“I hope you’re right.”
“I know I am.” His gaze fell to my growing pile of cloth birds. “Would you believe me if I told you I knew her? The Kiatan princess who folded a thousand cranes?”
“You’re not as old as that!”
He made a face at me. “Thestoryisn’t as old as that. I met Shiori only once, and briefly, but she wasn’t so different from you. Even when a terrible curse befell her, she stayed strong. Her paper birds brought her hope.”
He pressed my hand against his heart. “You are not alone, Maia. Not now, not ever.”
His pulse beat steadily against my palm. I nodded, and I gathered the first batch of my cloth birds onto my tunic. The red threads sewn into their wings glimmered in the moonlight.
I leaned on Edan as I climbed onto the windowsill, crouching before the vast view of the forests and ocean below the Winter Palace. Still holding his arm, I turned to face him.
“For luck,” he said, his breath tickling my nose before he kissed me.
I leapt into the sky, a rush of air propelling me higher and higher. There, among the clouds, I suspended myself as long as I could—as if I were treading water.
“I am not alone,” I repeated. “And not all is lost.”
Hugging the birds close, I forced a small smile. Hardly a consolation, without the laughter of the sun, my body could not feel the cold of the night icing over my skin, and without the tears of the moon, my heart did not quail at anything. Especially not at the inevitable future, at the cost for saving A’landi—that I would die.
Sensing I was about to fall, I raised my amulet and pressed my lips to the glass crack, releasing the tiniest drop of the blood of stars, just enough to bathe my birds in its light.
Then, against the white sickle moon, I flung up my arms, sending the birds off to find anyone who might fight for the future of A’landi.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Amid the ruins of the shrine in the Winter Palace, Emperor Khanujin was sent to the heavens. No priests or monks were present to preside over the ceremony—only Lady Sarnai’s soldiers and the few ministers who had survived the shansen’s attack. They built a modest pyre of rust-colored bricks and knelt before the emperor once they’d laid him upon it.
Edan would not attend the funeral. When I asked why, he replied, “These rites are some of A’landi’s oldest traditions, meant to honor Khanujin and to wish him safe passage to his place among the gods. Enchanters and religion have never been in harmony with one another. It would be an insult to him and to your people if I attended.”
I bowed with Keton and Baba to pay my respects, then lingered a few moments, watching the wind lift the emperor’s ashes away from the pyre. My fingers were sore from sewing all night.
After making hundreds of birds with Edan, I’d attended to the task of fashioning Emperor Khanujin’s burial robes. I’d used his banner, along with whatever scraps I could find in the palace—old curtains and tablecloths, even the rice sacks used to cover Baba and Keton’s faces—to sew my birds, and without my scissors, I couldn’t spin coarse linen blankets into silk.
Only what was left over went into Khanujin’s robes. So, the emperor was buried plain as a villager. No embroidery, no jewels studded into the humble cloth, no inlaid gold or brocade. Not so much as a patch of silk.
No one said a word about it.
“Where are you going?” Keton asked me. When I turned, he flinched. “Your eyes, Maia. They’ve been red since yesterday. You—”
“They’re just bloodshot,” I lied quickly, waving away his concern with a gloved hand. A veil of unease fell over me. My brother used to tell me I was a terrible liar, and I had been. But things had changed.Ihad changed.
I hurried ahead to avoid his questions. But as my brother followed, I couldn’t help but listen to the quiet landings of his footfalls, the graceful skid of his cane from one step to the next. The last time I’d seen him, he had only just begun to try and walk again.
My chest tightened. Not long ago, all I had wished for was to see Baba and Keton so I could embrace them. But now that we were together, all I did was keep my distance. I didn’t know what to say to them that wouldn’t be a lie.
And how that pained me.
I slowed my steps and walked beside my brother. My hands sunk into my pockets, the piecemeal gloves I’d made barely concealing my claws.
“I haven’t been sleeping well,” I said at last, a meager attempt at an explanation.
“Me neither.” Keton tilted his head, listening to the flames still crackling from the funeral pyre. “I heard Lady Sarnai held a war council yesterday. Do you think the rumors of a march to Jappor are true?”
That was the reason I wanted to see her. “I don’t know.”
“There are men willing to fight,” said Keton. “I will fight.”
