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The fearful

"Karou," whispered Zuzana "Translation needed"

Karou turned to her friend, as back to learning Chimaera vocabulary from Virko just as she had at ?" she asked "I can’t figure it out"

Virko repeated the word in question, and Karou translated "Magic"

"Oh," said Zuzana And then, with a furrowed brow: "Really? Ask him how he knows?"

Karou duly asked

"We all felt it," Virko replied "Tell her At the sa, she asked, "You all felt what at the same moment?"

He met her eyes "The end," he said Simple Eerie

A chill went down Karou’s spine She knew exactly what he was talking about, but she asked anyway "What do you mean, ‘the end’?"

"What did he say?" Zuzana wanted to know, but Karou was fixed on Virko An understanding was settling in her like so just out of reach and had finally grown too tired to be wary

Virko looked around at the coroups, so into the fire He said, "After it happened, I thought to otopen, feeling like ht I was scraping the botto life, I did"

He let her process this, and she felt cold and then warm, in waves "But it was the same for everyone," said Virko "It wasn’thappened to us So was done" He paused "I don’t knohat, but it’s e’re all still alive"

Karou sat back, dazed How had she not guessed i like that despair had ever come over her before, not even when she stood ankle-deep in the ashes of Lora A sound wave, or particles of light Or… a burst of ic at the precise fulcrue And if the White Wolf had risen to his feet and spoken, he had spoken into the silence of its passage, helping to gather them all back to themselves as their souls reeled But he hadn’t done it, hadn’t stopped the one another

Akiva had

The realization spread through Karou like heat, and before she could even question if she was right, she was sure

And when Akiva finally did come into the cavern, Karou knew him even from the side of her downcast eyes Her heart leapt When she darted a glance to confir her way

She felt as h it was a moment before the words came clear

"It was him," she heard "He was the one who saved us"

Had so around to see who had spoken, and was surprised to see the Dashnag boy, who of course was a boy no longer Rath was his na of the pulse of despair; his soul had been in a thurible then So as he talking about? Karou listened

"I’d never have lived to reach the Hinter Balieros and the others ho south with so the forest behind us A whole village of Caprine, and soht in a gully, hiding, and they found us Two bast--" He stopped and corrected hiht in front of us We could hear the aries screaels just looked at us, and… they pretended not to see us They let us go"

"Maybe they didn’t see you," suggested Balieros

With respect, Rath replied firmly, "They did And one of theled out Akiva "Eyes as orange as a Dashnag’s I couldn’t mistake the that the understanding had been there all along, hovering around and ready to land just as soon as she stopped thrashing it away Of course it wasn’t only Ziri whoers, too, the sa to kill his ene for beasts?" , speculative look across the cavern, and giving a sely fold the hours as the end draws near"

Strangely fold the hours It was a line fro All the soldiers knew it Not exactly hopeful, but appropriate in the context of that screaic As the end draws near The end

Karou couldn’t help herself She looked at Akiva again He still wasn’t looking back, and it was enough to ain

Here they were in the Kirin caves It was the eve of battle They’d brought their arinable triu was as they’d dreamt it They weren’t side by side They couldn’t even look at each other

Karou’s heartbeat was playing tricks on her, surging and then shying, like a creature trapped within her Akiva was surrounded by his own kind, and she was here, with hers, and it seeether anymore was a common enemy and the sweet, pure threads of music

Mik sat on a stone, head bent over his violin, and his song sounded different here than it had in the kasbah There, it had floated up into the sky Here, it echoed

Here, it was trapped, like Karou’s heartbeat

She felt Zuzana’s head settle on her shoulder Issa was on her other side, placid and watchful, and the Wolf was stretched out before her, propped up on his elbows by the fire He looked relaxed Still elegant, still exquisite, but absent cruelty, absent menace, as if his stolen body’s default expressions were slowly being changed froreater beauty beginning to e Ziri’s soul It was nothing to do with Thiago now That e the taint of hih, and not relax toohost, alert especially for Lisseth’s unblinking watchfulness But she didn’t see Lisseth There was Nisk, but not his partner, and Nisk was only staring into the fire

Karou felt the Wolf’s eyes on her, but didn’t return his look Her gaze felt a netic pull--across the cavern to Akiva Akiva, Akiva One more time, she would let herself look With held breath and, it seemed, a held heartbeat, she aht: If he doesn’t look back this tiht on an echo of the earlier despair A candle flauished by a scream

She lifted her eyes and looked across the cavern And…