The progress was intoxicating. With each new skill, it seemed the world was a little different, a little less mysterious. I had an urge to revisit things. I dug out my notebooks of Droma songs, read and reread them. I spent nights poring over them. It was a search, but for what was not clear to me until I found it. Phrases began to jump out at me: “A shared skin between vim and I,” or “the thoughts were mine and vis and ours at once,” or “in the grass, there is no you or me but only an us.”

There is not much that can be gleaned from a handful of stolen songs, but these phrases haunted me. They felt like truth. They felt like hope. But I didn’t understand them. I translated some of them and brought them to the palace once. Vathorem read them, then gave me the oddest look. “Ariah, why did you give these to me?”

“I think they could help?”

“Help with what?”

“With my training.”

Vathorem read me. It was a hot flash; he could have charmed me, but it took time to make me comfortable that he did not always want to waste. “Ariah, these are just poems.”

“Well…yes.”

“This is not a technique.”

“Well, no, not outright,” I said. I took the sheaf of papers from him and thumbed through the pages. “It’s not what they say, it’s what they’re about. There’s some technique they have that could help, I think. I can tell from the poems.”

Vathorem sighed. “If reading them helps, keep reading them, but all they are to me are strings of pretty words.”

Chapter 21

CHAPTER 21

The longer I stayed in Vilahna, the less likely it seemed I would ever return to the Empire. The longer I stayed in Vilahna, the less I wanted to return to the Empire. I had Sorcha in Alamadour. I had Vathorem to keep me sane. I had a clumsy but firm grip on the shaping. When I had honed my ability to break charms and mirrors, sex became more fascinating than terrifying, and in Alamadour I had the space to explore it. Fallinal came again to the markets, and again she sought me out. This time, though, I was trained and stoned when she appeared at my door. I remember it all. I didn’t like her, but I wanted her, and I wanted a memory built on my own terms. She came to my door, and I answered, and she smiled. When I didn’t come barreling across the threshold at her, she frowned. “Come in,” I said, holding the door wide for her.

“You sick or something?” she asked.

I caught Sorcha’s eye and nodded to the door. His eyebrows leapt up, but he gave me the space to do it. “No, I’m not sick. You can come in. Have you eaten?”