The Fates Divide (Carve the Mark #2)(25)

“So humble!” an older woman across from me said, tipping some of her drink into her mouth. “We all saw what you did on the news feed, Miss Noavek. There’s no need to be shy about it.”

“I am neither shy nor humble,” I said, feeling my mouth twist into my sourest smile. My head was pounding. “I just don’t believe everything I see. You should have learned that lesson well enough, exile.”

I almost laughed, seeing all their eyebrows pop up in unison. Akos touched my shoulder, the part covered with fabric, and bent closer to my ear.

“Slow down on making enemies,” he said. “There’s plenty of time for that later.”

I stifled a laugh. He had a point, though.

At first, all I saw next was a broad smile in the dark, and then Jorek collided with Akos. Akos looked too confused to return the embrace—actually, he didn’t seem particularly affectionate, as a rule, I had noticed—but he managed to give Jorek a good-natured slap on the shoulder as he pulled away.

“Took you long enough to get here,” Jorek said. “I was beginning to think you guys got kidnapped by the chancellor.”

“No,” Akos said. “Actually, we abandoned her in an escape pod.”

“Really?” Jorek’s eyebrows popped up. “That’s sort of a shame. I liked her.”

“You liked her?” I said.

“Miss Noavek,” Jorek said, bobbing his head to me. He turned back to Akos. “Yeah, she was a little scary, and apparently I gravitate toward that quality in friends.”

My cheeks warmed as he looked from Akos to me and back again, pointedly. Jorek thought of me as a friend?

“How’s your mom?” Akos said to him. “Is she here?”

Jorek had stayed behind after our little mission to ensure that his mother made it through the chaos of Voa.

“Safe and sound, but no, she’s not here,” Jorek said. “She said if she ever manages to land on Ogra, she’s never going to try to take off again. No, she’s keeping an eye on things for us in Voa. Moved in with her brother and his children.”

“Good,” Akos said. He scratched the back of his neck, and his fingertips scraped along the thin chain he wore, the one with the ring Ara Kuzar had given him hanging from the end of it. He didn’t wear it out of affection, as Ara and Jorek had undoubtedly hoped he would, but as a burden. A reminder.

Teka had disappeared for a moment, but she returned now with a sturdy woman at her side. She was not tall or short, really, and her hair was pulled back into a tight braid. The smile she gave me was warm enough, though like the others, she didn’t even glance in Akos’s direction. Her attention was solely mine.

“Miss Noavek,” the woman said, offering your hand. “I am Aza. I sit on our council here.”

I glanced at Akos, asking a silent question. He rested his hand on the bare skin where my neck met my shoulder, extinguishing my currentshadows. I knew without trying that I was not capable of controlling my gift right now, as I had learned to in the renegade hideout in Voa. Not in Ogra’s currentgift-enhancing atmosphere, with days of limited sleep behind me. It was taking all the energy I had just to keep it contained, so it wouldn’t explode out of me as it had when we first landed.

I took the woman’s hand, and shook it. Akos may not have commanded her attention before, but his ability to extinguish my gift certainly did. In fact, everyone around us looked at him—specifically, at the hand he kept on my skin.

“Call me Cyra, please,” I said to Aza.

Aza’s gaze was curious, and sharp. When I dropped her hand, Akos dropped his, and my currentshadows returned. His cheeks were bright with color, and it was spreading to his neck.

“And you are?” Aza asked him.

“Akos Kereseth,” he said, a little too quietly. I wasn’t used to the meek side of him, but now that we weren’t constantly surrounded by the people who had kidnapped him or killed his father or otherwise tormented him—well. Perhaps this was what he was like, under somewhat more normal circumstances.

“Kereseth,” Aza repeated. “It’s funny—for the duration of this exile colony’s existence, we have never had a fated person pass through our doors. And now we have two.”

“Four, actually,” I said. “Akos’s older brother Eijeh is . . . somewhere. And his mother, Sifa. They’re both oracles.”

I cast a glance around for both of them. Sifa emerged from the shadows behind me, almost as if summoned by her name alone. Eijeh was a few paces behind her.

“Oracles. Two oracles,” Aza said. She was finally startled, it seemed.

“Aza,” Sifa said, nodding. She wore a smile intended, I was sure, to be inscrutable. I almost rolled my eyes.

“Thank you for sheltering us,” Sifa said. “All of you. We have walked a hard road to get here.”

“Of course,” Aza said stiffly. “The storms will be over soon, and we will be able to find a place for you to rest.” Aza stepped closer. “But I must ask, Oracle . . . should we be concerned?”

Sifa smiled. “Why do you ask?”

“Hosting two oracles at once seems like . . .” Aza frowned. “Not a good sign for the future.”

“The answer to your question is yes. Now is indeed the time for concern,” Sifa said softly. “But that would be the case whether I was here or not.”