The moon amplified Kavya’s ability to see his features. Deep circles curled beneath his eyes. His mouth, so apt to smiling in that disconcerting way, was a grim streak of shadow. She saw worry and extreme fatigue as plainly as if he’d spoken the words—as plainly as if she’d taken up residence in his mind and experienced his exhaustion.

“Put it away, Chandrani,” he said nodding to her saber.

“She’s right, though, about you vowing to leave.” Kavya forced her voice to remain even. “Why not stay gone? Pashkah did what you’d set out to do—to ruin me. There should be nothing left between us other than my extreme regret that I ever met you.”

“Look at me.”

She stared once again, indulging his command because she wanted to. He was handsome to the point of stabbing pain in her chest. A man had never figured into her plans. She was too vulnerable. She could barely sleep, let alone lie beside another. So much vulnerability was terrifying. Tallis made her want what she’d never even imagined. That should’ve been enough to raise her defenses and cast him from her thoughts.

He was dangerous.

Except, she’d never considered lying with a member of a different clan. Tallis couldn’t creep into her mind. He’d find the idea repulsive.

Instead he would touch and stroke her with his strong, work-worn hands.

So she looked, memorizing the way the moon added deeper luster to the silver sheen of his dark hair. That heavy mass was tempting. She could bury her fingers in it and pull his mouth down to hers.

“Kavya.”

She blinked. “Yes. I looked. What about it?”

“I slept.” He shouldered past Chandrani, who made a token protest both mentally and verbally. “Do I look like I’ve slept?”

Kavya pushed free of the trees as she stood. The moon wasn’t strong enough to help answer his question. She placed cold hands on his cheeks. Only when skin met skin did she realize that her touch was an echo of how she’d held his blood-streaked face. His eyes closed briefly on a sigh. That wasn’t possible. He was too angry for sighing.

“I knew it,” he whispered.

Rather than question him—because he was still a lonayíp bastard who spoke in riddles—she turned his features toward the moon. The circles under his eyes were so deep and dark as to appear agonizing. He looked ten times as tired as when they’d parted.

“I don’t understand.” She pulled her hands back just enough for him to grasp them, fingers twined, holding each other again. She was afraid of repeating these intimate things—making patterns, finding familiarity she didn’t want to feel but couldn’t deny.

“You came to me again. In a dream.”

Kavya jerked away. She wasn’t touching him, just the sharp bark of the trees at her back. “I’ve been here with Chandrani the whole time. Linked with her mind. Very much awake. I . . . I—”

“You what? The only way you can convince me of a Dragon-damn thing is to tell the truth. It has to sink into my bones as the truth. I don’t have any other way to judge what you say. So say it.”

“I would’ve found you had I been able.” She swallowed, grateful for the darkness that concealed her embarrassed flush. “I wanted to know where you’d gone. I would’ve cheated. I would’ve searched your mind for clues as to why you’d really gone.”

Tallis of Pendray bowed his neck. He looked like a supplicant, which sent shivers of satisfaction up her spine—then dread. She didn’t want this man to be just another admirer.

“Do you believe me?”

“Yes,” he said quietly. “Now, one more question.”

He lifted his head and stepped to within a breath of her body. He’d never stared at her with deeper concentration.

Kavya wanted to look away, but that would be tantamount to running. “Ask me.”

“Do you mourn those who were hurt and scared and stolen?”

Tears were sticky like gelatin in her throat. “I do,” she managed to say. “A piece of my heart died at dusk.”

“And if you were able, what color would you wear to express that mourning?” Surely he had other features, but she was riveted to his tortured eyes. “Tell me, Kavya. What color do the Indranan wear to mourn their fallen?”

“The same color we gave to the humans here in India, Pakistan, Tibet. No matter the faction, North or South, we wear white.”

CHAPTER

EIGHT

Tallis stared at her face, her honest face, and ducked into himself. He didn’t move, but there was no denying his withdrawal from Kavya’s simple words. It shook everything he knew to its bedrock.

He’d rebelled against the Sun—the dictator who’d turned him into a killer. He’d plotted against her and hated her. She’d been using him, and he’d been right to rebel. He only regretted that he hadn’t started to revolt years ago. It was past time to break free of that false prophet.

That the apparition happened to look like Kavya, happened to use the name her innocent followers had bestowed . . .

He was mad.

Or Kavya was even cagier and more manipulative than he’d believed.

No, he couldn’t hold on to that logic anymore. Kavya was an optimist in a time of despair. She manipulated people, but he’d never seen what might qualify as malevolence, only subtle pushes toward the hope and courage few dared dream: peace.

All that remained of his antipathy toward Kavya was that her goal of unification aligned with the woman who’d directed his violent hands. That thing was not optimistic or innocent. He’d felt only selfishness and ambition.

For the sake of the Dragon Kings as a whole, that ambition could not come to pass.

Part of him had grudgingly come to respect Kavya. It seemed a shame to find a reason to continue thwarting her noble endeavors. But his intention remained the same. He would rid himself of the demon in his mind, even if it meant keeping Kavya from accomplishing her mission.

“I dreamed of you again.” Throat tight, he cut off her protests with a stiff sweep of his hand. “It wasn’t you. Nothing fit. She was a warped version of how you appeared before your followers. Something to please everyone. Only . . . more exaggerated. It was the first time I could see through the illusion. She said she mourned the dead, but she wore turquoise from the North.”

“That would never happen. Ever. It would be an insult, not to the South, but to the people we used to be. Long ago. A people who shared the same name, without qualification.” She forcefully shook her head. He’d known as much, no matter his unanswered questions and fury at having been used. “What else did this . . . Sun tell you?”

“She claimed that peace between the factions would mean unification of the Five Clans.”

Kavya’s brows drew together. The more she revealed of her authentic personality, the more animated her features became. She exposed more with her frown than she could have with a hundred words. At least that was reassuring. Toward the end of his dream the phantom in his head had gazed down at him with an eerie blankness that reminded him too much of Pashkah.

“That has never been a facet of my hopes,” she said. Her fingers compulsively itched the evergreen’s shredded bark. One foot tapped the needle-strewn ground—a soft patter of sound he identified despite the steady, growling flow of the Beas at his back. “How would the end of our civil war unify all of the Dragon Kings? I can’t even comprehend the power someone would need to make that happen.” The drain of hope from her eyes buried pain behind his sternum. “To force compliance? By any means?”

Tallis nodded. His eyelids felt lined with grit. “The Sun I envisioned said that the factions would unify when twins stopped resisting the inevitable. A gift split between two people was a gift that hadn’t been allowed its full potential.”