I observed this latest exchange with bewilderment. It never failed to astound me how easily they existed around one another. Their unusual devotion had led to questions from the other wards at the keep. Marek laughed himself into stitches the first time a younger girl asked if he and Sefa planned to wed. “Sefa isn’t going to marry anyone. We love each other in a different way.”
The ward had batted her lashes, because Marek was the only boy in the keep, and he was in possession of a face consigning him to a life of wistful sighs following in his wake.
“What about you?” the ward had asked.
Sefa, who had been smiling as she knit in the corner, sobered. Only Raya and I saw the sorrowful look she shot Marek, the guilt in her brown eyes.
“I am tied to Sefa in spirit, if not in wedlock.” Marek ruffled the ward’s hair. The girl squealed, slapping at Marek. “I follow where she goes.”
To underscore their insanity, the pair had taken an instant liking to me the moment Rory dropped me off at Raya’s doorstep. I was almost feral, hardly fit for friendship, but it hadn’t deterred them. I adjusted poorly to this Omalian village, perplexed by their simplest customs. Rub the spot between your shoulders and you’ll die early. Eat with your left hand on the first day of the month; don’t cross your legs in the presence of elders; be the last person to sit at the dinner table and the first one to leave it. It didn’t help that my bronze skin was several shades darker than their typical olive. I blended in with Orbanians better, since the kingdom in the north spent most of its days under the sun. When Sefa noticed how I avoided wearing white, she’d held her darker hand next to mine and said, “They’re jealous we soaked up all their color.”
Matters weren’t much easier at home. Everyone in the keep had an ugly history haunting their sleep. I didn’t help myself any by almost slamming another ward’s nose clean off her face when she tried to hug me. Despite the two-hour lecture I endured from Raya, the incident had firmly established my aversion to touch.
For some inconceivable reason, Sefa and Marek weren’t scared off. Sefa was quite upset about her nose, though.
I hung my cloak neatly inside the wardrobe and thumbed the moth-eaten collar. It wouldn’t survive another winter, but the thought of throwing it away brought a lump to my throat. Someone in my position could afford few emotional attachments. At any moment, a sword could be pointed at me, a cry of “Jasadi” ending this identity and the life I’d built around it. I recoiled from the cloak, curling my fingers into a fist. I promptly tore out the roots of sadness before it could spread. A regular orphan from Mahair could cling to this tired cloak, the first thing she’d ever purchased with her own hard-earned coin.
A fugitive of the scorched kingdom could not.
I turned my palms up, testing the silver cuffs around my wrists. Though the cuffs were invisible to any eye but mine, it had taken a long time for my paranoia to ease whenever someone’s idle gaze lingered on my wrists. They flexed with my movement, a second skin over my own. Only my trapped magic could stir them, tightening the cuffs as it pleased.
Magic marked me as a Jasadi. As the reason Nizahl created perimeters in the woods and sent their soldiers prowling through the kingdoms. I had spent most of my life resenting my cuffs. How was it fair that Jasadis were condemned because of their magic but I couldn’t even access the thing that doomed me? My magic had been trapped behind these cuffs since my childhood. I suppose my grandparents couldn’t have anticipated dying and leaving the cuffs stuck on me forever.
I hid Rory’s gift in the wardrobe, beneath the folds of my longest gown. The girls rarely risked Raya’s wrath by stealing, but a desperate winter could make a thief of anyone. I stroked one of the gloves, fondness curling hot in my chest. How much had Rory spent, knowing I’d have limited opportunities to wear them?
“We wanted to show you something,” Marek said. His voice hurtled me back to reality, and I slammed the wardrobe doors shut, scowling at myself. What did it matter how much Rory spent? Anything I didn’t need to survive would be discarded or sold, and these gloves were no different.
Sefa stood, dusting loose fabric from her lap. She snorted at my expression. “Rovial’s tainted tomb, look at her, Marek. You might think we were planning to bury her in the woods.”
Marek frowned. “Aren’t we?”
“Both of you are banned from my room. Forever.”
I followed them outside, past the row of fluttering clotheslines and the pitiful herb garden. Built at the top of a grassy slope, Raya’s keep overlooked the entire village, all the way to the main road. Most of the homes in Mahair sat stacked on top of each other, forming squat, three-story buildings with crumbling walls and cracks in the clay. The villagers raised poultry on the roofs, nurturing a steady supply of chickens and rabbits that would see them through the monthly food shortages. Livestock meandered in the fields shouldering Essam Woods, fenced in by the miles-long wall surrounding Mahair.
Past the wall, darkness marked the expanse of Essam Woods. Moonlight disappeared over the trees stretching into the black horizon.
Ahead of me, Marek and Sefa averted their gaze from the woods. They had arrived in Mahair when they were sixteen, two years before me. I couldn’t tell if they’d simply adopted Mahair’s peculiar customs or if those customs were more widespread than I thought.
The day after I emerged from Essam, I’d spent the night sitting on the hill and watching the spot where Mahair’s lanterns disappeared into the empty void of the woods. Escaping Essam had nearly killed me. I’d wanted to confirm to myself that this village and the roof over my head weren’t a cruel dream. That when I closed my eyes, I wouldn’t open them to branches rustling below a starless sky.
Raya had stormed out of the keep in her nightgown and hauled me inside, where I’d listened to her harangue me about the risk of staring into Essam Woods and inviting mischievous spirits forward from the dark. As though my attention alone might summon them into being.
I spent five years in those woods. I wasn’t afraid of their darkness. It was everything outside Essam I couldn’t trust.
“Behold!” Sefa announced, flinging her arm toward a tangle of plants.
We stopped around the back of the keep, where I had illicitly shoveled the fig plant I bought off a Lukubi merchant at the last market. I wasn’t sure why. Nurturing a plant that reminded me of Jasad, something rooted I couldn’t take with me in an emergency—it was embarrassing. Another sign of the weakness I’d allowed to settle.
My fig plant’s leaves drooped mournfully. I prodded the dirt. Were they mocking my planting technique?
“She doesn’t like it. I told you we should have bought her a new cloak,” Marek sighed.
“With whose wages? Are you a wealthy man now?” Sefa peered at me. “You don’t like it?”
I squinted at the plant. Had they watered it while I was gone? What was I supposed to like? Sefa’s face crumpled, so I hurriedly said, “I love it! It is, uh, wonderful, truly. Thank you.”