“If you’d let me, I’ll find the nearest judge between here and Kion. Likh and Khalad could even attend to us before we send them back to Ankyo.” He kissed me longer. “You propositioned me, remember? You asked me for my heartsglass in a room full of Yadoshans. If we’d had another day to ourselves, I would have married you right there and took them all for witnesses. You would have enjoyed some of their raunchier wedding customs.”

“Even if the bride was an asha?” I was horrified. He laughed, and I was on his lap in an instant, kissing him eagerly, my hands running through his hair. “I was drunk and out of sorts,” I whispered to him, but found myself liking the idea more and more. Surely I had nothing left to lose. Surely I could start a new life, not as one, but as one half of two…

“I regret nothing I said. Marry me, Kalen. Take my heartsglass and honor me with yours.”

His arms encircled me. “You already do.”

From behind us, Khalad cleared his throat. “I, uh…I’m going to take the rest of the utensils. Just go ahead and—”

He crumpled abruptly. Stunned, we broke apart and rushed to him. “What’s wrong with him?” I asked in a panic, immediately Delving him and finding nothing.

“Have no fear, Tea. He’s only asleep. He’s too important a person to kill, but I would like him unconscious for the rest of our conversation.”

A figure emerged from the darkness, and only then did I sense their presence. There were two of them: the mysteriously cowled figure that looked down on me from the cliffs of Mithra’s Wall, and—no, no, no—Altaecia. Kalen let out a growl. Likh stumbled toward us, shock clear on her face.

“You don’t seem as surprised as they are.” Altaecia greeted me with a smile, as if she had not just gone out of her way to betray me, to betray everything the asha and Kion had stood for.

“I should have known sooner. There were signs, but I refused to believe them.” I was angry, horrified. “Why, Althy?”

“It was for you, my dear.” Her voice was as I remembered it, patient and kind and wise, but a strange tremor lay tucked behind it. There was sadness in the way she walked and sighed, a peculiar regret that I could not understand. “And for Mykaela, surely you didn’t think you were the only one who wanted to save her? To find some method to keep her from drawing in the Dark and prolong her life?”