Inkmistress (Of Fire and Stars 0.5)(90)

“I know I made a mistake,” he continued. “When we met, I didn’t know that you were the kind of person with whom I could have been honest from the very first breath and you still would have helped me. I didn’t know you would stay by me even when I collapsed in the middle of the woods and you could have left me behind. And while I knew you were the one my sister wanted me to find, I didn’t know that your gift was something she would injure you for, and I am so sorry for the suffering that my actions and choices have cost you. But I want to do better. I want to be better. Maybe I don’t deserve that chance, but I’m asking you for it because if I don’t, I know I will regret it for the rest of my life. And I know you now, Asra. I know you. I trust you. Please give me another chance.”

Somewhere in the middle of his speech, I met his eyes, daring him to try to use his compulsion on me, to try to touch me uninvited, to do anything to undermine his own words.

He simply waited for me to say something, his face tight with fear, but his eyes holding the smallest flicker of hope. I couldn’t cling to my anger with him looking at me so humbly. I let the last of it slip away like a bird released into the wild. It would still exist. It would still be part of our past, but it didn’t have to define our future.

In spite of it all, I had to face the truth I’d been denying for moons.

I loved him.

“Sing me that song about the tavern girl and the sheep again and maybe I’ll forgive you,” I said.

A slow grin emerged on his face. “Really?” He stepped closer, still cautious.

I slipped my hand into his and laced our fingers together, unable to help the sigh that escaped when I did. It felt so good to be connected to him again, and though the peace between us was still fragile and new, the rightness of it was undeniable.

“I missed you so much,” he said. “Every day, every hour, every minute—”

“Oh be quiet,” I said. Then I kissed him.

A spark leaped between us as it had the very first time we touched. I let my arms wrap around him, giving in to how good his mouth felt on mine.

When he broke away from me and smiled, this time his smile was my dawn, the sun returning after too much darkness.

He sang me “The Tavern Lamb” on the way back down to the castle. I tried to sing with him but always ended up laughing too hard to go on. And when we crossed the threshold of my room to find Zallie awake and more than ready to hand off Iman, I finally understood what my mother had been telling me when she said, Listen to your heart.

I knew how to find the Fatestone.





CHAPTER 34


IF LISTENING TO MY HEART WAS THE KEY TO ATHEON, my heart led me to Hal. That meant it was Hal who needed to listen with his Farhearing. Veric had been a bloodscribe like me, and Leozoar had been a wind demigod like Hal. Of course they’d have worked together to hide the Fatestone. Of course it would be impossible to find the Fatestone without both gifts. Once I understood that Hal was the answer, it all made sense.

Why hadn’t my mother just told me? It chafed a little that it had taken this long to figure things out when she could have given me stronger direction. But whose fault was that? I was the one who had stayed angry at Hal. I was the one who had been slow to forgive, and slow to admit my own feelings. My mother must have wanted me to find my own way to the answers, to be sure of my own heart. I understood.

“You’re the key,” I told Hal, who had sat down to hold Iman.

“What?” he asked.

Zallie nursed her own baby, Nera, not minding us. By now she was more than used to our odd conversations and arguments.

“It was something the shadow god told me that only makes sense now. I need you to listen. That’s how we’ll find the Fatestone. Listen for something out there that sounds like me.”

Hal closed his eyes, and I recognized the tilt of his head that meant he was reaching beyond his normal range. At the same time, I reached for the well of dark magic in me that I now knew had come from the shadow god. It wound through me in its familiar way, and I gently drew on it to brighten my Sight.

“I don’t hear anything unusual,” he said. “I listen to the city all the time. If I heard something that sounded like you, but wasn’t actually you, I would have noticed long before now.”

My heart sank. Maybe my theory was wrong.

“Aw, don’t frown like that,” Hal said. “Here, hold Iman for a little bit. That’ll cheer you up. We can keep thinking about the answers. We’ll figure it out.”

I took the baby from him, grateful that lack of dexterity and grip in my left hand didn’t affect my ability to hold Iman. Even though the knowledge that Iman was Ina’s child nagged at me from time to time, he felt like my child, not hers. The way he felt pressed to my chest was already so familiar and natural, like he had always been meant to be there. I hummed him a lullaby made of memories of my mountain.

“Wait,” Hal said.

I stopped humming.

“There’s an echo. How did I never hear it before?” He stood up and paced to the window.

My breath caught. “Where?” I asked.

“Sing that tune again,” he asked.

I hummed the simple melody.

“It’s not far away. It sounds like it’s coming from the center of the hedge maze.”

“I have to go, then. Right now,” I said, reluctantly handing Iman back to Hal.