“Thank you.” The words squeaked from Iseult’s throat, cracked and quiet—and in Nomatsi. She still burned inside, but it was a weaker flame. A dying flame. She settled into Aeduan’s grasp. Her head lolled against the tree, bark rough against her scalp. “Thank you,” she repeated.

For half a moment, Aeduan stilled against her. As if he understood her words. Suddenly, Iseult was not tired at all. She was taut as a Heart-Thread, her vision shrinking to pinpricks upon his blue eyes.

“Aeduan.” She stood taller against his grip. “Te varuje, Aeduan. Te varuje.”

Pale consternation rushed up his Threads. He frowned.

“Te varuje,” she said again, urgency in her voice and in her posture as she tried to lean toward him. “I told you that at the Monastery, and I know you remember. I know you’re in there—”

He shoved her. Hard enough to break off her words. Hard enough to send stars across her vision. Then suddenly the wool was back in her mouth. Too fast for her to evade, too rough for her to resist.

Iseult choked as Owl had. Her eyes watered, her nose burned, and silt grated down her throat. She could do nothing but try to breathe and keep her supper from coming back up—all while Aeduan refastened her to the ash.

“I told you,” he said when he was done, her bindings so tight she could already feel the blood leaving her extremities, “I do not speak that language.” Then he turned as sharply as Evrane had and joined the other monk at the fire.

SIXTEEN

He did not know why he had listened to the one called Iseult. He did not know why he had helped the child by loosening the wool in her mouth. After all, pity was an emotion he had abandoned long ago, and mercy he had lost even before that. There was no space for such weakness when one was all that stood between the world and chaos.

Though chaos had still won in the end.

He had no name—or rather, none that he remembered. It had been lost in the dark water of a thousand years, and history had successfully erased it. When he had come into this new world, others had called him Monk Aeduan, so Monk Aeduan he had become.

Yes, the first Aeduan still wrestled inside of him, swimming toward the surface. But that man would never survive. He would tire eventually, then fade away.

As the new Aeduan sat beside the campfire, he watched the girl called Iseult. Even bound to a tree and helpless, he could see there was fight in her posture, fury in her heart. She only ever had gentle words for the No’Amatsi child, though.

It reminded him of someone else. Someone from before the world had ended. The one they’d all loved, even as they’d betrayed her.