She was already turning back to the platform. The Resolution seemed to have arrived at a conclusion.

“We accept. We will now adjourn for the rest of the—morning, is it? Morning.” Half the Resolution screens had started to close, but the spokesperson was still there. “When we reconvene this afternoon, we will need Zinyary Halkana.”

Zin looked terrified and exhilarated as the crowd started to dissipate. Tennal sneakily punched her as he passed, knuckling his hand into her bicep. “Can’t believe you nearly got us kicked out of the Resolution because you wanted to take my side against our aunt.”

“It will help other people, it was the right thing to do—” Zin said, in high indignation, but Tennal had already left her behind. He looked for Surit, but Surit had been pulled into a debriefing with the division commanders. Never mind. Surit would be there later. Tennal had the overwhelming urge to be outside, breathing the air of his own planet.

He quickened his stride, walking past the politicians and soldiers and aides. Past Istara—who gave him a quick thumbs-up—and Basavi. Past the last of the inquest and the anteroom outside. Tennal burst through the double doors of the Codifier Halls like a diver emerging from the sea.

He was the first out of the hall. For a moment he had the wide, shallow steps to himself.

The courtyard was fresh with the early morning air. He noticed, as if for the first time, the trees that crept along the outer walls were heavy with rose-pink blossoms—a triumphant shout of color, a jubilant scent in the air. People crossed the paths below. Flyers hovered low against the warm Exana sky. Tennal didn’t know what had changed that he couldn’t stop noticing things, but he drank in each movement, each touch of the breeze on his skin, each facet of light like the morning had turned him into a mirror, reflecting everything.

He told himself it was just a reaction to being back on the planet. He told himself it couldn’t last, and that was true, but for once the thought didn’t hurt. There would be bad times again. There would be times so dull and gray that he would claw at the walls of his own head to get out of them. But they would end—he had proof they would end—and it would be in the same way as this, with a raging blaze of color, with a defiant breath of air, with the restless spurring of his body onward into the city and the day.

Last time he had been in Exana, everywhere had felt like a prison. He could pinpoint it now: the terror that everything would be dull forever. How could that be the same place?

But it was the same. Tennal breathed in and took the stairs down two at a time. The wider universe hummed with possibility, and Tennal was alive.

CHAPTER 34