He waved the letter high so I couldn’t snatch it from him. “Were you even going to tell me you were leaving?”
His voice was firm. Too firm. A flare of anger ignited in me. “It’s my choice, just as it was yours to take the oath. You knew the consequences. I know mine.”
“It wouldn’t be the same for you as it was for Bandur, Maia. Your heart is good. We would find a way for you to—”
“Fight it?” I shook my head. “There is no way. You asked where I wished to go next. I want to go to the Winter Palace.”
As I expected, my answer did not please Edan. He pursed his lips tight. “Maia, you need time to rest. Just because you’re no longer bound to Lapzur doesn’t mean you aren’t still in danger. The last thing you should do is rush back to the palace to fight the shansen’s demon.”
“Would you have me hide?” I cried. “Would you have me let our soldiers die, let this war drag on for another five years?”
“Yes,” he replied. “I would prefer that the woman I love not hasten her transformation. Especially not for the sake of fighting Khanujin’s battles.”
“I’m not fighting for Khanujin, I’m fighting for my country. A’landi is helpless against Gyiu’rak without me. Just now you promised to go with me wherever I wished. And now?”
“I meant what I said,” insisted Edan. His fists clenched at his sides.
“But?”
“You might do more harm than good if you go.”
There. He’d said it.
The heat in me reached a boil. My cheeks burned, and my eyes blazed with delirious fury. “You suggest that I let this war run its course? You, who’s spent centuries flitting from one warto the next.”
“Yes, and so I know the ugliness of war. I know that power can make things worse instead of better.”
“And I know that if I do not help A’landi, then the Maia inside me will be lost forever.”
“Or maybe that’s precisely how she will be lost,” Edan whispered. “Think this through,xitara.”
Even hearing him call mexitara,the name that had once been so dear to me, couldn’t quell the anger stirring in me.
“I would rather die as this Maia than live forever as a demon and watch my country fall,” I snapped. My words took on a cruel edge—I couldn’t help it. “You wouldn’t understand. Nelronat is gone, your family is gone, your home is gone. What have you to fight for?”
“You,” he said hoarsely. “You are my family and my home.”
Deep inside, I wanted to stop. I didn’t want to hurt Edan. But the demon in me had other plans.
“I’m not your family,” I said. “I’m not anyone’s family.”
“Maia—” He tried to wrap his arms around me, but I threw him off, and he slammed back hard into the sand.
He got up. Spread his arms out in entreaty. “Please.”
“Don’t touch me,” I warned him. My control was slipping, and I spun away. I couldn’t—
“Maia…”
As I heard him say that name again, my eyes grew so hot the ocean blurred into the sky, and a rush of fire surged through my veins. I turned on him, but my mind was not my own. My body was not my own. Everything happened too fast. One moment, I felt the wind lashing at my face, the next, I saw my claws extended, razor-sharp nails pointed at Edan’s heart.
Blood trickled down his cheek.
I stepped back in shock.I didn’t mean to,I wanted to say, but Edan already had his dagger raised at me.
Seeing it made me balk. I could almost feel pangs of the meteorite’s searing heat radiating off its blade, and I waited, my breath tight, for Edan to utter his name “Jinn” and activate its power.
But he didn’t. He didn’t have to. The message was clear. The sorrow in his eyes was clear.
