We were alive. I wouldn’t waste one more precious second of that gift with doubt.

So right before he reached the gate to leave, I walked to him in two quick strides and slipped my hand into his. He looked at me, a question in his warm eyes, and I pulled him close, wrapping his big arms around my waist. On my tiptoes, I wound my arms around his neck, pressing my chest, my hips, against his. I didn’t care that I was bloody. I didn’t care that I was covered in sweat and stink and dirt and horror. None of it mattered.

He mattered.

“No.” I kissed him on his lips. Once. Twice. Then again, longer, my mouth moving against his with all the heat I had inside.

“Don’t go,” I murmured. My voice held a quaver, my nerves bubbling through my bravado. “Stay with me.”

But more than anything else in my life in that moment, I was sure.

More than anything.

He blushed red all the way to his ears.

But he did.

Six moons later

A BRIDE ALWAYS felt nervous on her wedding day.

Or so I’d once heard.

But since I wasn’t technically a bride—no father giving me away, no dowry paid, no bride price offered, no tradition followed at all—I shouldn’t have been nervous.

Nevertheless, my stomach flitted with butterflies.

The ceremony we had agreed to, a simple meeting of minds, a promise to be united as one without the technicality of an actual marriage, settled my nerves. Though Arwia had said she’d revoke any laws that gave husbands power over their wives, her new council—made up of the seven men who’d supported her and five women—had yet to meet to strike them down.

The remaining five council members who’d opposed her rule had been given the choice of leaving the city or facing Arwia’s new guardswomen and men who’d been trained in Manzazu. A particularly dour-faced former councilman had tried to lead a small insurrection against her and had ended up at the end of a rope, staring into Arwia’s eyes.

The rest fled.

Currently, Arwia’s concern about unrest in Sidu, a seaport city, was more pressing of a concern, so for me, when the law benefitted the man and not the woman, I wouldn’t agree to marry under it. Fortunately, Dagan hadn’t cared. He wanted me at his side, hand in hand for the rest of our days, marriage tradition upheld or not.

I smiled at myself in the looking glass hanging on the wall of Dagan’s old chamber and smudged a bit more of the jade on my eyelids, per Nanaea’s command.

A crown of roses around her head, she stood on tiptoe and pinned a sprig of yellow chamomile to the shoulder of my tunic.

“Stand still, Sister. I swear to the gods of the skies that you’re the absolute worst when it comes to being prettied.”

She ran her hands down the length of my turquoise tunic with the pockets I’d insisted she sew on, though she protested that they took away from the beauty of the garment. They were practical, I’d told her. I could keep my tinctures in there. I could put the gift in there that I needed to give to someone, should Nasu succeed in his quest. She’d grumbled, but she’d done it.