“Can you ask the bones?” Amurra asked Marso.
He hugged the chicken bones tighter. “Are you sure you want to know?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation. Stran agreed with her.
“We have children,” Stran explained. “If we can’t take care of them, then we need to know to make other arrangements.”
“Again,” Kreya said tiredly, “you could still die randomly.”
“Marso, please?” Amurra asked.
He sighed, and his shoulders sagged, but to Zera’s ears, it didn’t sound like a defeated or dejected sigh. More like relief, which was odd. She eyed Amurra and decided the woman was smarter than they’d given her credit for. She somehow knew she wasn’t asking too much of Marso.
He tossed the bones on the carpet, and his eyes shifted, taking on that looking-elsewhere expression he wore when he was seeing more than what anyone else could see. He rocked side to side, and his lips moved without sound.
All of them watched and waited.
Mist rose above the bones, and images flashed within, too fast for Zera to see and too jumbled for her to make any sense of. But Marso was enrapt. The silence felt like the moment before a vase fell and shattered on the ground. It was the breath before the scream.
At last, he looked at them. Smiled. “Eighteen years.”
Stran let out a gusty sigh. “It’s enough.”
“We’ll see our kids grow up,” Amurra said. “We’ll be there for them, through their childhoods. It is enough. Thank you, Marso. Kreya... There are no words.”
Kreya straightened. She had more color back in her cheeks, now that she’d rested for a few moments. “First we need to survive Eklor’s—”
Jentt interrupted. “Read us. How many years do we have?”
“Does it matter?” Kreya asked him. “Would you live any differently if you knew it was eighteen years or eight months?”
A muscle twitched in his cheek. “I don’t know.”
“I do,” Kreya said. “I plan to use every day to its fullest, no matter how many we have left, because I lived too manydays waiting for things to be right again. I spent years with my heart in the past and the future. From here on, I just want the present.”
“I need to know,” Jentt said.
They stared at each other for a long moment.
“Fine,” Kreya said, clipped. “If you need to know.”
Marso gathered the bones, whispered to them, and then tossed them again. He swayed, his lips moving as the mist rose, and Zera thought about stopping him. She knew that haunted expression in Kreya’s eyes, and so she wasn’t surprised when Marso opened his eyes and answered:
“Three years.”
Kreya had known it would be short. Frankly, she’d feared it would be less.
She felt Jentt rock backward as the words hit him, as if he’d been struck. But she merely let the knowledge sink into her. She’d used up bits of her life for years, resurrecting him piecemeal. It didn’t surprise her that she hadn’t had much left to spare. Actually, it felt right. Of course she should pay a price for defying the laws of the universe.
“Only three,” Jentt whispered.
“What do we do?” Zera asked.
Kreya thought the answer was obvious. “We live. We live and we love, and we do our best not to stop doing either before our time is up.”
Wrapping his arms around her, Jentt pulled her close. “I’m sorry.”
“Just try not to get hit with an arrow this time.” Kreya rested her cheek against his shoulder and breathed in the wonderful scent of him. He wasn’t angry anymore, which was a smallmiracle. “And don’t mourn our deaths before they happen. We have time.”
