Sky in the Deep

I leaned into the tree, pinching my eyes closed against the pain in my arm. Against the ache in my chest. Because Iri was alive. And if he was alive, it meant something terrible. Something far worse than losing him.

I closed my eyes again, laying my head back to rest on Fiske’s shoulder, and wove my fingers into his. Where the people we had once been and the people we were fit together.

Where we were both.

I reminded myself of
who I was—an Aska warrior who’d lost everything. A girl with fire in her blood. I told her to keep running.

“And if you don’t?”

“What do you mean?”

He looked down into my face, putting the words together in his mind before he said them. “If you go back to Hylli, I want to come with you.”

I twisted the corner of the blanket in my hands. “What about your family?”

“I’ll go where you go.” This time, the words were unyielding.

It’s what we did for each other. It’s how we survived. And being back on the front line with her was like going home. A home that could never be burned or broken.

I ignored the feeling of my heart being pulled down the mountain and let the sound of his voice brush up against me and touch that place in the center of me that was still soft. It made me tremble, thinking of his hands on me. Remembering the way his mouth tasted on mine. I couldn’t undo the tether between us. And I didn’t want to

And I let it. I gave myself to him. Because I was already his.

“I don’t belong to you.” I repeated the words I said to him the night he pulled the stitches from my arm. This time, to lift
the weight that pressed down onto him and silence whatever words were whispering in his mind.

And because a small part of me still wanted them to be true.

“Yes, you do.” He pulled the hair back out of my face so he could look at me. “Like I belong to you.”

He kept his distance from me. “Will you go with them? Back to Virki?”

I looked at the house, where my father was still talking with the Riki. How did we get here? How could we ever go back? I wanted to push my face into the snow. I wanted to scream.

He stepped toward me, taking my cut hand into his. He turned it over before wrapping a strip of cloth around it, knotting it on my palm. I breathed through the feeling flowing through me, like candle wax melting. “Don’t.” The word hit me in the chest as he said it.

I bit down on my lip until my eyes watered. To keep myself from speaking. I was afraid of what I would say if I did.

“Stay with me and come with us to the valley. We’ll meet the Aska there.”

I closed my eyes as a tear rolled down my flushed face. Trying to escape. Trying to leave this moment and pretend like I hadn’t chosen a path to get here. It wasn’t a command. It was a request. One that I didn’t think I could deny. He’d left his family and come with me down the mountain as his people reeled in the aftermath of a raid. He’d taken me home. Helped me find my father. Now it was my turn to make a choice.

To choose him the way he’d chosen me.

The writhing, bleeding hole inside of me closed up.

I let him erase it. I let him make it go away.