I tried to imagine how I would have acted if my mother had returned to my life after I had accepted that I would never see her again. In my mind, it was a happy reunion, and we fell into our old rhythms of care and understanding. It certainly wasn’t that simple for Akos, with the history of betrayal and subterfuge that existed between him and Sifa, but even without that, perhaps it was never simple. Perhaps I would have avoided Ylira just as he avoided his mother.
Or maybe it was just that she spoke in riddles, and it was exhausting.
Once Akos had rounded up his family, we all followed Teka deeper into the room. I tried to keep myself from marching, though that was my instinct—scare them on purpose, so I didn’t have to watch them grow frightened by accident.
“So we’re right near the village of Galo,” Teka said. “It’s mostly full of Shotet exiles now, but there are still some Ograns who live here. Merchants, mostly. My mother said we’d integrated pretty well—oh!”
Teka threw her arms around a pale-haired man with a mug in hand, then shook hands with a woman with a shaved head, who tapped Teka’s eye patch in gentle mocking.
“I’m saving my fancy one for a special occasion,” Teka replied. “Do you know where Ettrek is? I have to introduce him to—ah.”
A man had stepped forward, tall, though not as tall as Akos, with long dark hair drawn up into a knot. I couldn’t decide, in this light, if he was my age or ten seasons older. The rumble in his voice didn’t do much to help.
“Ah, here she is,” the man said. “Ryzek’s Scourge turned Ryzek’s Executioner.”
He put an arm around me, turning as if to draw me into a group of people all holding glasses of whatever-it-was. I pulled away from him so quickly he might not have had the chance to feel my currentgift.
Pain darted across my cheek, and followed my next swallow down my throat. “Call me that again and I will—”
“What? Hurt me?” The man smirked. “It would be interesting to see you try. Then we would see if you are as good at fighting as they say.”
“Regardless of whether I am a good fighter or not,” I snapped, “I am not Ryzek’s ‘Executioner.’”
“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
