Epilogue
In the deep and winding tunnels under Paria, I snaked my hand into my pocket, withdrawing a gleaming stone.
It was less bright than it had once been. Fractured lines broke through its center, a rime of granular ice coating the facets of its surface. Its mate had looked the same before I laid it deep within Nahli.
I could have kept them. Grown gills that let me breathe below the ocean—and whatever Thaan had been slowly turning into. Feathered and taloned and sharp as a raptor. But neither of those things would have brought me enough joy to eclipse the target they’d also create on my back.
Besides, I found plenty of joy in other things these days.
Like sliding between the sheets with a man carved by the sun, his breath warm over my mouth and his voice a murmur in my blood.
Like dancing with Diara late into the hours during every feast and party Laurier Palace deigned to throw, rolling out of bed early the next morning because she wanted to ride, letting Kolibri unleash her hooves over the forest floor.
And opening a letter from Pheolix every month, each one containing seeds and sprigs only found in the north, instructions of where to plant and how to care for the plants he’d sent along. Knowing he remembered who I was.
Like the sound of my mother’s laughter on her birthday as she held my father’s hand against her belly, watching his eyes flare wide with shock.
Then rising from our houses later that night, lured by a sky lit with green and violet light that danced across the stars over Leihani.
“Are you doing that?” I’d asked Kye, my breath caught in my lungs at the staggering beauty of it.
“That?” he’d replied with a reverent laugh. “I’d have to practice for years to make light dance that way.”
I’d never seen it before, and I hadn’t seen it since. But I knew who laid it across the sky.
I gazed down at the broken half of Thaan’s heart in my hand, my mouth curving. “All right, lout. Just this once.”
Kye scoffed. “This once? It’s no fun down here, Leihani.”
“Exactly. Promise you won’t burn me. If you do, you’re sleeping outside.”
He chuckled, wrapping his arms around me, though he conveniently made no such promise. My feet lifted from stone, and every muscle in my body turned to lead as he gently glided across the endless pit that fell through the house of shadow.
On the other side, I laid the Scale of Safiro where I’d once found it. Under a constellation of silky stars and glowing worms and twinkling silence.
And there it sits to this day.