A wishbone. Smiling, she closed it in her hand. From the first night, it had been their parting ritual at the temple of Ellai: to make a wish. She was ready for ritual again, but not the parting part. They’d had enough of that to last them lifetimes.
She went. She walked, holding the wishbone to her heart. Or she started out walking but was soon enough gliding, skimming along, not touching the floor. One could get lazy, she thought, but she wasn’t especially worried about it. The passages twisted. Her torch flickered green, trailing long and threatening to go out when she went too fast. It was almost used up, but she wouldn’t need it, as soon as she was with Akiva.
And she came to the entrance to the bath cavern. There was a laugh in her throat as she rounded the bend, ready to murmur, laughing, Finally, finally, I thought I might die,against his mouth, against his throat, hungry and laughing and eager and—
She stopped short.
Akiva wasn’t here.
Of course, murmured a tiny, cold voice in her heart.
She smothered it. Yet.Akiva wasn’t here yet. Which was odd, because he’d said he was coming directly. Well, okay. No reason for concern. Maybe he’d gotten lost. No. Karou had more respect for Akiva’s resourcefulness than to believe that. Maybe he’d gone to do something, thinking he could still make it back before she did. She hadgotten here fast; Ziri hadn’t lingered.
The water was pale green and steaming, the crystal growths glittered, and the curtains of darkmoss swayed where their longest tendrils trailed in the current. Karou considered slipping out of her clothes and into the water, but only briefly, and not seriously. A feeling of foreboding was working its knuckles into her shoulders. It was a more advanced feeling of foreboding than she was prepared for, and she realized when it hit that she’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop ever since they flew back through the Veskal portal. What other shoe? She didn’t know. That cold little of coursevoice didn’t know, either. It just knew— shejust knew, on some level—that it had all been too easy.
It was a sensation in the spine, like she’d gotten just before the Dominion ambush. There was something she was missing.
Yes. Akiva.That’s what she was missing.
He should be here.
She tried to be reasonable. She’d only been here five seconds; he would come around the corner any second.
But he didn’t.
Of course, of course. Did you really think you could have happiness?
Karou’s pulse hammered faster and her breathing shallowed, but it was panic barely contained, this time, not desire.
Akiva didn’t come.
Karou’s torch sputtered and died, and she had no seraph fire to light her passage back. She had to feel her way in darkness, clutching her unbroken wishbone to her heart.
LEGENDS
“Look.”
Ziri saw the stormhunter before Liraz did. He didn’t point, only breathed the word, not wanting to send it veering in the opposite direction. The creatures could sense the smallest movements from impossible distances. In fact, it was a marvel that it was flying this near them.
It was flying towardthem.
Liraz did look, and Ziri was caught as much by the play of starlight over the fine planes and curves of her face as by the sight of a stormhunter on a direct path for them. More, in fact, and easily. He watched her watch it, and drew wonder from her wonder.
Until she said, eyes narrowing, “Something’s wrong.”
He turned, and saw that in the moment that he’d been looking at Liraz, the creature had veered aside, and was no longer on a course for them. It was still distant, and for a beat he didn’t see what it was that had alarmed Liraz. It was gliding, tilting on an updraft. It looked glorious.
Ziri squinted. “Is that—?”
“Yes.”
Liraz’s voice was tense, and for good reason. This was an anomaly akin to… well, akin to a Kirin and a Misbegotten going for a starlight fly together. Strange, Ziri thought, was going to have to try harder in the future. Still, it wasstrange.
It was the unmistakable shimmer of seraph wings.
His first thought was that an angel was hunting it, somehow pursuing it. But nothing in the manner of its flight suggested distress. It was just flying, and an angel was flying alongside it.
“Have you ever heard of that happening?” he asked.
Liraz gave a small laugh, barely a breath. “No. I know Joram wanted one for his trophy room. It was a sport, for a while. Every lickspittle lord and lady in the Empire hoped to bring him one, with no luck, and some died trying, and finally he had to call in hunters, trappers. The best. And do you know how many they got?”
It was the most she’d spoken since he found her in the entrance cavern, so disarmingly tongue-tied, and again Ziri found himself pulled to watch her, half forgetting the stormhunter and the mystery of a seraph flying at its side. “How many?” he asked.
“None.”
“I’m glad.”
“Me, too.”
He realized, with a pang of deep sorrow, that though she was directly upwind of him, and the spice scent of her was as bright to his senses as a color, he could no longer detect the other—the secret perfume, so fragile, that hid within it. He had breathed it while carrying her in his arms, but his Kirin senses were duller than the Wolf’s had been, and it was lost to him now. Well, he would always remember that it was there. That was something. Being the Wolf had given him that, at least.
They held their position and watched in silence as the stormhunter went on tilting and wheeling, the angel keeping pace with it, sometimes pulling ahead, sometimes falling behind.
“Come on,” said Liraz, when it began to put distance between them, heading north. “Let’s follow them.”
They did, and saw that their path was erratic, carrying them near to cliff faces where the wind funneled and charged, and then up to circle around a minor peak, threading through a terrain of clouds. Eventually they spun and headed, once more, toward Liraz and Ziri.
They watched the stormhunter come, and it was very near before Ziri realized that the figure flying along with it was not its only company. There were figures riding it. He hadn’t noticed them before because, not being seraphim, they didn’t give off light.
“Is that—?” he began, dumbfounded.
“I think it is,” breathed Liraz.
It was. And, catching sight of Liraz and Ziri, they gave sharp cries in their strange human language. Ziri could, of course, not understand what they said, but the note of victory was plain, as was the pure, delirious joy.
And who could blame them for it? Mik and Zuzana had tamed a stormhunter. They were going to be legends.
A CHOICE
Akiva didn’t know what was happening to him. He was in the bath cavern, heart pounding, waiting for Karou.
And then he wasn’t.
Time stuttered.
“There is the past, and there is the future,” he had said to his brothers and sisters not long ago. “The present is never more than the single second dividing one from the other.”