Page 58 of A Sky of Emerald Stars

“There’s infinite.”

I clenched a fist to my gut. “My stomach hurts,” I grumbled as I started to push past him and back toward the library. I needed some more boring old histories to calm down.

“I thought you hated me.” Navin turned and tailed me like his normal lingering self. “Why are you so concerned with calling me the right thing?”

“I hate you for a lot of very good reasons. Imprisoning me against my will for instance.” I turned to look at him one last time, my eyes promising my words. “But this, this isn’t why I hate you. I’ll call you by the right name as I slit a knife across your throat for lying to me.”

Navin grinned. “There she is.”

We ate dinner in the garden, under the open sky. I’d given up on my attempts to avoid Navin. The questions he had sparked in me never seemed to stop, and I didn’t want to page through the whole library to get more answers.

There was a whole history, a whole system of magic, I had never known about. In the whirlwind of that thought, I’d almost forgotten everything that had transpired between us. Navin acted like we were allies, as if we were both thrown into this sordid arrangement together. But who knew what would happen once the others came back.

“I think my voice is growing hoarse.” Navin chuckled and took a sip of his wine. “We still have one more day before Rasil returns. You can ask me more in the morning.”

I yawned and stretched my arms above my head, my body finally feeling comfortable and well-fed. “Am I to go back to the dungeons tomorrow?” Navin cut me an incredulous look. “Doyou have magic that can force me? Because you and I both know if it came to a hand-to-hand fight, I’d win.”

His lips curved. “Agreed.”

“Will they expect me to be bound and back in a cell when they return?”

Navin swallowed. “I want to get us out of here. If you can play their game a little longer, they will send us on our way with you as my prisoner.”

I scoffed. “As if you could keep me on a leash.”

He grinned. “Maybe I could,” he goaded. “I have more tricks up my sleeve than you think.”

“So I need to play the role for your husband until we leave this place?”

Navin’s lips thinned at the word “husband” but he nodded. “Only in front of Rasil. Only until we can get out of here.”

“Do you still love him?” The words tumbled out, and I frowned into my cup of wine for loosening my tongue.

“No,” Navin said softer. “Not for a long time.”

I rubbed the back of my neck, the silence between us eating away at me again. I still didn’t know if I could trust Navin, but I knew I needed to get out of this place, and if letting the humans think they had the upper hand would do it, then I would play along. Once we got to Sankai-ed and found Maez, then she and I would decide together whether we helped retrieve this eternal song or left Navin in the dust.

“Do you think Maez is still alive?” I asked, my voice breaking a little thinking of her. She and I had been best friends since we were pups. The thought of anything happening to her made me ache.

“She’s alive,” Navin said with a nod. “Galen den’ Mora is the safest place in all of Aotreas... once you’re inside, that is.”

“The songs written around the outside of the wagon?”

“You’re catching on,” he said. “They are wards and songs of protection.”

“Can magical songs be written on objects to protect them?”

“No.”

“But the wagon—”

“Galen den’ Mora is a dying wish; it sings its own songs if you listen close enough.” Navin sighed wistfully. “The magic must be felt, heard, or sung—even if it’s only into our own minds, sometimes it’s enough. But the louder it is, the more powerful.”

I shook my head. “In Durid, when the Silver Wolves attacked us...”

“No song could’ve protected us from that many Wolves,” he said. “I tried... tried to sing into my mind, tried to hold that protection for us. But remembering songs when fists are flying at your face isn’t exactly easy. After that right hook from the big one, I could barely remember my own name let alone my magic.”

I swallowed the lump that’d formed in my throat, remembering his bloodied, brutalized face. He bore some of the scars still—the nick in his eyebrow, the fading scar down his jaw. “You held your own for a while there.”

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