He let his gaze linger, studying all the ways in which she’d changed since the last time he’d seen her in Nazirah. She was thinner, the muscles of her arms less defined, and her usually glowing bronze skin seemed sallow and anemic. Even her eyes were different—that spark he usually saw there, that fire and steel, had dimmed.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, before she could speak. “Khepri, I—I don’t even have words for how sorry I am.”

She shook her head. “I’ve had weeks—months to think about nothing except why you did what you did. Why you lied to us, lied to me. I know you were just trying to protect Herat but I still—” She bit her lip, cutting herself off.

“You still what?” Hassan asked, heart fluttering in his chest.

Her amber-gold eyes caught on his, and he watched pain flicker there. “I still can’t forgive you. I can’t trust you.”

His heart sank. He had wanted to hear her say that she did—that she still loved him, that she understood why he had done what he’d done. That they could move past this.

“But I’m so glad you’re alive,” she said in a rush, tears brimming in her eyes. “The whole time the Hierophant had me prisoner, I was terrified. I thought that he must’ve captured you, too. Or that you were … that he’d killed you. But now…” She brushed a tear from her cheek. “Now we’re both free, and we can go back to Nazirah.”

Hassan looked into her eyes, guilt pulling at his gut. He wanted to give her everything she wanted—to return to Nazirah. To begin to win back her trust in him.

Instead, he shook his head. “I’m not going back to Nazirah, Khepri,” he said as gently as he could.

“What?” she said sharply.

“I can’t.”

Her eyes went flinty and hard. “I know you feel bad about what you did, Hassan, but you can’t just run away.”

“I’m not running away,” he said, although the pang in his chest told him that wasn’t entirely true. “Look, there’s a lot you don’t understand.”

“Hector told me everything that happened in Behezda,” Khepri said.

“Hector did? Why didn’t you—”

“Ask you? I wanted answers, and you were avoiding me,” Khepri replied. “So I went to someone else who would tell me the truth.”

“Then you know why I can’t go back,” Hassan said, frustration breaking through his voice. “The prophecy, the god, the Age of Darkness—this is bigger than Nazirah. It’s bigger than Herat, than Lethia, than all of us.”

“But it’s not on you, Hassan,” she said. “Let the Prophets and the Order of the Last Light and—and whoever these Lost Rose people are worry about the world ending. We need to worry about our people.”