Amos, I never told you this—anyone this.

[SS]: I nod for him to continue.

I heard you in the Seam screaming for me and for our King. Remorse left me chained in the lower-most cell in Gait. I broke my ankles and my wrists to reach you.

[SS]: I suck air in through my teeth, hissing. “Why?”

He’s gently caressing my face.

So I could slip through the shackles. Nothing would keep me from you.

[SS]: With a sad smile, he drops his hand and returns to his pacing.

It was the same with Xelan all those years ago. He was in trouble, and I knew it.

I could only hope he’d listen to me…

At great heights, the wind buffeted against my wings. The turbulence was stronger than I expected. All my time on Cinder, I wanted this. Free in the clouds, my hair streaming behind me, and to find snow-capped mountains in some faraway distance.

Was it worth the price?

I alighted on the cliff I’d not seen for millennia, but I knew Xelan still retreated here. I may have assigned a spy or two to observe our wayward Prince. Sweeping through the dry underbrush and rounding two blackened trees, I kept myself downwind. The clearing opened to the beautiful sight of the abandoned capitol sprawled out under an ashen haze.

And there was Xelan. Weeping. His head in his hands, doubled-over in pain.

Betrayal.

Two doses on the same day. A brother and a lover. My naïve, kind, sentimental Prince.

I purposely stepped on a twig, although surely he heard me in the brush—

Xelan startled.

—Maybe not.

He dropped his hands and let me have an unobstructed view of his flushed face. The midnight blue of his eyes expanded and left white slits in the center. Like a great cat or a snake. To stay in Atramentous this long—an entire day—meant he was truly upset.

“How did you find me here?” His voice was steady, but the triple tone exposed his emotional state.

What a fucking mess.

I held my hands up as I drew closer. “My Prince. This is where you and Nox quarreled beyond brotherly bickering for the first time. This is where you first ever saw me as more than a guard. And this was Savis’ favorite crag to climb. Of course you come here when you need to be alone.” I took another step closer. “The sentiment. Like with Celindria, it leaves you open and blind. Your greatest weakness.”

“How dare you speak to me of weakness?!” The blazing indignation in his words sparked some frost in my heart. “You could have refused!”

Now, I cooled. One of us needed our composure about this. I raised a brow and carefully annunciated, “Refuse. My. Wings?” I calmly slipped out of my jacket and folded it on my arm. “Over her?” Shaking my head, I looked out at the next ridge. After all the wrongs she committed so far. How could Xelan not see?

Celindria deserved her punishment, and I was honored to mete it out.

Quieter than the gusts at this altitude, I breathed, “Never.”

Xelan gripped my throat and slammed me against the nearest tree. “She may never walk again. That much force was unnecessary!”

I snarled and grabbed the front of Xelan’s labcoat. “She deactivated her nacre intentionally! Who does that? And why? Have you thought about that, Xelan? To bleed and bear those scars—The woman is mad.” With every lash, her skin split to the bone of her shoulders and ribs. Her refusal to scream both unnerved and aroused me. A complex to study another day.

Manic thoughts raced across my Prince’s face. Tormented and lost, he searched for an answer.

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I opened my mouth to ask him about the Tritan and her complicity with him—

His fist to my jaw abruptly cut me off. Falling to my knees, I spat cerulean blood. Xelan turned his back on me.

His voice croaked with emotion and finality. “This is the last time I will see you, or you risk making an enemy of me.”

We reached overreaction territory. On my knees, I reasoned with him. “You cannot mean that.” The urge to beg struck me, and left me in a state of self-loathing so strong I had to stand to regain myself.

Xelan kept his back to me and turned his head to the sky. The breeze caught his hair and sent it kiting away. “We no longer fight for the same cause.” He spoke to Elden’s sphere, where here on this mountaintop it seemed close enough to touch.

Ask him to stay.

But… after a hundred years apart, perhaps he made this decision a long time ago. Was I not even worth telling? Or was this it? Had he waited the entire century, intending to end it this way?

What about what I wanted?

Fuck it.

“All this time, all I have wanted is you. Us, where everyone can see.” My voice sounded thin and terrified even to me. I hurried to his side and pulled my Prince’s face down to mine. Brow to brow. Eye to eye. “I can fly. We can fly together. Like we dreamed about.” The words were little more than a whisper.

Xelan cupped my face. “Where has your icy facade gone? You have so little in this life. Are you afraid to lose your hard-earned fortitude?”

“Yes.”

He pressed, “Will you cauterize the wound—your heart—if this is a permanent loss for you?”

“Yes.” And I knew this to be true. Like an amputated limb, losing Xelan would close that avenue from me. A state of existence I dreaded after all these millennia.

Through the tears on his face, Xelan’s lips brushed against my mouth. I closed my eyes. Tasted the salt and tasted him. The breeze cast ash and embers through our hair.

Wings enveloped the sweetness. Xelan’s wings. Thrilled, I opened my own. When our feathers encircled our embrace, we breathed from one another for a finite eternity. Both of us trembling from the intensity and from the fear of what came next.

Xelan parted us a few inches to whisper, “I hope they take you far.”

My first love took off on his wings and left me on that mountaintop alone. My broken heart begged me to weep, but my eyes couldn’t spare the tears. Not when I suspected worse awaited us on the horizon. Instead, I gazed at Li, boiling above. I could relate—

Oh, amos.

[SS]: I might be crying for him.

He’s pulling me in for a squeeze and brushing the tears. Comforting me for commiserating with his younger self.

I wanna know if you cried, Rayne. If it reached you, too?

So much compassion in that big heart of yours. Don’t worry, Sagan. The young man in that story is doing just fine.

Yet in that moment, I was lost. My King and my once-lover were at odds, and mostly as the result of an evil genius’ machinations.

It was in my dazed contemplation that I noticed a flicker on the ridge below. Again. And again. A figure walked along the rocks and flitted out of existence.

Back into it.

Out again.

Closer.

Young T.a.o. appeared beside me. “I heard you in the Seam.”

I blinked at her, half dead inside.

“It wants me to help you. It calls your name. Korac. I want to be friends.” The frail woman held her hand out.

I certainly didn’t want to walk home and flying… Let’s just say this put me off from using my wings. “The Afflicted One.” I took her hand, and she pulled me into a conduit of her making.

A monochromatic scape occupied the void between the mountain and the destination. I glimpsed it as with all conduit travel before spilling into icy powder.

Snow.

For miles surrounding us. Beautiful, crisp, and exactly the thing I needed to see. “T.a.o., where are—”

“HONK!” An ugly creature with flippers and a beak informed me I was encroaching on his territory.

T.a.o. watched me with amusement shining in her Atramentous eyes.

I reached out to pet the snarky critter, and it clipped at my fingers. Despite the Progeny woman’s giggling, I knew, and the bird knew, I would eventually tame it. “Give me time.”

[SS]: “Like your heart.”

Yes, amos.

T.a.o. and I played with the creatures in the snow as she propositioned me. To find my people in exchange for helping her brothers escape their sister, Celindria.

“Nothing would bring me more pleasure, but what about—” I swallowed. I couldn’t say his name. “I—”

That tiny woman plowed me into the snow after getting a decent run-up from behind.

Bewildered and blanketed in the powder, I blinked at T.a.o. with the stuff weighing my lashes.

She giggled in my face before disappearing and reappearing upright. “Much better.”

The snow tasted pure and fresh. T.a.o.’s innocent laughter reverberated from it, and the penguin judged us in silence. My heart hurt and made me heavy, but not so much so that I couldn’t snatch her ankle and send her crashing on her ass.

Big laugh then. Sweet and fun. Her eyes danced with it even as T.a.o. returned to the unfortunate subject that brought us here. “Save our brothers, so they can play with us. Our maker knows and doesn’t know. He can feel. He will not stop us.”

Even through T.a.o.’s insane parody of language, I understood her sentiment. “What of your sister?”

“She walks in shadow. She can never know happiness.”

Cryptic.

I turned my back on her to stare out at the white wilderness populated by honking, waddling birds. The slopes and ridges. The cascade of stars in the inky sky. Such wonder. I thought only of my King and his brother.

Snowboarding.

Snow exploded against the back of my head. Cold and biting. Stiffly, I turned to the sounds of the frail woman snickering into her hand. With an inelegant shake, I dusted most of the chill from my hair. And glared.

Sweetly, T.a.o. pleaded, “No taking it back?”

I shook my head once to the left and then to the right. Still glaring. No matter how long it took, I vowed to crush her.

In the snow, on one of the worst nights of my life, T.a.o. and I began a friendship I never thought I’d see end.