Nur’s streets spill over with traders and merchants, acrobats and jugglers, hawkers selling moon cakes, and children roaming in joyful packs. The thoroughfares are strung with multicolored lanterns, and dance stages gleam in the sunlight. A storm lurks along the horizon, but the people of Nur ignore it. They have survived worse.

Though there are still remnants of Keris’s assault, the Empress sent two thousand troops to assist with rebuilding. Nur’s structures have been repainted and restored, debris has long since been carted away, and roads have been repaved. The oasis thrums with life. For tonight is the Scholar Moon Festival. And the people mean to celebrate.

At the Martial garrison where Laia and I faced the Meherya, Helene’s banner snaps in the warm summer wind. She has arrived, then.

Tribe Saif’s wagons sit in one of Nur’s many caravanserais, and for a long time, I simply watch the bustle.

True freedom—of body and of soul. That is what Cain promised me, so long ago. But now that it is here, I do not know how to trust it. I am not a soldier or a student or a Mask. I am not a Soul Catcher. Life stretches ahead of me, unknown and uncertain and full of possibility. I do not know how to believe that it will last.

A whisper of cloth, and the scent of fruit and sugar. Then she is beside me, pulling me close, her gold eyes closing as she rises up on her tiptoes. I lift her, and her legs are around my waist, her lips soft against mine, hands in my hair.

“Oi!”

Mid-kiss, something smacks me on the back of the head and I wince and put Laia down, flushing as Shan steps between us.

“That is our Kehanni-in-training.” He glares at me, before his face breaks into a grin. “And she will be telling her very first story tonight. Show some decorum, Martial. Or at the very least”—he nods to a brilliantly painted wagon at the edge of the caravanserai—“find a wagon.”

He does not have to tell me twice, and as the girl I love and I tumble into her wagon, as I bash my head on the low roof and curse, as she kicks my feet out from under me and pins me to her bed, laughing, the tension in my heart unknots.

But later, when we stare up at the dark, lace-cut wood of the wagon’s ceiling, I voice the question in my head.

“How do we trust our happiness, Laia?” I turn toward her, and she traces my lips with her finger. “How do we go on if we don’t know if it will be taken away?”

I’m gratified that she doesn’t answer right away, thankful that she understands why I ask. Laia isn’t who she was. Her joy is tempered, like mine. Her heart tender, like mine. Her mind wary, like mine.

“I do not think the answer is in words, love,” she says. “I think it is in living. In finding joy, however small, in every day. We’ll struggle to trust happiness at first, perhaps. But we can trust ourselves to reach for it always. Remember what Nan said.”

“Where there is life, there is hope.”

Her answer is another kiss, and when we break apart, I am surprised to see that she casts me a dark glance.

“Elias Veturius,” she says imperiously, “two years ago, on the night of this very festival, you whispered something quite intriguing in my ear. You have yet to translate it.”

“Ah. Yes.” I rise to my elbows and kiss a trail down her neck, to her collarbone, lazily making my way to her stomach, my desire spiking as she trembles.

“I remember,” I say. “But it doesn’t quite translate.” I glance up at her, smiling as her breath hitches. “I’d really have to show you.”

LXXI: Helene

The dancing begins before the sun has set, and by the time the moon is overhead, Nur’s stages are full and the music is raucous.

Martial and Tribal guards patrol, but I survey the festival anyway, marking exits and entrances through which an attacker could escape. Alcoves and windows where an assassin could hide.

Old habits.

With two Masks at my back, I make my way through the crowds, meeting with a half dozen key Tribal Zaldars before Mamie Rila marches up to me.

“No more politics, Empress.” She jerks a chin at my guards, and when I nod, they make themselves scarce. “Even empresses must dance. Though you should have worn a dress.” She frowns at my armor, and then shoves me toward a slightly disheveled Elias, who has just appeared at the stage himself.

“Where’s Laia?” I look behind him. “I’d rather dance with her.”

“She’s preparing to tell a tale.” He takes my hands and pulls me to the center of the stage. “It’s her first one, and she’s nervous. You’re stuck with me.”

“She’ll be incredible,” I say. “I heard her tell Zacharias a story last night. He was rapt.”

“Where is he?”

“With Tas, eating moon cakes.” I nod to a cart near Mamie’s wagon, where the young Scholar boy, who appears to have grown a foot since I last saw him, grins as my nephew stuffs a cake into his mouth. Musa, keeping them company, hands over another.

“How are you?” Elias steps away from me and turns, holding my hand overhead as I do the same a moment later. I remember when this was all I wanted. To hold his fingers in mine. To feel unfettered. That time feels so far away that it is like looking at someone else’s life.

“There is much to do,” I say. “I have to finish touring the Tribal cities, and then I’ll go to Serra. Blackcliff is nearly rebuilt.”

“Dex is Commandant now, I hear.”

“Commander,” I correct him. “There will not be another Commandant.”

“No.” Elias is thoughtful. “I suppose not. No whipping post either, I hope?”

“Dex said Silvius used it for kindling,” I say. “They’ll welcome our first class of female recruits in a month. Interested in a teaching position?”

Elias laughs. The drums pound a bit faster, and as one, we quicken the pace of our dance. “Maybe one day. I’ve already had a letter from your Blood Shrike.” He raises an eyebrow, referring to his grandfather. “He wants the heir to Gens Veturia back in Serra. With a Scholar wife, if you’d believe it.”

“She’d have to say yes first.” I smile at the way his brow furrows in concern. “But indeed, Quin would say that.” I glance around and find Musa moving through the crowd toward us. “The Scholars have quite the advocate at court these days.”

Elias tilts his head, gray eyes sober. “How is your heart, Hel?”

For a long moment, I do not answer. The drummers cease and a group of oud players strums a slower tune.

After Harper’s death, I wanted to rip out my heart to stop it aching. Learning what his spirit said to Elias—a message my friend brought to me himself—offered me no comfort. I paced the streets of Antium late at night, cursing my actions, reliving the battle. Tormenting myself with what I could have done.

But as the days turned into weeks and months, I grew accustomed to the pain—the same way I learned to live with the scars on my face. And instead of hating my heart, I began to marvel at its strength, at the fact that it thuds on insistently. I am here, it seems to say. For we are not done, Helene. We must live.

“Before she died,” I say, “Livvy told me I’d have to reckon with all that I tried to hide from myself. She said it would hurt. And”—I meet my old friend’s gaze—“it does.”

“We’re trailing ghosts now, Hel,” he says, and there is strange comfort in knowing that at the very least, there is someone in the world who understands this pain. “All we can do is try not to make any more.”

“Pardon me, Elias.” Musa appears, moon cake in hand. I promptly steal it from him. I’m starving. “May I cut in?”

Elias bows his head, and Musa waits patiently as I devour the moon cake. The second I’m done, he takes my hand and pulls me close.

Very close.

“This is a bit inappropriate.” I glance up at him and find myself slightly breathless.

“Do you like it?” Musa arches a fine, dark eyebrow. Surprised, I consider his question.

“Yes,” I say.

He shrugs. “Then who cares.”

“I hear Adisa’s new king reinstated your lands and title,” I say. “When does your caravan leave?”

“Why, Empress? Are you trying to get rid of me?”

Am I? Musa has been invaluable in court, charming Illustrian Paters as easily as he has Scholars. When we broke up the estates of Keris’s top allies, it was Musa who suggested we award them to Scholars and Plebeians who fought in the Battle of Antium.

And when grief threatens to consume me, it is Musa who appears with a meal and insists we eat it out in the sunshine. Musa who drags me to the palace kitchens to bake bread with him, and Musa who suggests a visit to Zacharias, even if it means canceling two weeks of court.

I thought at first that the Scholar had wights watching me to make sure I did not fall too deeply into despair. But the wights, he told me, are no longer his spies.

Knowing too many secrets isn’t particularly pleasant, he said when we were out riding one day. How am I supposed to take the Pater of Gens Visselia seriously when I know he spends most of his time composing odes to his hounds?

“Empress?” He waits for an answer to his question, and I shake myself.

“I don’t want to keep you in the Empire”—I can’t quite look at him—“if you don’t want to stay.”