Page 79 of A Sky of Emerald Stars

“His uniform,” Navin said matter-of-factly as the card game erupted into cheers. One of the Wolves dragged a pile of coins across the table. “None of the humans will bother Maez if she’s dressed like a Wolf, and she will be very helpful in getting you back out of the palace again. No one will double-check Tadei’s princess if she’s moving with an Onyx Wolf guard.”

I snorted into my drink, foam spraying across the table, as the human woman and the Onyx Wolf guard started sloppily kissing. “Looks like we’ve just got to give him a couple more minutes with her and nicking their clothes will be a piece of cake.”

“For some reason he strikes me as the sort to keep his boots on,” Maez added with a laugh. “Best you can hope for is he unbuckles his belt.”

I chuckled back. “Point well made.”

“I have a better idea anyway,” Maez said, cheering the air and rising.

I tried to grab her elbow. “Maez, wait—”

But she was already swaggering over to the card table. She dropped a pouch of coins on the table and feigned a drunken stumble into the nearest chair. Her hood tipped back as she smiled with all the charm of a rich lord as she looked from one cardplayer to the next. “Who wants to make this game more interesting?”

Sadie

Maez was truly a charismatic mastermind. I’d never heard of the card game she proposed to the table, but it involved people removing items of clothing for every lost hand. By a dozen rounds in, Maez had only removed her boots, while the rest of the table was in various states of undress, one Wolf in only his undershorts. She made it look easy—and fun—just a human traveler with a penchant for debauchery.

After filling our bellies with greasy food—and washing it down with another few drinks—my anxiety finally eased. At some point, Navin’s hand had found mine under the table. Our fingers skimmed over each other’s, both of us wearing matching secret smiles. I wondered if he felt the freedom, the simple joy, of this little moment as much as I did. Here we were nameless. Just two people who wanted to hold each other’s hands in a tavern at the edge of the world.

Navin tried to say something to me, but the roar of laughter from the card table was near deafening and the musicians were playing twice as loud to compete.

“It’s too loud,” I shouted as I stood from the table. Navin seemed to intuit what I said despite my words being drowned out by the clamor. I hooked my thumb at Maez who was nowshirtless in only a black undervest and wearing an Onyx Wolf helmet askew on her head. “Let her play.”

We sat on the steps of the wagon, the blustering wind now calming my flushed cheeks. The warm buzz of ale sang golden through my veins, and I stared out at the wisps of clouds dancing past us.

My whole body sighed along with each breath as Navin wrapped one arm around my shoulder and I leaned into him.

We stared at the dark underbelly of Rikesh floating in the distance as he said, “My father used to make up songs about the black rock mountains in the sky. I never thought one day I’d be floating in the air staring up at them, let alone frequenting them so often they start to feel... normal.” I felt the lift of his cheek as he smiled against the top of my head.

“Was he a good man, your father?” I normally wouldn’t have asked such a weighted question, but here with nothing but sky all around us and his arms encircling me, it felt safe to speak of such things.

Navin let out a little contemplative hum. “He was.” His words were a whisper on the wind. “Parts of him are starting to fray in my memory like looking through a fogged window.” I leaned in farther, loving the rhythm of his words, speaking in a way only a musician could. “The strangest things stand out: the way his eyes crinkled when he laughed, the timbre of his voice as he sang his larger-than-life stories, the way he would pick at his lute until the embers of our fire flickered out... but above all else, I remember one sound—the last sound he ever made.” My breath caught in my throat, the moment so delicate I was afraid to speak or move. “It has haunted me these many years. I hear it on the storm wind and the swish of a broom and the whipping of sails. The sound of his last surprised gasp. One single breath. It wasn’t a scream, no dramatic cry, just the tiniest inhalation, like a stolen breath between verses of a song, and then he vanished, pulled into the darkness of the gold mines.”

My stomach roiled as I thought of the paintings I’d seen of juvlecks, of their whip-like tongues and long reptilian bodies. Grae had told me of his encounter with the beast deep within the mines of Sevelde. We’d never know the true number of how many people died fleeing from Sawyn’s wrath through the Olmderian mines. But the vastness of loss could sometimes wash over me; the multitudes of faceless dead hurt less than the one—the father who always had a song, who died with a single gasp, leaving his son to flee the depths of the mines alone.

I cleared my throat, emotions constricting my windpipe.

“I’ve mourned him for so long,” Navin said, his throaty words tight. “And yet sometimes it still doesn’t feel real to have lost him. I never got to bury him. Never had but a carving on the mine’s entrance of his initials to pray to.”

“You deserve more than that,” I said, wishing I could lift that invisible pain off him, the pain that made his shoulder slump and his head hang. “When we return to Olmdere, we will erect a proper memorial to your father so that whenever you travel through, you can visit him and say the prayers. We will mourn him in all the ways you never allowed yourself.” I combed my fingers through Navin’s hair as he sniffed. “We will mourn together.”

“This is the cost of war. This feeling, this burning that is gnawing at my insides,” he said. “This is what’s at stake if we don’t succeed tomorrow. This is the feeling I want to spare so many families from feeling. So many more could be lost to monsters if the Onyx Wolves find a way to harness those songs.”

“We will get the vase,” I reassured him. “And we will hide it where no human or Wolf can use it.” Before this moment, I’d debated trying to convince Navin to use it, to see if we could use the songs to help us win this war. It felt... justifiable. But now, now I knew I never wanted to be responsible for the look on Navin’s face. Now I knew I would do everything in my power to not let anyone drag one more scar across his heart. “One way oranother. We will find a way to get Ora back, too—I promise you. There’s enough grief in this world already.”

“Sometimes I’m grateful in some strange little way for the suddenness with which I lost my father, for the finality of his death.” Navin’s guilty water-filled eyes finally lifted to mine. “Because I mourn my brother even as he still lives. I think you know that feeling all too well. You’ve lost your family, too, even though they are still alive.”

My throat tightened further, tears pricking my eyes until they were as glassy as Navin’s own. “I do.” I whispered the tremulous words. “I wish I could just hate my father, wish it was as simple as that. But I grieve every good memory along with it. It wasn’t all bad. It wasn’t all evil. I don’t know how to hang on to any of the good now; every moment of fondness feels like a betrayal. I’ve been reeling ever since we left. How do I reconcile two such disparate truths? How do we find where we belong outside of all that we were?”

Navin wiped one of my tears away with his knuckle, then palmed his cheeks to try to stop his matching tears from falling. “I found belonging with Galen den’ Mora,” he said. “But a part was always missing, too, like a melody without a final note. It wasn’t home.” He pulled me tighter to him and I slipped my arm around him back, needing his closeness.

“I doubted for so long if such a feeling was even real.”

“I used to think that,” he agreed. “But now I’m beginning to wonder.” He sighed and looked up at the sparkling midnight above us. “Of all the places in Aotreas, why doesthismomentfeel the most complete I’ve felt in a long, long time?” He threaded his fingers through my own and squeezed. “But I already knew the answer. It’s already been written in all the old songs just waiting for me to recognize it: maybe home isn’t a where but a who.”

“Who?” I meant it as in questioning the premise, but his answer said it all.

“Only you, Sadie.”

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