‘So, you chose a circle?’I scoffed.
‘It’s the world.I was strong for my age, and my mother would say I could hold up the world with just this finger.’He held up his index finger.
‘Wait, the world is round?’
He laughed loudly, almost sounding like the old Atlas.So he was still in there.
‘You’re lucky that Torgrin reads enough for the both of you, Caris.’
He had the nerve to laugh harder when I punched him in the shoulder.I wasn’t stupid.I just hadn’t been around books growing up.I had been too busy apprenticing as a blacksmith and training to fight my mother’s killer one day.Then it came to me.
Torgrin had been the first to call me Swordmaker.Using Atlas’s knife, I carved a vertical line from top to bottom and intersected it with a horizontal line near the top.I handed Atlas his knife back and waited for him to say something.
‘Perfect!It suits you well, Swordmaker.’He winked at me.
We rode for half a day.Atlas was considerate of my little group.Tomas, Finn and I were still recovering from our wounds, and even though Mae didn’t complain, it was clear from the deepening grooves in her face that she was exhausted.Even as we settled in our new camp, she did the rounds tending to our wounds.She inspected my shoulder and back, clicking her tongue, which became a familiar sound.She grumbled about all the medicines she had left behind that had taken years to create and collect.
During the night, I kept waking at any little sound, hoping it was Torgrin and Cillian coming into camp, but it was only someone needing to relieve themselves or the nightwatch changing.When dawn came, I felt worse.I wasn’t healing like I usually did.I tried to eat, but I felt nauseous and feverish despite the cold.
We rode a little longer than the previous day but stopped early to set up camp before dark.I took Torgrin’s journal out of my pack and found a place alone by the fire.
†
I made Caris laugh today and felt everything inside me come alive again.I spent the morning in the stables humiliating myself by telling her stories about me and Atlas doing ridiculous things as young men.It was worth it to see her happy and laughing.
†
We leave for Capita tomorrow.I don’t know what will happen when we arrive, but if everything goes as planned and we return, I will give Caris her mother’s dagger and this journal.
I was an empty shell before I met Atlas.We are as close as brothers, but we felt a piece was missing until we met a girl by the Red River.I think that is when Caris became one of us.
Three souls bound across eternity.Fated to find each other in every life.
She is our person.We are her people.
She will always have us.
†
I flipped through the journal again, coming to a halt to reread.
She is our person.We are her people.
It triggered the memory of my mother’s dream, in which my father had spoken to her.Find Caris’s people.They are waiting for her.
I always thought we were searching for the family who had abandoned me.
I had believed my connection with Torgrin and Atlas was because they were the only living people who could understand what I had lost that night.But how could I deny that it was more than thatnow?Even though we’d been apart, Torgrin and Atlas had been dreaming of me for years.Three souls bound across eternity.Fated to find each other in every life.
Torgrin’s words soothed me as I read them over and over.Before leaving Murus, I had slipped the drawings I loved inside.Looking at the snowcapped mountains, I wondered if I’d ever see them in my lifetime.
‘He has so many of those books stashed around Pedion.’Atlas sat next to me.
‘For someone who doesn’t express his emotions, he sure writes about them a lot,’ I murmured, running my hands over his writing.
‘Are we still pretending we didn’t meet ten winters ago?’Atlas raised his brow in question.
‘No.’
