The Fates Divide (Carve the Mark #2)(36)

“Pleasant man,” he said. “A little too soft-spoken, though, don’t you think?”

The joke eased me back into the present. When before everything had been quiet, now it was roaring with conversation. Teka was having a heated argument with Ettrek, which I knew because her finger was in his face, almost jabbing him in the nose when she gestured. Aza was with a few other grave-looking people, her face half-covered with her hand.

“What happens now?” Akos said to me softly.

“You think I know?” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t even know if you and I count as exiles. Or if Lazmet counts exiles as Shotet.”

“Maybe we’re on our own, you and me.”

He said it with a glint of hope in his eyes. If I was not an exile, if I was not even Shotet, then staying with me was not a sign of his inevitable betrayal. The family Noavek had so long been synonymous with “Shotet” in his mind that the sudden paring down of everything I was appealed to him. But I could not be made smaller, and moreover, I didn’t want to be.

“I am always a Shotet,” I said.

He looked taken aback at first, tilting away from me. But his rejoinder came quickly, and it was sharp: “Then why do you doubt me when I tell you I am always a Thuvhesit?”

It wasn’t the same. How could I explain that it wasn’t the same? “Now is not the time for this debate!”

“Cyra,” he said again, and he touched my arm, his touch light as ever. “Now is the only time for this debate. How can we talk about where we’re going now, what we’re doing now, if we haven’t talked about who—and what—we are now?”

He had a point. Akos had a way of getting to the heart of things—he was, in that way, more of a knife than I was, though I was the sharper-tongued of the two of us. His soft gray eyes focused on mine like there were not over one hundred people crowded around us.

Unfortunately, we didn’t possess the gift of focus in equal measure. I couldn’t think in all the chatter. I jerked my head toward the door, and Akos nodded, following me out of the mess hall and into the quiet stone street beyond. Over his shoulder I saw the village, faint dots of light dancing all over it, in all different colors. It looked almost cozy, not something I had thought a place like Ogra could be.

“You asked who we are now,” I said, looking up at him. “I think we need to move even further back and ask, are we a ‘we’?”

“What do you mean?” he asked, with sudden intensity.

“What I mean is,” I said, “are we together, or am I just some kind of . . . warden again, only it’s fate keeping you prisoner this time, instead of my brother?”

“Don’t make it sound simple when it isn’t,” he said. “That’s not fair.”

“Fair?” I laughed. “What, in your entire life so far, has made you think anything will be ‘fair’?” I stepped wider, so I felt like I was rooted to the ground, the way I might have if we had been about to spar. “Just tell me—tell me if I’m something you’re choosing, or not. Just tell me.”

Just get it over with, I thought, because I already knew the answer. I was ready to hear it—even eager, because I had been bracing myself since our first kiss for this rejection. It was the inevitable by-product of what I was. Monstrous, and bound to destroy whoever was in my path, particularly if they were as kind as Akos.

“I,” he said, slowly, “am a Thuvhesit, Cyra. I would never oppose my country, my home, if I felt like I had a choice.”

I closed my eyes. It hurt worse—much worse—than I was expecting it to.

He went on, “But my mother used to say, ‘Suffer the fate, for all else is delusion.’ There’s no point in fighting something that is inevitable.”

I forced my eyes open. “I don’t want to be something you ‘suffer.’”

“That’s not what I meant,” he said, reaching for me. I backed up. For once, the pain that wrapped around every limb was not a curse to me—though not a gift, never a gift—but another set of armor.

“You’re the one thing that makes my life bearable,” he said, and the sudden tension in him, suffusing every muscle, reminded me of how he had braced himself every time Vas came around. It was the way he looked when he was guarding himself against pain. “You’re this bright spot of light. You’re—Cyra, before I knew you, I thought about . . .”

I raised my eyebrows.

He drew a sharp breath. His gray eyes looked glassy.

“Before I knew you,” he began again, “I didn’t intend to live past rescuing my brother. I didn’t want to serve the Noavek family. I didn’t want to give my life to them. But when it’s you . . . it seems like whatever the end is, it might be worthwhile.”

Maybe, to another person, this might have sounded kind. Or at least realistic. A person couldn’t avoid fate. That was the whole point. Fate was the place at which all possible life paths converged—and when the oracles said “all,” they meant all. So was it really so bad, being something good in the fate Akos dreaded?

Maybe not. To another person.

Unfortunately, I was not another person.

“What you’re telling me,” I said, “is that if you’re going to have your head chopped off anyway, it’s at least nice to have your head on a very soft chopping block.”