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“I’d rather they controlled this biscuit.” A sharp edge had cut into his gums. Eavus flashed a smile at the kid, but he shrank against Revni, and then recoiled. His lip quivered, and Eavus found any remaining glee soured. The kid’s face was an absolute mess, he was clearly in pain Eavus could barely comprehend, and now he’d been stolen from his mother’s arms—by two strangers. “We’ll get you taken care of,” Eavus tried, but from the kid’s expression, maybe that’s not what he said at all.

He gestured to Revni for another hunk of biscuit, then leaned over the boat to dunk it in the river. “Thinking the gods have any say just seems…” he trailed off bitterly. How did you say naive in Gerstunt? There were too many languages for him, too many barriers.

“My gods will bear their wrath down upon their enemies.”

Bear their wrath. Her gods couldn’t even get the kid to eat more biscuit. Eavus held it out, then finally gave up and pressed the mush into the child’s tiny fist. The kid could feed himself. Eavus couldn’t bear to look at that swollen face any longer. He turned his eyes to the shore, searching for anyone that might be following, or might see them. “If your gods are listening, then why did they allow you to get caught?”

Revni swayed the boat, shifting the child in her lap, but stilled at his words. They hadn’t spoken of it—not once. What he’d done to her. What he’d allowed done.

Willows dipped their long lines into the dark edges, moving past them at a crawl. Or were they the ones that were moving? Eavus couldn’t tell anymore. Everything felt backwards.

“If your gods care, why did they let you get thrown in a cage, like an animal? Why would your gods allow—” It wasn’t her gods, he knew that. It was him. It was Aleteria. It was the whole damn world.

The rolling shoreline made him dizzy, but turning to face front was no better. The child blinked waterlogged eyes, and somehow that wide look, bloodshot from crying and a bruise blackening on his face…

“Why did they let this kid—you—lose your family, your people?” He didn’t know what he was asking, not really. Her and her gods. If they were so special, why did horror keep happening? “Why would your gods let you be sold like a piece of meat, to have everything stripped from you, so you have nothing left, nothing that’s yours, not even a memory, not even your last shred of humanity that belongs to you?” Eavus’ voice was raw from holding back. Revni had gone quiet.

“Those weren’t my gods that did that to me.”

Eavus swallowed. He’d said too much, gone too far. He was angry. He didn’t mean it.

Eavus leaned forward to snatch at the pack, sending the whole boat rocking again. Hopefully she hadn’t eaten all the dried meat. Revni shot a steadying hand to his knee, countering the boat’s cant. Her fingers were cool on his bare skin, but somehow sent fire crackling where they’d touched.

“Caea took those things from you,” she said softly. “Not gods.”

“Caea gave me a home,” he sputtered, the instinct so rote it was impossible to suppress. “An occupation. Caea gave me hope, a chance.”

“What name did they give you?”

He blinked. She took her hand away and everything was twenty times colder.

“What name?” she repeated.

“Ricaea Marceas.”

“What about Eavus?”

“That—” How to explain? “That’s my…personal name.” Why had he given her that name when they’d met? Eavus was something tucked into the gaps in his heart, drawn out only in private moments of wistful wondering. Why had that name sprung to his lips?

Revni only nodded, as if she knew.

“How did you come up with it?”

“It was—my name.”

“Your parents were Aleterian?”

He shook his head, dumbfounded. His heart was pounding in his ears, and somehow torqued against itself, unable to untwist.

“No. I don’t know—I don’t know my real name. Eavus was the translation.” It could be Eavr, from the Vernix. Eevha, from the Northern tribes. Evya, from the Hotts to the east. They took the name he spoke at the age of four and corrupted it to suit their own tongue, and then, even that they took from him, giving him their own, giving him another, like a pet that had been rehomed.

“So they took everything then.” It wasn’t a question.

Eavus swallowed again, unwilling to voice the traitorous thoughts that were beating like a drum in his chest. He’d said that same thing, at the very place they were heading towards.

Aleteria takes everything.

“But they didn’t,” Revni went on. This time she slipped her hand in his, and that simple kindness, that gentleness from someone he knew to be strong, almost broke him open. “That is the name you took. Not theirs. They didn’t take you. Only the parts of you they wanted. The rest of you is still here. And it can choose which parts to take back.”