Fire
Math sat in silence, more wretched than he’d imagined possible without a wound to show for it.
He stared out the window Kai had left open, watching the grasslands roll past in golden waves.
His thoughts drifted to the children at Isofal—likely relocated to another cenobium by now.
He hated the idea, not because he feared they’d be treated unfairly, but because he knew they wouldn’t.
The instructors would put the Isofal novitiates through the same grueling regimen as their own. And when the children faltered—or worse, failed—they wouldn’t understand why. Math wouldn’t be there to shield them. And the only other person who might have—Master Wadera—was gone.
Just that—the loss of Wadera—was enough to make his chest tighten.
But thinking about what would come next made him want to scream.
There was nothing he could do. Even if the Idallik Order were willing to listen to a failed novitiate’s opinion—and he knew they wouldn’t—he was still a fugitive, riding a train in the wrong direction.
And if that wasn’t a metaphor for his entire life—helpless, off course, and heading somewhere he didn’t choose—he wasn’t sure what was.
And then there was Kaiataris. Too late, he’d begun to understand what he meant to her: a lifeline.
She’d woken into a world worse than the one she’d left—no longer merely dismissed or doubted, but reviled.
A villain. A monster. Something to be destroyed.
She had no family. No allies. No one but him.
And now she believed even that had never been true.
Math had no idea how to convince her otherwise. He did have this horrible connection. He could hear the Queens talk.
Maybe he could have convinced her if she’d seen Huraiik’s broken body, but he’d buried the pieces, hadn’t he? Like a proper gentleman.
He regretted that now. Bitterly.
As he brooded, Math gradually became aware of the landscape rolling past the window.
Grasslands.
The train had left Cherkiss heading west, but Math had assumed that it would turn south, down the spur that led to Sounalla. That, however, wouldn’t have taken them through grasslands.
Only one line did: the southern route—so named not because it ran south, but because it skirted the southern border of the empire. One of the longest rail lines in Rokasmaa, it wound west through Pastan, then into what used to be the Vormadaak Desert—now lush grasslands.
After Pastan, only one stop remained: Ashahr. Miss that, and the next station wouldn’t come for over two thousand miles, not until the line reached Okiakosaa on the Bay of Ayya.
If they didn’t disembark at Ashahr, Nuhzar wouldn’t need magic to track them. Their destination would be obvious.
The only question was whether they’d already passed it.
He had no way to know.
As he absently scratched at his skin, Math realized the problem hadn’t gone away. Kai had only removed a single vine. The rest of the growths remained, quietly anchored beneath his skin.
Why would she have done more? To her, they weren’t a sickness or a curse. They were proof. Confirmation of what she feared he truly was. Maybe she thought tearing them free would cause lasting harm. She definitely knew it hurt.
Whatever her reasoning, it didn’t change the fact: the vines had to go.
He rifled through the carriage, uncovering crates stamped with military seals—supplies bound for the isthmus.
One box of swords raised his hopes, only for them to crash when he drew one and found it to be ceremonial: dull-edged, gold-gilt, made for parades or decoration, not for fighting.
He found blankets, tents, canteens, leather satchels, and piles of belts and boots—useful, but none of it the kind of help he needed right now.
Math rearranged the crates, carving out a small alcove beneath the open window Kai had made while he slept.
He liked to think he was decent at this sort of thing—years of helping novitiates build blanket forts had to count for something.
From the outside, it would look like nothing more than a dense stack of freight.
Only by climbing the boxes and dropping down would someone discover the space, which was just large enough for two people to lie side by side.
He suspected he was being optimistic. Kai wouldn’t want to share close quarters, not after this.
Math told himself that was fine. He’d have more room to sleep.
He lined the alcove with coarse wool blankets, muttering a few quiet spells to anchor them against the crates and block any telltale slivers of light.
Then he peeled off the ill-fitting servant’s uniform and set to the far more unpleasant task of extracting the vines embedded in his skin.
Without his tools, he could only manage a rough job of it, and he had no illusions that he was getting everything.
Still, the light from the window helped.
He’d just finished tugging a long, wiry vine free from between his shoulder blades—biting his teeth at the pain—when a quiet, startled gasp broke the silence from above.
He whirled, half-crouched and reaching for a sword he didn’t have.
Kai stood above, at the mouth of the alcove, clearing her throat in apology.
She tossed down a bundle of clothing and a tightly rolled scroll, her cheeks stained crimson.
He could feel her reaction almost as vividly as his own—mortification, yes, but also a deep flush of heat and shame.
She kept her eyes pinned to the window, as if the scenery had become suddenly, terribly important.
But she’d been looking before. He could feel that too.
Normally, he might’ve made a joke—should’ve, even—to defuse the tension coiling between them. Maybe that was what embarrassed her most: not the sight itself, but the betrayal it implied. She’d decided he was the enemy. Wanting him—desiring him—didn’t fit that narrative at all.
“How long have you been lurking there?” He yanked the torn remains of his shirt over his lap, a poor substitute for modesty—though truthfully, his smallclothes would’ve done even less to preserve it.
“Oh. I…” Kai waved vaguely at the bundle of clothes, her gaze still fixed anywhere but him.
“I found a crate of garments that I thought might suit you. I should have—well—I mean, it would’ve been courteous to announce myself, but I was …
distracted.” She wrinkled her nose in frustration, an expression that might’ve been charming under less humiliating circumstances.
“Is that what they called it in your time?” Math asked, doing his best to ignore the warmth still radiating from her side of the bond, like a handprint pressed to skin.
Kai looked away and didn’t answer.
Math wasn’t a virgin. Hadn’t been for years—not with how the Order handled “tension.” Commander Talu hadn’t been wrong: those encounters were always in the dark, wordless, forgettable, with a mutual decision to pretend they’d never happened.
Like most in the Order, Math had kept mostly to his own sex—less risk of complications, fewer chances for whispered scandal, and if two young men stumbled back from the woods flushed and disheveled, everyone accepted “sparring” as a convenient fiction.
It had all been pragmatic and transactional, stripped clean of emotions so they could all pretend it was just another kind of training exercise. Nothing personal. Nothing lasting.
Which meant Math had never been wanted—just convenient. Every partner he’d ever had had been chosen for ease, not longing. He understood sex well enough. But not once had he looked someone in the eye and seen their desire for him, specifically.
It should have been intoxicating. Maybe it still was. But the person who’d looked at him like that was also the one who’d just called him a monster. Her anger hadn’t vanished—it had simply been overwhelmed by a hotter and more humiliating fire.
None of it made him feel good. Not like this.
He dressed in silence, choosing to ignore the sharp tug of the vines still buried beneath his skin. That pain could wait.
Neither of them spoke as he began to fasten the buttons. The silence was heavy, thick with everything they weren’t saying. He nodded toward the roll of paper. “What’s that?”
“A map,” Kai said tersely. “Something that may improve our situation.” She cleared what little space there was and unrolled the scroll—revealing, to Math’s surprise, not a regional layout or even a map of Rokasmaa, but a full world map, complete with both continents and the borders of every nation.
“First,” Kai said, eyes on the paper, “is this accurate, to your knowledge?”
Math crouched beside her, pretending not to notice how she angled away from him.
“Close enough. It’ll be less precise outside Rokasmaa, but…
” He pointed. “There’s Cherkiss, where we started.
The line heading south goes to Sounalla.
We’re somewhere along the line west, probably not far from Pastan.
” He traced the rail to the next city. “If Nuhzar guessed we boarded this train—and we should assume he did—he’ll be waiting either there or at Ashahr.
Or he’ll have warned another cenobium to catch us further down the line. ”
“Is there a closer cenobium?”
Math grimaced. “Kudawan. Smaller, but still big enough to hold us if we’re caught. And Bashan’s not going to take us seriously now. Not after I refused to let Nuhzar take me in. Even if we reach them, I don’t know how to make them listen.”
“Then perhaps we don’t go back to Bashan,” Kai said, and pointed—not to a city on their map, but to a large country that ran down the center of the other continent to the west. “What if we went here instead?”
Math blinked. “Lomar? Invade-everyone Lomar? The only reason we don’t hate them more than Kaliri is because we don’t share a border. Yet.”
Kai’s expression didn’t waver. “I used to have a mentor named Sanis.”
“… all right,” Math said slowly, already suspicious.