry a sword. I was to play the drums, but my arms were too weak, so I learned the flute instead.”
“You hardly ever play it anymore,” I said with a note of wistfulness.
“That’s because I’ve been too busy teaching you to sing,” Edan joked, but he reached into his pocket to oblige me. He took out his flute, but a piece of paper slipped out from inside the instrument’s wooden body. “What’s this?”
I jumped, recognizing the letter I’d written. I’d forgotten about it.
“Nothing,” I said quickly, reaching over him for it, but Edan had already begun to read.
“Maia,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “Maia…”
I hung back. “I wrote it before we left for Lapzur. Our last morning at the temple, Master Tsring told me that the only way to be free was to destroy the dresses….He told me…”
My voice trailed, my eyes drifting to the farewell I had written Edan. I had composed the letter before Master Tsring had confided in me my fate, and yet…somehow, somehow I must have already known. Perhaps that was why I had forgotten to take the letter back.
“He told me I would not survive.”
A muscle ticked in Edan’s jaw. I’d stung him. “And you didn’t think to tell me?”
“I…” I didn’t know what to say.
