Page 54 of Dance of Stars and Ashes

Meera studied Zarya’s face as if searching for a lie. When she didn’t find one, she nodded.

“Can I ask you something else?” Zarya asked.

“What?”

“May I touch it? Your tattoo?”

Surprisingly, Meera didn’t appear taken aback at the invasive suggestion.

“Go ahead,” she whispered and lifted her chin.

Zarya reached out and gently touched the side of Meera’s throat, her fingers tracing the line of stars. Her magic stirred in her chest, simmering like it was luxuriating in the heat of a sunbeam. It stretched towards Zarya in the most disconcerting way, like it was trying to claim something it had lost.

“At night, when I lie awake, it grows warm,” Meera said. “It tingles. Sometimes, I wonder if it’s… alive.”

Their eyes met, the moment churning with bottomless depths of… what? An understanding and a connection that neither of them understood but invariably bound them. Zarya pulled her hand away as she rubbed the tips of her fingers together.

“Thank you,” Zarya said. “I’m sorry we interrupted your day.”

“If you discover anything, will you come back and tell me?” Meera asked. There was a thread of hope in her voice that made Zarya’s heart twist. She hoped she hadn’t put ideas in this woman’s head that could never come to pass.

“Of course,” Zarya said.

After they said their goodbyes, Zarya and Yasen left the house and headed towards the palace.

“What do you make of all that?” Yasen asked.

Zarya looked over at him. “I don’t know. I wonder who else can feel what she does?” She told him about the man in the canteen, as well. “Those two guards who abandoned their posts on the watchtower that night. Were they vanshaj?”

“One of them was,” Yasen said, and that further confirmed her theories.

But theories of what, exactly?

“That might explain why they left.” Zarya scanned the people passing by as though she might be able to tell simply by looking at them. “Have you ever heard of anything like this before?”

“No,” Yasen said. “But any vanshaj who feel a connection to magic would keep that secret.”

“What would happen if someone found out?” she asked, already knowing she would hate the answer.

Yasen’s expression was grim. “I imagine they’d be killed on the spot.”

Zarya said nothing to that as they wound their way through the streets and exited the vanshaj quarter. She chewed on her lip, spiraling into her thoughts. A shop caught her eye when they were a few blocks from the palace.

She stopped, staring at the open storefront that sold a variety of fighting leathers. She’d abandoned all her training gear when she left the cottage all those months ago and had never owned anything as nice as this.

“We’re going shopping?” Yasen asked, catching the direction of her stare.

She approached the store, running her fingers over the soft leather of a black, corseted vest. “They’re beautiful.”

“Can I help you?” asked the man behind the counter.

“I’d like this,” she said, pointing to the garment she’d just touched. “And those.” She pointed to a pair of leather pants.

“Of course. Would you like to try them on?”

Zarya followed the shopkeeper into a dressing room while Yasen grumbled about having to wait.

“Then leave,” she said through the curtain.