A hand yanked me away. I stumbled, letting out a small grunt as my back hit a familiar form and a set of arms wrapped around me.
“Too cold for swimming,” a voice murmured, so close to the crest of my ear that goosebumps of an entirely different kind raised on my skin. It was punctuated by an agonizingly brief brush of lips.
Reshaye wordlessly slunk to the back of my mind.
“I was not going to fall.”
“I’d rather not risk it. If I recall correctly, you’re not a terrific swimmer.”
“Pssh.” I ran my finger along my captor’s ribs, and just like I knew he would, he let out a poorly-stifled laugh and released me.
I turned to see Max giving me a terse half smile that looked as if it were trying to be annoyed and failing. Left side first, of course.
It was the kind of smile I returned without thinking.
“You abuse the power I’ve entrusted to you by exploiting my weaknesses like that,” he said.
I shrugged. “I cannot be expected to resist all temptations.”
We’d spent a week in constant, agonizing proximity, but had barely touched each other. We had no privacy, after all, for anything more, though I’d never admit aloud the embarrassing amount of time my mind now spent thinking of all the things we’d do once we did.
My ear still throbbed with warmth. I gave him a sly smirk, ready for another retort, but his gaze had turned serious and concerned.
“Nightmares?” he said, quietly.
“They feel very real.”
“They do.”
Of course, Max, of all people, would know.
He extended his hand, and I arched my eyebrows.
“What?”
He scoffed. “Please, Tisaanah.”
There was a part of me that didn’t want to show him — didn’t want to give him yet another thing to worry about, especially not when I knew how much he was giving up to be here with me. I laid my hand in his, palm up, and together we looked down at it.
The veins of my wrist and forearm, once barely visible beneath the pale patches of my albino skin, had darkened nearly to black.
Max’s brow knitted.
“There is already so much about Reshaye that we do not understand,” I murmured. “Perhaps this will just be another strange unknown.”
“I don’t like unknowns.”
I almost laughed. Too bad. Because we’re surrounded by them.
His gaze flicked up to meet mine, and the words died in my throat. His eyes were stark and bright beneath the moonlight. They were the ultimate reminder of what the thing that lurked inside me was capable of. I could still vividly picture those translucent eyelids sliding back, revealing a dark, determined stare, and his body unraveling into flames.
Beautiful. Terrifying.
I looked down at my hand one more time. Then I shrugged and let it drop.
“This should be the least of our concerns, anyway,” I said, as I turned my gaze towards the sea. Towards Ara.
I did not know what was waiting for us there. After we left the Mikov estate, for a few blissful days the high of victory drowned out all else. But then the nightmares grew more vivid, and the shores of Ara grew closer, and I felt the Orders’ chains tightening.
I had made a deal, after all. The Orders gave me the power I needed to topple the Threllian Lords and save those I left behind. But in exchange, I sold myself back into slavery. Except now, I would wield death, instead of light touches and pretty words.
A knot formed in my stomach at the thought of it. Max’s memories of the destruction of Sarlazai still haunted the backs of my eyelids. I would not repeat that kind of devastation.
“I think I have the mental capacity to be equally concerned about all of it, personally,” Max muttered, and I placed my hand over his. His fingers rearranged around mine instinctively, warm and familiar.
“What do you think we will find? When we return?”
He was silent for a long moment. “I think that it doesn’t make sense,” he said, at last. “I think that Nura has been too quiet. I think that Sesri’s reign is a strange battle for the Orders to choose. And I think that they’re desperate, and that’s the thing that scares me most, because I don’t know why. So I don’t know what we’re going to come home to, but I know I don’t like it.”
When we get back, Nura had said to me, I hope you’re ready to fight like hell.
I had no choice but to be ready. I was surrounded by reminders of all that depended on me. Eight years ago, my mother had kissed me on the forehead and sent me, her only daughter, into a hideous and uncertain future. It was all so I could have a chance — just one chance at survival, at living. And this was my only opportunity to make my life worth all of the ones I had seen snuffed out. There would be no more little girls torn away from their mothers in the night. No more mothers worked to death in the mines.
There was no sacrifice too great for that.
My gaze lifted to Max, to his far off stare. Guilt and affection tangled in my chest, each feeding off the other.
Max had already made so many sacrifices, more than anyone should ever have to suffer.
“I would understand,” I said, quietly.
His eyes flicked to me. “Hm?”
“I would understand if you cannot do this. If you can’t be in another war. I would understand.”
A shadow crossed his face, as if something painful had torn through him, then softened.
“If you can do it, I can do it.” His hand lifted to brush my cheek, then he said, more softly, “I don’t care what we’re walking into. You’re not going to do it alone.”
Gods. My gaze slipped out to the ocean, because suddenly, the sight of him — the sight of the way he looked at me — was
