Chapter 42 Cero #2
His relief was so great that he just stared at her, no doubt looking like an utter rube. For the life of him, he could not form words. What the hells had happened to him? Two weeks ago, he’d wanted to toss her from the Sail. Now he felt like tearing to shreds anything that might hurt her.
“I walked in the dark.” She looked beyond him.
“I saw Ruh. He looked older. But then I saw you, and—” Her gray eyes met his and he caught his breath.
For the first time, she was looking at him not with loathing or wariness or irritation but knowing.
Like she’d seen inside him as much as he’d seen inside her.
“You were a scim in my hands with battle closing in. You kept saying my name. I was dead, wasn’t I? ”
He nodded.
She put her hand to his face. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“It was nothing,” he mumbled, though the trembling of his body said different. “Can—can you walk?”
She nodded, so he put her down and they stumbled out of the ocean. Abzi came running, and Karinna knelt in the sand, pulling the cat into a hug, breathing in her fur.
Cero staggered up the shore until he hit the beach grasses and lay flat on his back, so drained that he didn’t realize he’d drifted off until he awoke to a rising sun and a blanket laid over him. Just like when he healed Abzi, he’d slept for hours.
“I made some food,” Karinna said from beside a small fire. She’d cleaned up and changed, her long hair wrapped in a crown around her head, her face still pale. “There’s a spring just there.” She nodded to a cluster of bushes a dozen yards away. “If you want to wash the salt off.”
When he returned to the fire, she offered him a bowl filled with nuggets of roasted meat and wild potatoes. “It’s snake,” she said. “Surprisingly tender.”
A strange sound had them both turning. Abzi, ears pinned back, growling low in her throat and then pouncing at the air.
A loud squeaking sound and a glimmer of iridescence.
Karinna gave Abzi a stern look, and for a moment, the cat appeared to understand.
But seconds later, she was snapping at the air again.
“I haven’t been able to talk to her properly since we got here,” Karinna said. “Same with the wights—though that’s nothing new. But—I think they tried to save us.” She smiled at something in the air and Cero caught sight of a tiny furred face before it disappeared again.
“We were going down,” Karinna said. “You’d blacked out.
And the wights appeared. Hundreds of them.
Thousands, maybe. I tried to ask them for help, but I couldn’t feel my magic.
I saw something huge breaching in the sea and thought we were done for.
Then the Sail leveled out. It glided. I could hear their wings, but as we got closer to shore, they couldn’t hold us anymore.
We crashed. That’s the last thing I remember until I woke up in your—”
Arms, she was probably going to say, but it was too intimate. She nodded at the Sail. “How the hells are we going to get back?”
“I can probably fix it,” Cero said. “But it might take a while.” He looked toward where Abzi was jumping and batting at what he now knew were wights.
He put his hand over his heart. “Thank you,” he said to them. “For saving us. For putting yourselves at risk. I am in your debt.”
The chittering went silent and Cero suddenly felt—enclosed. But not in an unpleasant way.
Karinna smiled. “They’re hugging you,” she said, and he expected her to tease him, or curse the wights. Until now, it hadn’t appeared that she even liked them.
Instead, she waded into the sea, returning with massive hunks of seaweed that she arranged in little piles. Wings flashed and slowly, the seaweed began to disappear. She took a bowl of food for herself and, after a few bites, spoke up.
“I shouldn’t have tricked you into giving away the truth about your magic,” she said. “It was wrong.”
Cero looked out at the sea, at the occasional flashes of a wight’s eyes or face. “Is that the second apology I’m hearing from you, rebel?”
“Yes,” she said. “Proving you’re the Tel Ilessi was part of the mission, but—I didn’t expect your reaction.”
“You could have asked me,” he said. “If you had, I’d have told you.”
“You seem afraid of it,” she said. “But—isn’t it a good thing?”
“The idea of a Tel Ilessi always seemed like a lie. And yet my existence proves it’s not and I—” He looked at her, almost pleading.
“I am afraid. I’m not good with people, like Aiz is.
I don’t know how to comfort them or make them better versions of themselves.
I don’t know how to unite people. I’ve always been solitary… other than Aiz.”
Abzi came and sat in Cero’s lap, purring, and he pet her, comforted by her presence.
“When Aiz came back to Kegar after being away and demonstrated such immense power, I felt relief. It was so clear to me that she was the Tel Ilessi and I had been mistaken. I never thought she would become what she became. She was different once. Kind. Hopeful.”
Karinna spoke softly and she looked down, tracing her finger through the sand. “You loved her.”
“I did,” Cero said. “But now I don’t remember why.”
“I’ve never loved anyone,” Karinna mused. “Or had anyone love me. At least not like that.”
“You have parents who love you. Siblings.”
“Do I?” She looked down at her hands. “You heard the Resistance call me Keris. But the first person to make the comparison was my mother. And she’s no fool.
She’s a Kehanni, the greatest storyteller in centuries.
People come from all over the continent to hear her stories. How can she be wrong? I am like Keris.”
“A deranged murderess?” Cero scoffed. “Not likely, rebel. You’re too honorable. Yes, you’ve killed. But for all your skill, it’s clear you don’t relish it.”
“I don’t,” she said. “Keris was a terrible person. I don’t want to be like her. That means something, right? Yet my own mother—” She sighed, and looked so sad and small that he got up and sat beside her. Not close enough to touch her, but close enough that he could feel her heat.
“I saw inside you when we were in the water,” he said, and she looked up at him, surprised. “I realize that sounds strange,” he went on. “But I had to, so I could bring you back. I had to—to know you.”
“What did you see?” She sounded almost afraid to know.
I saw someone strong. Beautiful. Scared. I saw a flame so bright it could light the world for an age.
“I saw someone who should make her mother proud, rebel.”
There was a loud series of chitters. Agreement, perhaps.
“You—you can call me Karinna, if you like,” she said in a rush, glancing up at him. His chest swooped strangely. “Figure you’ve earned that.”
He smiled and nudged her with his shoulder. “And you can call me Cero. Though, do please call me sky-dog sometimes. Just so I know it’s really you.”