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  “Of course,” he said, “We all understand, Rowan. And we're all proud of you, too.”

  I smiled at that, still a little shaky, and decided that was what I had to focus on. The fact that I'd earnt us a way home and that we were moving forward, thanks to me; I had no choice but to linger on what had been done to me, but I couldn't let it be the only thought that rattled around my head.

  *

  There was no saying goodbye to everyone in Port Mahon.

  My bags were packed. I'd gathered up clothing for the journey, along with all the trinkets from my room I had space for. I took a handful of shells, the golden phoenix and the wolf Reis had carved me, and wrapped the book I'd spent nights running my fingers over in shirts to stop it from getting scuffed. Reis told me not to worry about the rest. They'd leave everything where it was, awaiting my return, whenever that might be.

  No matter who I said goodbye to, the response was always the same. See ya later, Felheim. People drifted in and out of Mahon, disappearing for months or years at once, and no one wasted time on drawn-out goodbyes when they were convinced I'd be back, sooner or later. They were right. It was only once I was leaving that I truly appreciated how I'd settled within myself there.

  I'd come back, once the dragons were dealt with. I'd be the Necromancer of Port Mahon, if that's what people needed me to be.

  Reis walked with us to the stables, intent on seeing us off. Atthis and Katja had left earlier that morning, and I stared deeper into Canth, at the road ahead of us, reminding myself that we'd catch up to them eventually, once we reached the palace gates.

  “It wasn't bad having you around again, Varn,” Reis said as she climbed up into the carriage. “Bring Atalanta down next time, alright?”

  Varn rolled her eyes, but there was no missing the smile she was trying to bite back.

  Akela took my bags and said, “Reis, I am enjoying this little vacation very much, but I am afraid we are having to get back to work, now. But I am thanking you for being such a gracious host, yes. This town of yours, it is very nice.”

  Reis laughed, shook her hand, and none of us could ignore the last thing Akela piled into the carriage. Gavern's head, wrapped in strips of cloth, dusted with bitterwillow to stop it from going to rot too quickly.

  “Thanks. Thanks for everything you did for us,” I said to Reis, determined to keep smiling. It was my choice to leave. No one was tearing me away. “I don't know what we would've done without you.”

  “Nonsense. You did this town a real service,” they told me. “Don't go forgetting that. And don't look so bloody glum. You'll be back before you know it. We'll probably still be rebuilding the damn port.”

  Akela helped me up into the carriage, and I sat opposite her, watching as Kouris knelt down, arms held open. Trying not to smirk, Reis stepped forward and grabbed one of Kouris' horns, tugging her head to the side.

  “Get out of here, you,” was all they said, and Kouris obliged.

  The carriage rolled to an unsteady start and Kouris strode alongside us, neither wishing to splinter the carriage nor put too much strain on the horses. I watched as Reis disappeared and Mahon faded along with them, telling myself that it wasn't forever. I was a necromancer. I had decades within me. Centuries. I could afford time away from Mahon, if it meant straightening out my thoughts.

  The journey to Chandaran wasn't any more thrilling than it'd been the first time. Our thoughts were occupied by Asar, but none of us wanted to speak up, lest we give each other the impression we were getting our hopes up, expecting to find more than a scattered resistance and a few surviving settlements. We stopped at the same inns I'd visited with Varn and Atalanta, and once the innkeepers realised that Kouris was a pane, a dragon-born, they were only too happy to serve her up all the raw meat in the establishment.

  Varn and Akela arm-wrestled over the table, proving it wasn't impossible for Akela to be bested, and I found that sleep wouldn't return to me. I couldn't tell whether it was the result of having claimed so much of it throughout the previous week, or whether nerves were to blame. The closer we drew to Chandaran, the more I wished to return to Port Mahon. I looked ahead and all I could think was that Katja was there, waiting for me. Yet I knew if I'd left her behind, I would've felt as though I could never return to Mahon. I would've spent the rest of my life looking over my shoulder.

  There was no turning back, I thought, seeing the city in the distance. I'd committed myself to this, I reminded myself as we rolled through the busy streets. The Queen had asked me to bring Gavern's head, had made a promise to me, I repeated over and over as the palace came into view.

  Atthis and Katja were there, waiting.

  They hadn't been allowed in without Varn's authority, and as we climbed out of the cart, I did all I could not to look at Katja.

  She made it as hard for me as she possibly could. She didn't shrink from me, didn't take her eyes off me for a second. I glanced her way, determined to get it over with, to prove to myself that it wasn't as bad as I was imagining it to be. There were dark marks smudged beneath her eyes and she looked as though a fever had gripped her, though I felt nothing untoward welling up within her. Her hair was all askew, and the moment my eyes met hers, her mouth twitched into a smile.

  “Good morning. Kouris, Akela,” Katja said, and the sound of her voice told me there was fear within me still. Fear that wouldn't be silenced by reason. “What a lovely day to embark on an eight-week journey across the ocean. Honestly, I don't know why we're leaving Canth. I like it here. There is life and charm within the place, if one can look past all the debauchery. What is there for us in Kastelir? Do tell me, for I wonder so. Our castle is but rubble and ash and Isin a memory. And my mother—oh, my mother is dead. There are not even bones in a crypt for me to visit!”

  “Kouris, that's enough,” Atthis said, stepping through the gates as they were opened for us.

  But Katja wouldn't be silenced, not while I was around her. She forced nothing upon me, didn't send sickness shooting to my stomach, but her words proved crueller than all that.

  “What do you think is going to be waiting for us, Rowan? Do you truly believe that Claire will be there, faithful and unchanged? Alive, more than anything?” Everyone halted. Even Varn, who'd never heard the name before. My blood burnt white-hot and the world dimmed as I stared at her. Had the ground opened up and swallowed her whole, crushing her in its maw, it wouldn't have been enough to sate the anger that paralysed me. “Oh, come now. Don't give me that look. If you'll recall, darling, I wasn't the one who brought Claire up, was I?”

  “Katja," I warned, but she silenced me with a smile.

  “Not saying please this time, hm?” she asked, and with a dreary sigh, said, “You really will never guess what Rowan said to me. I'd taken her hand, you see, and there she was, curled up on the floor, sobbing out Claire, Claire, Claire. It was all so embarrassingly pathetic that I thought I should faint.”

  No one was looking at Katja anymore.

  Kouris, Atthis, Akela and Varn were looking at me and they knew. Akela had seen what Katja had done for herself, but the others had believed that Katja had pushed knives into me, and that'd been it; they hadn't through for a moment that she'd stolen something from me.

  No one said anything. They could only reflect on how weak Katja had made me, how her words cut through me still, and the thought of wrapping my fingers tight around Katja's throat made it impossible to draw breath into my own lungs.

  I ran.

  Behind me, I heard Varn ask, “Who the fuck is Claire?” but if anything else was said, it was lost to the pounding between my temples. I charged through the forgotten gardens, crashed into the front doors, shouldered one open, and though the corridors were filled with a dozen footsteps drawing closer and closer, I didn't care. I didn't know where I was going, but it didn't matter.

  I could feel Kondo-Kana within the palace. I chased that feeling, bolting into the temple and skidding to a stop, almost striking my forehead against Isjin's outs
tretched hand in the process. Hands on my knees, all the breath spluttered out of me, and the guards who'd given chase weren't far behind. Wheezing, I heard Kondo-Kana say, “It is fine, it is fine. Go,” dismissing them, and I screwed my eyes shut, trying to drink down how it felt to be around her.

  “Aejin,” Kondo-Kana said, placing a hand between my shoulder blades. “I did not think to see you back so soon. Please, sit with me.”

  I pulled away from her, tugging at my hair as I paced the room, kicking over candles. The light warbled and faded and spread as I seethed, dry wax cracking, hot wax burning my skin, drying on my feet and shins. Without a sound, Kondo-Kana lowered herself onto the bench, ignoring the destruction as I tried to suffocate what Katja had said out of my system.

  “You are angry,” she observed. I span around, wanting to snap that of course I was, but my eyes met hers, and all that impossible clearness opened something wide within me. Anger and hurt poured through that rift and I was left shaking with the dregs that remained. “But anger is not all you have, or all you are. Will you speak with me?”

  I sat by her side, but a storm continued to rage within me, throwing itself against the walls. The floor beneath us was so unsteady that we may as well have been at sea.

  “Tell me what has happened, Aejin,” Kondo-Kana said softly, “Tell me who has hurt you.”

  I looked at her and she smiled, aware of how blunt she was being. There was a certain freedom afforded in being able to speak plainly around her.

  “Katja, she—” I paused, swallowing the lump in my throat. The words she'd spoken outside the palace mixed with those that had passed her lips within the apartment, and they swirled around my head, drowning out my own thoughts. “I thought she was my friend. She's a... a healer, but she thought she could be something more.”

  I leant against Kondo-Kana's side, strength drained from me. Katja had been planning on saying what she had outside of the palace; it wasn't spur of the moment, hadn't come to her without rhyme or reason. She'd probably practised it in her head over and over on the journey to Chandaran.

  The secrets I'd been holding onto tumbled out of me in stilted pieces and Kondo-Kana listened, fingers trailing through my hair. I didn't know what it was that made it easy to talk to her – whether it was the bond pulled taut between us, or the fact that I wouldn't have to see her every day – but I started at the beginning, words dripping out of me. I spoke not only of what had happened, but of the ways I'd been hurt, and how that hadn't come to an end when Akela took me from the apartment. Nothing like shock or pity registered within Kondo-Kana as I spoke; she simply held me close and listened.

  I told her what had forced me to run to her like this, and Kondo-Kana said, “And now you are afraid that your friends will think of you differently, knowing this?”

  “No. Yes. Sort of,” I murmured. “Whenever they see me, it's the first think they'll think. It's all I'll be to them. I'm making them feel bad just by being around, all because of something they had no control over or part in, and that only makes me feel worse, and I'm afraid it'll never end.”

  “They are never going to forget this, that is true,” Kondo-Kana said, tucking my hair behind my ears, “But you must allow them to feel what they feel. Of course they will hurt when you are hurting, but you must trust that they are not so selfish as to let that consume them. They love you, they will listen to you. They will never reduce you to one moment of your life, Rowan, and they cannot help you while you keep this all to yourself.”

  The thought of voicing any of this with Atthis or Akela, or even Kouris, made my heart spike, but Kondo-Kana was right. My eyes stung with how dry they were, tears refusing to rise.

  “That is the thing with the world, Aejin. Their blades will not bleed us dry and their oceans will not drown us, but that does not mean there aren't greater ways to harm us,” Kondo-Kana said. “We forget, but we do not forget. We hold onto the ways the world tries to scar us, though history fades. People are cruel. Or they are confused or scared, or all three. Sometimes there is no defining what they are, or why they act in such ways. Trust that you are not the only one who feels this. Know that there is still plenty for you to do, before the silence takes you.”

  “Silence...?”

  “Yes, yes. You will know it when you hear it, but please, do not linger on that now. It is meant for another time,” she said, leaning back. “Concern yourself with what comes next. With the Bloodless Lands.”

  I hadn't thought anything could tear my thoughts away from Katja, but I found my hands at Kondo-Kana's shoulders, desperate to hear more.

  “You will go there, though I cannot say when. But you will go there, because there are so few who can. We are the only ones who can look upon it without changing, Aejin. We are the only ones who can walk the ruined cities of our ancestors; the only ones who can hope to make it more than it is,” Kondo-Kana said softly. “The things I did were terrible. Or perhaps the things I did not do were worse—or...”

  Kondo-Kana faltered, glancing away, and her eyes swirled darker, darker as she seemed to draw away from me, away from the world, until it all cleared within a blink. She closed her eyes, trying not to grit her teeth, to tense up.

  “I do not remember. I do not remember what I have done, Rowan,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I will tell Nasrin you're here. Find your companions when you are ready.”

  I was left with Isjin, mind swimming with thoughts of the Bloodless Lands. The longer I remained there, the harder it was going to be to leave, but I wasn't brave enough to face the others quite yet. Kneeling on the floor, I salvaged what candles I could, relighting those that had gone out as I whispered my apologies to Isjin.

  Leaving the temple, I heard a faint murmur of conversation down the corridor. It wasn't hard to find the others, for most rooms within the palace had been boarded shut, and when I walked into the waiting room, Atthis, Kouris and Varn looked up at me, wanting to say something without knowing what would reach me. Silence dragged on and I surmised that Akela was watching over Katja outside. Eventually, Varn did me a kindness in speaking up.

  “What a complete tosser,” she said, knocking a fist against her open palm, “Need me to stick a few knives in her head?”

  A breathy laugh rushed out through my nose and a weight lifted from my chest along with it. Kouris and Atthis seemed to realise that they didn't need to say anything, not right away, and I moved over to Kouris, saying, “I'm sorry about what Katja said, about Kidira. That wasn't fair.”

  “None of it was fair, yrval,” she said, looking very much as though she wanted to add something more, but didn't, for my sake. “Come on. I hear there's a Queen waiting for you.”

  I didn't want to waste any more time. Kouris handed me Gavern's head, ooze and gore seeping through the fabric wrapped around it, and we followed Varn down the corridor, to the room Atalanta was standing vigil outside of. Atalanta and Varn smiled at one another, and without saying anything, Varn took her place at the other side of the door, holding it open for us.

  Kouris ducked through the doorway, and I found that little had changed since my last visit. Queen Nasrin was still consumed by her work, and Kondo-Kana sat by her side, humming as she ran a brush through her unreasonably long hair, making ready to braid it. Queen Nasrin was used enough to Kondo-Kana's whims to not let it distract her, and it was Kondo-Kana who spoke up first.

  “A pane,” she said at the sight of Kouris, smiling brightly. “It has been far too long since last I met one. Tell me, my towering friend, where do you hail from?”

  Kouris spared a moment to bow politely at the Queen, and turned to Kondo-Kana, saying, “From the sca-isjin of Kyrindval, my little friend.”

  “Ah. You still keep the old words,” Kondo-Kana said, evidently pleased. “But the pane have always remained untouched by time and war alike. Truly the wisest of all Isjin's races.”

  Queen Nasrin kept her eyes on me the entire time, pulling her hair free of Kondo-Kana's hands and tucking it over her shoulde
r.

  “Now, before Kana gets stuck reminiscing—do you have it? Did you do it?”

  The words came out more stiffly than she'd intended them to. She was refusing to let herself get her hopes up, despite what I held between my hands.

  “I have it,” I said. “Gavern's head.”

  I held it out to her as though it was nothing more than a sack of potatoes, but when Queen Nasrin reached to take it, I found myself stepping back.

  “Promise, first. Promise you'll help us back to Felheim,” I said, holding the head out of her reach. Acting as though it wasn't already too late for bargaining.

  I was toeing a fine line. Queen Nasrin stared up at me, eyes hard, and I could practically feel the headache Atthis was giving himself, still not used to having no authority in a situation like this.

  “I won't promise anything of the sort until I see what you've brought,” Queen Nasrin said firmly. “Anyone's head could be in there; there's hardly any shortage of the sort, down in Port Mahon.”

  “Nasrin,” Kondo-Kana said, clicking her tongue. “It's Gavern's head.”

  “And how do you know such a thing? It's a head, I won't contest that, but you never met the man.”

  Kondo-Kana shrugged.

  “I trust Rowan,” she said. “She would not lie.”

  “Must you always insist on taking everyone else's side?” Queen Nasrin asked, rolling her shoulders when Kondo-Kana leant against her back.

  “I cannot help it. She is my Aejin yu ka Aejin,” Kondo-Kana said, resting her chin against the Queen's shoulder.

  “Can't you just say necromancer like the rest of us?” Queen Nasrin said, not going to the effort of shrugging Kondo-Kana off for a second time. “Very well. If it will put an end to this current annoyance, then you have my word. Present Gavern's head to me immediately and I shall put you on the next ship back to Felheim.”

  The cut of her frown told me that I'd already pushed her further than most had, and I didn't wait for her to change her mind. With all eyes on me, I cleared a space on the desk, put down the head and peeled back the strips of fabric. Sunken eyes stared blankly at nothing, sallow skin darkening around the lips and throat. Akela had ensured it'd been a clean cut, but a severed head was still a severed head.