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Yes, Rin knew; in the abstract she knew this truth, that to the cosmos they were fundamentally irrelevant, that they came from dust and returned to dust and ash.
And she should have taken comfort in that, but in that moment she didn’t want to be temporary and immaterial; she wanted to be forever preserved in the material world in a moment with Altan, their foreheads pressed together, eyes meeting, arms touching and interlacing, trying to meld into the pure physicality of the other.
She wanted to be alive and mortal and eternally temporary with him, and that was why she cried.
“I don’t want him to be gone,” she whispered.
“Our dead don’t leave us,” said the Sorqan Sira. “They’ll haunt you as long as you let them. That boy is a disease on your mind. Forget him.”
“I can’t.” She pressed her face into her hands. “He was brilliant. He was different. You’d have never met anyone like him.”
“You would be stunned.” The Sorqan Sira looked very sad. “You have no idea how many men are like Altan Trengsin.”
“Rin! Oh, gods.” Kitay was at her side the instant she emerged from the yurt. She knew, could tell from the expression on his face, that he’d been waiting outside, teeth clenched in anxiety, for hours.
“Hold her up,” the Sorqan Sira told him.
He slipped an arm around her waist to take the weight off her ankle. “You’re all right?”
She nodded. Together they limped forward.
“Are you sure?” he pressed.
“I’m better,” she murmured. “I think I’m better than I’ve been in a long time.”
She stood for a minute, leaning against his shoulder, simply basking in the cold air. She had never known that the air itself could taste or feel so sweet. The sensation of the wind against her face was crisp and delicious, more refreshing than cool rainwater.
“Rin,” Kitay said.
She opened her eyes. “What?”
He was staring pointedly at her chest.
Rin fumbled at her front, wondering if her clothes had somehow burned away in the heat. She wouldn’t have noticed if they had. The sensation of having a physical body still felt so entirely new to her that she might as well have been walking around naked.
“What is it?” she asked, dazed.
The Sorqan Sira said nothing.
“Look down,” Kitay said. His voice sounded oddly strangled.
She glanced down.
“Oh,” she said faintly.
A black handprint was scorched into her skin like a brand just below her sternum.
Kitay whirled on the Sorqan Sira. “What did you—”
“It wasn’t her,” Rin said.
This mark was Altan’s work and legacy.
That bastard.
Kitay was watching her carefully. “Are you all right with this?”
“No,” she said.
She put her hand over her chest, placed her fingers inside the outlines of Altan’s.
His hand was so much bigger than hers.
She let her hand drop. “But it doesn’t matter.”
“Rin . . .”
“He’s dead,” she said, voice trembling. “He’s dead, he’s gone, do you understand? He’s gone, and he’s never going to touch me again.”
“I know,” said Kitay. “He won’t.”
“Call the flame,” the Sorqan Sira said abruptly. She had been standing quietly, observing their exchange, but now her voice carried an odd urgency. “Do it now.”
“Hold on,” Kitay said. “She’s weak, she’s exhausted—”
“She must do it now,” the Sorqan Sira insisted. She looked strangely frightened, and that terrified Rin. “I have to know.”
“Be reasonable—” Kitay began, but Rin shook her head.
“No. She’s right. Stand back.”
He let go of her arm and stepped several paces backward.
She closed her eyes, exhaled, and let her mind sink into the state of ecstasy. The place where rage met power. And for the first time in months she let herself hope that she might feel the flame again, a hope that had become as unattainable as flying.
It was infinitely easier now to generate the anger. She could plunder her own memories with abandon. There were no more parts of her mind that she didn’t dare prod, that still bled like open wounds.
She traversed a familiar path through the void until she saw the Phoenix as if through a mist; heard it like an echo, felt it like the remembrance of a touch.
She felt for its rage, and she pulled.
The fire didn’t come.
Something pulsed.
Flashes of light seared behind her eyelids.
The Seal remained, burned into her mind, still present. The ghost of Altan’s laughter echoed in her ears.
Rin held the flame in the palm of her hand for only an instant, just enough to tantalize her and leave her gasping for more, and then it disappeared.
There was no pain this time, no immediate threat that she might be sucked into a vision and lose her mind to the fantasy, but still Rin sank to her knees and screamed.
Chapter 23
“There’s another way,” said the Sorqan Sira.
“Shut up,” Rin said.
She’d come so close. She’d almost had the fire back, she’d tasted it, only to have it wrenched out of her grasp. She wanted to lash out at something, she just didn’t know who or what, and the sheer pressure made her feel like she might explode. “You said you’d fixed it.”
“The Seal is neutralized,” said the Sorqan Sira. “It cannot corrupt you any longer. But the venom ran deep, and it still blocks your access to the world of spirit—”
“Fuck all you know.”
“Rin, don’t,” Kitay warned.
She ignored him. She knew this wasn’t the Sorqan Sira’s fault, but still she wanted to hurt, to cut. “Your people don’t know shit. No wonder the Trifecta killed you off, no wonder you lost to three fucking teenagers—”
A shrieking noise slammed into her mind. She fell to her knees, but the noise kept reverberating, growing louder and louder until it solidified into words that vibrated in her bones.
You dare reproach me? The Sorqan Sira loomed over Rin like a giant, standing tall as a mountain while everything else in the clearing shrank. I am the Mother of the Ketreyids. I rule the north of the Baghra, where the scorpions are fat with poison and the great-mawed sandworms lie in the red sands, ready to swallow camels whole. I have tamed a land created to wither humans away until they are polished bone. Do not think to defy me.
Rin couldn’t speak for the pain. The shriek intensified for several torturous seconds before finally ebbing away. She rolled onto her back and sucked in air in great, heaving gulps.
Kitay helped her sit up. “This is why we are polite to our allies.”
“I will await your apology,” said the Sorqan Sira.
“I’m sorry,” Rin muttered. “I just—I thought I had it back.”
She’d numbed herself to her loss during the campaign. She hadn’t realized how desperately she still wanted the fire back until she touched it again, just for a moment, and everything had come rushing back; the thrill, the blaze, the sheer roaring power.
