He hugged her back as hard as he could, a lump threatening to seal his throat and unstop his eyes, when she let go and leant back far enough to turn his head and examine the wound in his cheek. He batted her hand away and hugged her again. One part of his heart returned to him.

One part still missing.

He felt the hitch of her chest and knew she’d started crying and he squeezed and tried to lift her off her feet, ostensibly to make her laugh – she was far heavier than him – but in reality so he could shift to see Toxte’s face and raise an eyebrow.

‘Tika died,’ the eja said. Tayan nodded. ‘And Kime died, not long after. It … broke something in her. She went to the Swift Water on her own and caught a Greater Drowned.’

Tayan’s arms locked even tighter around Xessa and his mind filled with a sharp buzzing. Kime. Oh, ancestors. She was sobbing on his shoulder now, full-body crying, and Ossa was whining and pawing at his legs and Toxte looked a bit teary himself. And so he put away his own fatigue and hurt, and he became the shaman they needed even as his mind reeled under the revelation that Xessa caught a holy Setat.

Gently, he pushed her away and wiped her tears with his thumbs before signing: ‘I’m so sorry. Tomorrow, I’ll journey you to the Realm of the Ancestors and you can say goodbye. And I’ll make sure his spirit is on the spiral path to Malel, all right?’

She sobbed some more, but nodded, and Toxte was definitely crying now as well and Tayan had to carefully lock away his own grief. Kime. Father of the friend of his heart.

‘Word is you’ve lost your mind while I’ve been gone. Going to tell me about it?’ he asked as her tears slowed.

Xessa ducked her head and wiped her nose on the back of her hand, but he knew the set of her chin well. ‘Tell me what happened to you,’ she signed instead, and if she wasn’t ready to talk about it all, he couldn’t really blame her. Still … she did it. We’ve got a Drowned. We’ve fucking caught one.

He glanced at Toxte, who’d scooted forward and pressed his leg along Xessa’s thigh as she sat within touching distance of Tayan. The eja nodded, and so Tayan summarised the previous three months and the ambush and the absence of Lilla, either as corpse or as living man.

‘So. How do we get him back?’ Xessa signed and the question was so her – and so him – that something in his chest cracked and he had to look away, fighting for control.