“I know. Perhaps that is why I was not chosen,” Chandi said dryly, but then her face softened. “Do you remember the day you saved me?”
How can I forget?He remembered the damp smell of the sea as he had stood at the docks of Rysanti and watched the new islanders be brought in. One lagged. Dragged behind, really. Chandi had hissed and screamed and punched the overseers. He, the lone Sesharian officer, had been called in to calm her. “You spat at my feet as soon as you saw me.”
“You were dressed in Jantari grey, what else did you expect?” she said, smiling. “I thought you were a rustblood. But then when that Jantari began to drown me, you pulled him off. You took his blows.” She touched his right arm where the zeemir had cut into his bicep. “You spilled your own blood in the sea for me, Samson, and that’s when I knew. That’s when I recognized the fire in your eyes. You suffered that day and suffer today because you will do anything to see us all free. Your life is not your own, but ours.”
She cupped the nape of his neck and brought their foreheads together in a traditional Sesharian salute.
“Do not question who you are or why you are here. You are our Blue Star. You are the one they call Butcher. Make them fear, and then bring us home.”
Samson swallowed. He did not deserve such loyalty. But he loved her all the more for it.
Slowly, he reached for his urumi curled by his bedside. Chandi helped him stand, and he looped it around his waist. Its weight anchored him. Chandi was right. He could not wallow. Self-pity was a luxury for those who knew nothing of endurance. And he had endured worse horrors than most kings, seen the black face of death far more than most soldiers, been given a curse and turned it into power.
“There’s someone I need to see,” he said.
“Elena.”
He nodded. “Do you think she will forgive me?”
Chandi sighed. “The queen is wary, but she is not a fool. She saved you for a reason. Maybe that is worth something.”
“Well, I haven’t made things easier for her,” he muttered bitterly.What a fool I have been.They were on the same side, fighting for the same hope. No matter their differences, in this he and Elena were the same.
They would do anything to see their homes freed.
“Where is she?”
He found her among the floating shards. Great cathedrals were carved into the floating formations, each symbolizing an aspect of Nymia’s heart. Beneath the golden arch of Nymia’s Righteousness, Elena spoke with Syla. An ancient tree with face-shaped leaves shook at his approach, and the rulers turned.
He had prepared his remarks, ran through them multiple times, but standing before her now, underneath her scrutiny, Samson flailed for the words.
“Hello,” he said weakly.
Elena looked to Syla, who departed without a word or so much as a look at him.
“How are you?” he ventured once they were alone.
“Alive.” She cocked her head. “And, oh look, so are you. I wonder why.”
“Elena.” He started forward, then stopped. He held her urumi in his hands, the same one she had left behind before her journey to Moksh. She noticed but made no move to retrieve it. They stood there for a moment, entombed in their own silences, her blade in his hands and his mark on her throat. It had been easier to talk to Chandi; why not her, then?
Samson looked away. He still remembered the bitter acidity of her betrayal. It had struck him deeper than most, and it maddened him, for he knew not why.
“Th-this is yours,” he said finally.
Elena stared at the urumi, and he could not tell if she regarded the blade as a hissing snake or a peace offering. She took it carefully, examining the silver tongue, the horned hilt.
“You know, I never understood why you preferred the urumi above allelse,” she said as she ran a finger delicately along its spine. “But when I was with the Yumi, I learned that sometimes it’s not the blade, it’s the symbol. The fight it represents. You could just as easily summon flames with a slingsword as with an urumi, but you chose the urumi because it hisses like your Great Serpent. Strikes twice as fast.” Her hand curled around the hilt. “Do you think those miners found comfort, then, that their death came from an urumi rather than a zeemir?”
He absorbed her jab, found himself deserving of it. “Better to not have died at all,” he whispered.
Her eyes searched his face. Did she see his remorse? His shame?
“Yes,” she said softly after a moment. She hesitated, and something quick and sharp flickered in her eyes before her mouth twisted and she looked away. “But someone once told me that there is no room for regret, or those who feel it. So, tell me, Butcher. Do you still want vengeance, or will I have to leave you behind?”
He blinked in surprise to hear his own words repeated back to him.Skies above, did I really say that?It felt like a lifetime ago. But then, they had lost Ravani that day, not Sesharians, and he chided himself for caring about the distinction.
“I’m a fool,” he blurted. “I—I did not mean—”
