“And if you did find there was a safe way to grant Asha immortality?” Blaise asks, ignoring my implication entirely.

“Is that supposed to be a question?”

“Would you make her do it?”

The question stuns me, but as I go to make my mouth form the word no, I find my tongue hesitates—the beginning of the fae curse that binds me to my vows tingling at the edge of my response.

Blaise cocks her head to the side, though I can’t tell what she’s thinking. I expect judgment, but when she speaks her gaze is far off, somewhere else entirely. “I’d do it, too. Because it’s not fair of them, is it? To ask us to let go of them, when it wouldn’t be them who’d have to suffer. When they’re the ones leaving us alone, to deal with their deaths all by ourselves.”

Again, I find choosing my words around Blaise similar to trying to pick which cup is hiding the coin after a performer has already jumbled up the order. “I didn’t say I would take that choice away from her.”

Blaise snaps her head back to me. “But you didn’t say you wouldn’t. In my experience, if you don’t make up your mind beforehand, you’ll always choose yourself when the pressure of the moment comes.”

“Is this why you came down here?” I ask. “To encourage me to be the villain?”

Blaise shrugs. “Are you really the villain if you’re just trying to save the people you love?”

CHAPTER 4

NOX

“Now, just remember that since I can’t lie, you’ll have to,” Farin says under his breath, fisting his hand and tapping it against the side of my shoulder lightly as we approach Zora.

“I don’t know that lying will be much use if she can’t understand us,” I say, though I whisper it back, which I recognize is a contradiction to my claim.

I shake my head, trying to clear the flustered haze that’s invaded my eyes ever since laying eyes on my sister.

She looks different here, in this world, though I can’t know if it’s a true difference or just because I haven’t seen her awake. Haven’t had the chance to witness her demeanor, the way her eyes narrow in suspicion. The way she holds herself, like she’s ready to sprint at any moment.

Either way, she spits a string of unintelligible words at us as she whips a blade from her belt.

It’s a dull blade. I can tell by the way the firelight seems absorbed by it instead of glinting off the edge. I wonder how long she’s gone without sharpening it. If it’s even hers.

Farin and I both hold up our palms for her to see, though given the way she hisses at us, it doesn’t seem to help a bit.

“Zora,” I say, though I’m not sure why. I guess I’m hoping hearing her name will trigger recognition in her, but it’s a groundless expectation. If she doesn’t even speak our language, it’s unlikely her name here is the same as back home.

Something flashes in her eyes at the sight of me. Fear, maybe? It’s strange, the way her gaze lingers on me. I can smell the trepidation pumping off of her, though she pays little attention to Farin, who I consider to be the more dangerous of the two of us.

I wonder if that belief is even true.

Maybe she can scent the vampirism on me.

She yells something at us, and I shake my head to indicate I don’t understand. I take a careful step forward. She flicks her knife like she intends to launch it at me, but at the last second her fingers close back over the hilt, like she’s only just remembered this is her sole weapon, and she’s clinging to it for dear life.

Instead, she points the blade toward the sand. Farin and I take this as a command to kneel, and we do, thinking to placate her. Hopefully, we can show her we mean no harm.

“Well, this is going well,” Farin says, sounding more nonchalant than I prefer when I’m meeting my sister for the first time since childhood and have no way of communicating with her.

Something about Farin’s tone must give her pause, though, because her blade falters.

“You speak Linnish?” she asks, her voice hoarse with thirst.

I’ve never heard the term before, and my mind is threatening to go off on a scholarly hunt for how our language could possibly have made it to another realm, but I remind myself this isn’t the time for that.

“Yes,” I say, and Zora swallows, blinking rapidly.

“It’s dead,” is all she says in return.

It’s my turn to blink.

“The language,” she says, emphasizing the word by conducting her blade through the air. “It’s dead one.”

Farin cocks his head to the side. “And yet you speak it.”

Zora doesn’t seem to know which one of us to point the knife toward, or whether she should be pointing it at either of us at all, because the blade is shaking and zigzagging erratically. “Not well. Not for long time. I must…” She pauses, biting her lip. “I must search for words.” She points to her temple with the hand that’s not holding the knife. “Some words go missing.”

I frown, but my curiosity is getting the better of me. “How do you know Linnish?” I think I’m pronouncing her word for our language correctly, but I’m unsure.

“It was taught in school to me. But for reading and writing. No person speaks this language,” she says again, more emphatically this time, as if remembering how suspicious she is of us. As if the curiosity of our language had wiped it from her consciousness for a moment. “Who are you?”

I look at Farin, but he only shrugs, his palms still held out in front of him. “This is all you.”

Right. This Farin not being able to lie thing is going to be inconvenient. Though I suppose I should be grateful that my vampirism allows me to skirt the curse. I rifle around in my brain for a lie that might be convincing. I can’t very well spout out the name of a country without her knowing I’m making it up. If Zora was taught a dead language in her schooling, I can’t imagine geography wasn’t part of that education.

However…

“We’re voyagers from across the Great Sea,” I say. “Our people search for new lands, as ours have dried up,” I say, pulling from legends of the Nether. “Thanks to a storm, we were shipwrecked here. My friend and I are the only survivors, at least that we’ve been able to find. There could be others, but we’re beginning to doubt that. We’re just trying to survive. To find a way off this island.”

“To explore this new world?” Zora asks.

I shake my head and fight the burning in my eyes. “At this point, we’d just like to get back home.”

“You said home is dry,” she says.

“That doesn’t make it any less home,” I murmur.

I try not to think about the last memory I have from home. Of Blaise kissing Farin with enough fervor that even I believed it.

“Hm.” She surveys both of us with those wide eyes of hers. Fates, they hurt to look at. Everything else about her has changed so much, but her eyes are the same.

Except that they don’t recognize me.

Still, she lowers her knife.

When I shoot her a questioning look, she says, “Alone? Difficult to stay alive. Not alone? Staying alive has better chances.”

I hate how she sounds like she knows from experience.