an apology or an explanation or any words at all. She turned away, unable to look at him. She still felt a tingling on her lips and the taste of his sweet breath. Abruptly, to shatter the choking silence, she said, “Pia and Raan were captured.”
“Then we must free them,” he said. “I know where the prisoner tents are. Fennik was a prisoner for about a day . . . which probably accounts for Pia and Raan’s capture. Fennik is not skilled at deceit.” As if her change in subject had energized him, Korbyn strode past her toward the back of the tent and lifted up the base of the tarp—it had been slit with a knife, presumably his. “If anyone stops us, I’m under orders to take you to the doctor,” he said. “You feel ill and need immediate attention. If you can arrange to vomit on their shoes, so much the better. I found an abandoned medical tent, complete with uniforms. You’ll be safe there. And later we can use the uniforms to seek out the false vessels.”
He held out his hand for her to take. His eyes were beseeching.
She thought of how his hand had felt on her back. She had fit into his arms so perfectly. “I can’t.” She shouldn’t touch him again. She shouldn’t be near him. He belonged to Bayla, and Liyana . . . She had a different fate. “My absence will be noticed. Rescue the others first, and then come back for me.”
“You can’t ask me to leave you here.” All trace of light cheer had been swept from his face and voice. She felt his eyes on her, and she knew he was seeing her, not the future Bayla. She wondered when that had begun, when he had started to see her for herself. She should have tried harder to stop it.
“The emperor won’t hurt me,” Liyana said. “He needs me.” She summarized her conversations with the emperor, as well as her encounter with the magician Mulaf. “I’ll be safe, at least until I say no. And I have a chance to learn more about our deities. I am certain the magician knows where they are.”
“Liyana . . .” He paused and then appeared to change what he had planned to say. She risked looking at him and was caught in his eyes. She felt as if her ribs squeezed her lungs. It hurt to breathe. “These people are dangerous.” He looked at her as if she was all that mattered in the world.
“Just go, Korbyn. It would be better if you went.”
“I will return for you,” Korbyn promised.
He disappeared through the slit in the tarp, and she sank to her knees and put her face in her hands. She shouldn’t have danced with him. She shouldn’t have told him stories. Or laughed with him. She should never have noticed the way a smile would sneak over his face when he was delighted or the way a laugh would consume his whole body. She sucked in air and tried to calm herself. Once Bayla was here, he would forget her vessel, and everything would be as it should be.
Forcing herself to sit still, Liyana focused on her breathing. She tried to erase all other thoughts from her mind. She had a purpose: rescue Bayla. Once she achieved that purpose, every problem she had would be solved.
A soldier entered the tent. She was a copper-skinned woman with gold markings on the shoulders of her uniform and with intricate tattoos on her neck. “The emperor requests your presence.” She offered no other explanation.
Without hesitation, Liyana rose to her feet and followed.
Liyana studied the emperor. He had asked her to wait while he completed a task. Bent over a stack of parchments, he scribbled notes on a scroll. His lips were pursed in concentration, and his forehead was furrowed as if he wore the worries of his people—which he did.
“I have a little brother,” Liyana said into the silence.
The emperor raised his head.
“His name is Jidali, and he believes that I placed the moon in the sky just for him so that he won’t have to fear the dark. He has a laugh that shakes his entire body so that even his toes laugh with him. He thinks that bugs are the world’s best toy, and he can transform anything into a toy sword. What about you? There must be someone, a reason you are doing all of this. Who do you want to save?”
Looking down, the emperor resumed reviewing his papers. “Every man, woman, and child in the empire are my reasons.”
She knelt in front of his desk so that her face was even with his papers. He had to look at her. “Who do you think of when you have doubts? You must have doubts. The lake may not exist. And even if it does and you are able to reach it . . . you might not be able to end the drought. After all, our deities have access to the lake’s magic, and none of them has ended the drought. How can you have faith in your ability to succeed where gods have failed?”
“I think of my parents,” the emperor said, his face blank. “I think of my mother and my father, who gave their lives to the empire. I can do no less than they did.”
“How did they die?” she asked.
He was silent, and she wished she hadn’t asked. She thought of her mother and father, of their faces as they had said they’d remain with her. . . . His hands clenched and unclenched, betraying his expressionless face. Noticing them, he stretched them flat on the parchments. When he spoke, his voice was as hard and lifeless as stone. “Once, in the kingdom of Gracin, there was a famine. The fields would not yield crops, and the skies would not yield rain. Children starved, and the elderly died. It was as if the land had forsaken them. And so the king, who was beloved by his people, took up a plow as if he were an ox and pulled it across field after field. He poured his blood in the furrows and commanded his people to spread his flesh across the land. From his body and blood grew plants so high they pierced the clouds. Red rain fell, then turned to clear water—and the people of Gracin were saved.”
She watched him flex his hands. He had clenched them into fists again.
“Gracin is in the northeast corner of our empire. One year into the Great Drought, my mother and father paid it a visit.” His voice was empty. She felt an ache inside her, hearing it, and she wanted to cover her ears, as if that could change whatever horror made his voice flatten. “There was a ritual that harks back to this myth of the King of the Fields. Wine for blood. Cakes for flesh. My father agreed to participate. But several traditionalists believed this was not enough. They killed my mother to reach my father.”
She rose to her feet. She wanted to reach toward him, to fill that horrible emptiness, to find a way to heal . . . But she didn’t. And he wasn’t finished.
“He could have defended himself. He chose not to. He was outnumbered, death was inevitable, and the myth required a willing sacrifice. And so, he lowered his sword.” He swept his hand out as if it were a sword, and a jar tipped over. Ink spilled onto the parchment. It stained his fingers, but he did not stop it. “But the myth failed, and the people of Gracin continued to starve with the rest of us.”
“If it failed, why do you . . .” She trailed off. She shouldn’t ask. His parents, murdered by his people. Liyana could not imagine how it must have felt to hear that news.
His mouth quirked, but the smile did not light up his eyes. He straightened the ink jar and wiped his fingers on a silken handkerchief. His movements were precise but jerky. “Why do I chase a myth when a myth killed my father to no purpose? Fair question.” He rose from his desk and turned his back. Hands clasped behind him, he faced the sculptures that lined his shelves. Liyana watched him, the tightness of his hands and the stiffness of his shoulders betraying him. This was a man who felt deeply and had learned to hide it. “Because he lowered his sword. When all hope was lost, he tried the impossible. And now that all hope is lost for my people, I can do no less than he.”
She was silent. Raan would have argued with him. Pia might have agreed. But Liyana couldn’t think of any words that felt right. Standing beside him, she faced the sculptures too. She noticed that all of them were desert totems: falcon, tortoise, raven. . . . He must have chosen them to inspire him as he invaded her home. She spotted her clan’s totem on the lowest shelf, and she knelt to see it better. Every detail was perfect, from the tuft under the goat’s chin to the curve of its hooves.
He knelt beside her and lifted the goat statue from its shelf. He placed it in her hands. She held it up, and it flickered in the rays of sunlight that crept into the tent.
“Some in the empire believe that your deities do not exist,” the emperor said. “Yet you were willing to die for your goddess. You and I, we are not so different.”
She looked at him, surprised to hear him echo her earlier thought. He was close beside her. She could see the rise and fall of his breath in his chest. Only a few inches closer, and she thought she’d hear his heartbeat. “We are
