The last time we had been here, when I had watched her Wield her magic and their attention with masterful power, I thought I’d never seen anything more beautiful. But seeing her like this, honest and raw, was its own kind of beauty. She let me see these parts of her. I never thought she would let them see it, too. Maybe she never would again.
“I’m proud of you,” I said. We had walked a long way in silence. Tisaanah gave me a startled look.
“Why?”
“I know it was hard for you to show them that.”
She let out a rough scoff. “Being sad is nothing to be proud of. Stopping it from happening would have been.”
“You couldn’t have saved them. You do know that, right?”
She didn’t answer.
Instead she slipped her arm through mine, the weight of her head pressing against my shoulder as we walked the city streets in yawning silence.
After a few minutes, Tisaanah murmured, “I like this. It makes it easy to pretend.”
“Pretend?”
“Pretend we are a normal couple. That is probably what we look like, right now.” Her arm tightened around mine, as if for emphasis, and I chuckled.
“Maybe so.” Yes, we probably did look utterly average. I did have to admit there was something pleasant about the sheer mundanity of it. Like it was something I could take for granted.
“It’s nice,” I said, quietly.
“If we left, we could be this way every day.”
My eyebrow twitched. It was the first time I had heard Tisaanah talk about running away, even in jest.
“We could.”
“Tell me where we would go.”
I paused.
It seemed dangerous to even think of it. And yet so easy, to slip into this game with her.
“We could live on a beach somewhere. Somewhere where there aren’t winters.”
I could hear the wrinkle over Tisaanah’s nose. “A beach? It smells.”
“Not all of them. Just Ara’s beaches. There are islands where the water is completely clear, no seaweed. They’re beautiful.”
“You cannot grow a garden on a beach. And what a great loss that would be.”
“Fair. Alternate proposal, then. We’ll find a forest, somewhere off in… in Besrith, or maybe on one of those southern islands, or something. We could clear out a nice big patch of land. Big enough for a decent garden. Far enough away from society that we can go unbothered for as long as we want.”
“A lake.”
“Hm?”
“It will be near a lake. I want to learn how to be a better swimmer.”
“I’ll allow it. I appreciate seeing you in wet clothes.”
She laughed, though it faded quickly.
“And the most important part,” she added, “is that no one will ever find us.”
“Not a soul.”
What a dream.
A long silence. We were almost at the Towers, those white columns looming over us, when Tisaanah said, quietly, “Would you go? Now?”
I questioned if I’d heard her right. “What?”
“If we could go, right now, would you?”
Yes.
The word rang out, emphatically, in my head. I wasn’t sure why it wasn’t the one to leave my lips when I answered.
“For a long time, I wanted nothing more than I wanted to leave Ara and never look back. But the Orders… they wouldn’t let me go. Those restrictions, after Sarlazai.”
Even when I had begged Tisaanah to leave Ara with me, I technically hadn’t been allowed to go. I had just been so desperate I was certain I’d find some way, any way, to get the hell out of there if it meant keeping her out of the Orders’ grasp.
“Not anymore,” Tisaanah said.
A bittersweet pang twinged in my chest. Yes. Tisaanah had negotiated my freedom when she signed away her own, all of those punishments erased with the slice of a blade over her skin. And yet, I felt more trapped than ever.
“There is nothing stopping us. Even my pact to the Orders has been fulfilled.” Tisaanah wasn’t looking at me, her voice oddly flat.
I stopped short. Turned to her.
“What is this? Is this a fantasy, or is it real?”
“Do you want it to be real?”
Yes. Again, the word came to me fast. But… did I? Did I really?
“I don’t think you do. You care more deeply than anyone I know. You don’t want to abandon them.”
A muscle feathered in her jaw. “Perhaps leaving is the best thing I can do for them.”
“I know what it looks like when people trust their leader. And they trust you, Tisaanah.”
Tisaanah’s careful composure slowly cracked, sadness spreading across her face like fissures through stone. “I don’t know if they should. I don’t know if I trust myself, anymore. It is nice to dream. And I’m just so… tired.”
She stepped closer, arms sliding around my neck, close enough I could see every fragment of green and silver in her eyes.
I was tired, too. And I was better at running away than I was at anything else.
I kissed her, gentle and slow. Our faces hovered there, noses brushing, as I murmured, “Ask me one more time.”
One more time, and I won’t be able to stop myself from agreeing.
Seconds yawned out before us as her eyes searched mine.
And then—
“General Farlione!”
“MAX!”
Tisaanah and I jerked apart. I turned to see none other than Moth rushing towards us, his eyes wide. Behind him, several other soldiers — my soldiers — followed. Phelyp Aleor was among them.
“Where have you been?” Moth blurted out. “You just disappeared.”
“I…”
The other soldiers caught up to Moth and as they stood before me, there was something about the looks on their faces that made whatever answer I was about to give Moth die in my throat. The expression they wore was familiar — the same expression I’d see each night before I led them into battle. The faces of terrified young men who were trying very, very hard to
