Wren. Laughing.
It splits me right down the middle—in the best possible way. In the way sunlight shears through heavy clouds, or a flower pushes up through a field of ashen soil. Not a breaking but an opening, a bloom of light and color, because it’s Wren, laughing, here in this warm, magical place.
I race into the pavilion, past the others who cry out in surprise, and Wren is half turning when I launch myself at her with such force she staggers back, the two of us almost crashing to the ground.
But she is Wren, and she is strong again, and she is happy, so she regains her balance effortlessly, crushing me to her chest where my head is curled, one ear to her fiercely beating heart.
“Lei,” she breathes, fingers knotting in my hair.
“Wren,” I breathe back.
She presses a kiss to the top of my head, and I draw free just enough to tip my face, so her lips can find mine.
There are kisses of ours that felt like beginnings, and kisses that felt so awfully like endings. This one falls somewhere in between. Not new exactly, nor something coming to a close, but… a renewal. A promise of more to come.
“What’s with everyone kissing all over the place?”
“Ruza!” I exclaim, untangling myself from Wren to give the shaman boy a hug.
He laughs, stumbling. “Easy there. I’m still working on my muscles.”
“They’re looking great,” I tell him, and it’s true. His form has filled out. Even the angry scar at his neck where the collar the royal shamans wore has faded to a faint mark. My eyes travel over him. “Really. You look great.”
“I’m right here,” Wren says.
I’m frowning now. “No, I mean…”
Then I go still, sensing properly the familiar warm hum beneath my boots: faint, but definite.
“Magic,” I choke out, my eyes flying wide. “There’s—is that—this place—magic!”
Ruza looks at Wren. “I think we broke her.”
But Wren’s smile, like her laugh, is more open and truer than I’ve seen it in months, and I know then that I’m right.
I gape at her. Joy and awe and disbelief and a dark twinge of fear compete in my chest. “You’re—magic is—what have you done?!”
Ahma Goh approaches us, tittering. “Calm down, child. It’s just a bit of magic.”
We all know it’s not just a bit of magic, but her words disarm me. I press my hands to Wren’s chest. “It’s really back?”
“Only here,” she says. “And it’s not nearly as strong as before. But it’s a start.”
“How do you feel?” I whisper.
She smiles. “Like I’m home.”
Ahma Goh waves a tattoo-scrawled hand. “That’s got nothing to do with magic, child. It’s because you are home.”
I clutch Wren’s waist, looking around in awe. “Wren, it’s so beautiful.”
“You’re so beautiful,” she replies huskily, drawing me back to her lips.
“And that’s my cue to leave,” Ruza announces, as Ahma Goh claps us gleefully on.
It’s almost midnight by the time we are finally alone. I feel giddy and the kind of bone-deep happy that comes from spending a blissful day somewhere as idyllic as the sanctuary.
“I could live here,” I say as I swish my legs in the water.
Wren and I are sitting on the grassy bank of the bathing pool. The night is quiet. An owl hoots in the forest. The stream tumbles by, lustrous under the starlight. Though trees gather close, their boughs don’t close over the sky, and reams of silver fall over everything: the rocks pushing up between the mossy carpet; Wren’s dark waves of hair; the tawny skin of her thighs, our robes pulled aside to dip our legs into the pool. The water is unnaturally warm. Like the rest of the settlement, it glimmers with magic. I hadn’t realized how accustomed I’d grown to the feel of it during my time in the palace, or even on our travels before the war, Wren and Hiro always weaving protection daos over our camps. If it was strange for me after magic disappeared from the world, after a short time of living closely with it, I can’t imagine how it felt to Wren.
“We could,” Wren says, gazing at my face. “Live here.”
“There’s plenty of herbs for me to work with in the forests,” I say.
“And I’ll regain my magic.”
“You’ll use to it to heal the injured and tired who pass through.”
“We can sleep under the stars in summer.”
“And go on snowy walks in winter.”
“Baba and Tien and the others would come visit.”
“We could grow old like Ahma Goh,” Wren says.
“I don’t think anyone in the history of Ikhara has ever been that old,” I reply, and we laugh, though not for long.
Because we both know what we’re talking about isn’t real.
Maybe we could do these things, if we were different people. But we’re not. Wren has a nation to fix, and I have a new family to love and care for. They’ve lost so much already. It wouldn’t be fair to disappear on them, too.
Wren draws my right hand into her lap. Her fingertips brush over where my enchanted bangle had been.
Wren had her best smith remove the bracelets from mine and Aoki’s arms as soon as we arrived at the fort. Without magic to bolster them, they broke easily. The scars they left, however, have taken longer to fade—particularly for Aoki. Back in Xienzo, Baba has been tending to her half crushed wrist, doing his best for the old wound. She has problems picking things up sometimes, and I know it still hurts her to move it, but she’s brave, and never complains.
I’m so proud of her.
“All that much magic used to harm,” Wren murmurs, tracing the paling mark. “And all the pain caused to create it.”
I twine my fingers through hers. “It doesn’t have to be that way.”
“Magic is going to be restored, whether we help it to or not. It’s already starting here. It’s bound to spread with time.”
“That’s a good thing. We should restore it.”
She tips her head. “Should we?”
“It’s our way of life, Wren. It’s integral to so many of our cultures, so much of how we do things.”
“How we do terrible things,” she says.
“And how we do brilliant things.” I hesitate. “Wren, what I said to you on Lova’s ship. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean any of it.”
“I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”
“No. You should. It wasn’t fair—and you had to live with it for months afterward, thinking that’s what I thought of you. I’m so, so sorry, my love.” I push out a breath. “I’m not saying what you did was right. But I understand better, now. I—I’ve done horrible things, too. Like killing Caen. And watching others suffer without stepping in to stop it. And all the demons I hurt. I broke families, too, Wren.”
She shakes her head. “You were only doing what you could given the circumstances—”
“Just like you.”
“Lei, I’ve grown up like this, I was made to kill—”