“Yes,” said Paris. “But you’re not going to help anyone if you’re dead.” He took a shaky breath. “You should go back. I’ll keep looking, because I’m . . . I think the fog might not kill me.”
“You don’t know that,” said Vai.
“No,” said Paris. “But it’s worth a try, isn’t it?”
Vai looked at him silently, then said, “I’ve always liked your courage.”
She seized his shoulders and pressed her lips to his in a swift, warm kiss.
It lasted only a moment, but when their lips parted, she didn’t let go of his shoulders. She held on to him and gave him a smile like sunlight on swords.
“Come back alive,” she said, “and I’ll be a woman for you.”
Paris stared at her. He didn’t know how anyone could be so fearless, so alive. He didn’t know how she could stand to touch him.
“Vai,” he said. “I’m already dead.”
“And I’m already a man, but you don’t see me giving up.”
There were a thousand things he could say about how hopeless it was, how the blood was still cold and black inside his veins, how his dead heart still ached for death.
But he wasn’t entirely dead yet. And the whole world was dying around them. And in this moment, perhaps the last he’d ever speak with her, he only wanted—
He kissed her.
He kissed her and didn’t stop, because this was the only time he’d be able to touch her, the only chance he would have to learn the shape of her mouth when it was smiling into his. To feel this warmth, so bright and beautiful that it hurt.
Vai kissed him, and kissed him, and laughed as she stumbled back until she was pressed against the wall. Paris kept kissing her, but slower now, less desperately, as her body relaxed against his.
When they finally stopped, they were molded to each other, forehead to forehead, hip to hip. He could feel her swift heartbeat, her breath in his ear, and it felt like she was living and breathing for both of them.
She would have to.
He thought, I love you, but he didn’t want to say it when he had nothing to offer, nothing he could promise.
So he let go.
23
“YOUR EQUATIONS LOOK CORRECT,” SAID Runajo, peering at the paper—she hadn’t known that Sunjai had such terrible handwriting—“but why did you resolve this part that way?”
“Because I assumed we’d be in the Cloister,” said Sunjai. “Really, did you think the walls were going to come out of anything except the sacred stone?”
Runajo thought of the wide, round room at the heart of the Cloister, and the dark, lumpy stone that some said had fallen from the sky, some said had been thrust up out of the land of the dead. She remembered the column of bubbling light that flowed up from the stone, the raw material that she had once daily woven into the walls around Viyara.
“But they won’t let us in,” she said.
The High Priestess had never once believed anything that Runajo said, and in the Cloister, her word was law.
“They won’t let you in,” said Sunjai. “They’ll obey the sister of the Exalted.”
Runajo looked at Inyaan. The girl had been standing quietly in the corner of the room, her arms crossed, her face blank.
“The High Priestess—” she started.
“I am no longer a novice,” said Inyaan. Her voice was quiet, but steady. “I am the one who outranks her, now.”
Inyaan had always been silent and biddable. Runajo wondered whether now she would have the will to make the High Priestess comply . . . but she didn’t think she still had the right to question her.
And Sunjai’s calculations were correct. Their only hope of remaking the walls was inside the Cloister, and Inyaan was their only hope of getting in there. Runajo had no choice but to trust her.
Instead, she turned to Juliet, who waited silently by her side.
“I wouldn’t advise you to go back there,” she said.
“I wouldn’t consent,” said Juliet. “And I’m not free to go, anyway. The world is ending. I must be with my people.”
Runajo’s heart lurched with dread. “But the Catresou will kill you—”
“I mean the Mahyanai,” said Juliet. “Don’t you remember writing their name on my back?”
Her mouth curved. For once the smile wasn’t bitter, but guilt still seeped through Runajo’s body like acid.
“You do not owe us anything,” she said quietly.
“No. I do not. But I am the Juliet. I was born to protect my people.”
Juliet was serene, like a marble statue carved for duty and acceptance, and Runajo almost choked on her own rage. “We are not your people.”
For a moment Juliet stared at her, unreadable. Then—gently—she took Runajo’s hand.
“You were right about one thing,” she said. “My family wronged me. They made me a slave. But you never understood this: I chose to love them. I choose to love your people now.”
Runajo’s throat ached, and she couldn’t speak. She wasn’t sure she could ever find words.
But she remembered what she had seen Paris do, and she did the same: she sank to one knee and pressed her lips to Juliet’s knuckles in a kiss of wordless repentance and loyalty.
Juliet pulled her hand free and laid it on Runajo’s forehead. “I made a vow,” she said. “So I cannot forgive you. But I wish that I could.”
The heart of the Cloister was almost the same as as Runajo remembered: a huge, round room where glyphs and patterns shimmered as they swirled ceaselessly across the stone walls. At the center lay the sacred stone, a dark hulk of rock. The raw material of the walls still rushed up from it in a pillar of bubbling light that disappeared into a round shaft in the ceiling.
But the light was no longer a glowing white-blue. It had become dimmer, yellowed; there were gaps in the pillar as it rushed up into the ceiling.
The High Priestess stood before them, her aristocratic face a mask.
“Is this the will of the Exalted?” she said.
And Inyaan—who had always, for all the time that Runajo had known her, mumbled and refused to look anyone in the eye—raised her chin to stare down the High Priestess.
“By the blood of the gods that runs in my veins,” she said, “I claim the ancient right to offer at the stone.”
The High Priestess let out an angry breath, her nostrils flaring. For one moment, Runajo’s heart jumped in fear, even though they had already been let so far into the Cloister: there was no one except the High Priestess to stop them, but that meant there was no one to see if she refused.
But the High Priestess bowed her head and said, “As the blood of the gods wills it.”
She bowed gracefully and walked away with her head held high, equally graceful. And reluctantly, Runajo understood: the High Priestess might have longed to have her killed—she might think now that the three of them were no more than foolish children—but she believed in her duty to the gods and the royal house.
Against her will, she would allow them to save Viyara.
“You know your part?” asked Sunjai, circling the stone.
“Yes,” said Runajo. She trailed a finger across the surface of the light, felt it fizz hot-cold against her skin. “We can’t start till the last moment.” It had taken them hours to get from the Exalted’s palace to the heart of the Cloister—it must be dawn or later in the world outside—but that was still hardly enough time for the Lower City to be evacuated.
“That might be now,” said Sunjai. “Taste it. You tested the wall the most, didn’t you?”
That was true. Runajo leaned forward; she took a breath through her nose, then gently opened her mouth and touched her lips to the stream of light.
She felt the bubbling light swirl into her mouth, and for a moment she could imagine she was standing on the peak of the Cloister again, tasting the walls in the morning sunlight, planning how to save Viyara and never imagining how terribly wrong her plans could go.
Then the light curled around her tongue, and it wasn’t anything like the bright, mineral taste she remembered. It was sour, buzzing against her teeth, a taste of cracks and shards and ending. She coughed and spat out the light; it spiraled away from her mouth and slid back into the column.
Runajo ran her tongue over her teeth. The taste still lingered in her mouth, dissonant and wrong.
“How long do we have?” asked Sunjai.