Smiling, Zera patted her on the head as if she were a well-behaved puppy. “That’s right. We were victorious, even though our friend and leader, our sister, abandoned us. And then she walked off into the sunset, still without us, to grieve a loss we should have shared.”
Kreya snorted. “Seriously? You’re angry at me for grieving my husband. That’s it?”
“Yes. And for all the years since then.”
“Sorry for saving the world at great personal cost and needing time to recover.”
“Twenty-five years, Kreya. A quarter century! Maybe, just maybe, I needed you too! Ever think of that?” Zera shot to her feet, and her sycophants, who had been leaning in closer and closer, fell backward.
“I was in pain.”
“So was I! My heart hurt!” Zera grabbed the fabric of her shirt over her heart and yanked. Pearls and beads and jewels popped off. They sprinkled onto the marble floor, and Kreya watched them roll, scattering in every direction.
Zera’s chest was heaving, as if she’d run a race, and her curves were visible through the torn fabric, which Kreya had no doubt was intentional. She wore an expression of pure martyrdom, holding the pose, while her sycophants looked from her to Kreya and back again, waiting with bated breath.
Slowly, sarcastically, Kreya applauded.
Zera quit panting and closed the front of her shirt. “Go,” she said to her followers.
They scrambled up and out of the salon. A few of them slid on the pearls that littered the marble floor, then caught themselves on the pillars carved like skeletons. In seconds, all of them had tumbled out of the room. All that remained was the sound of waterfalls, trickling.
“You left me,” Zera repeated, but this time there were no theatrics.
“I’m sorry,” Kreya said quietly. She meant it. She’d never intended for any of it to happen—or yes, she had. They had defeated Eklor and become heroes, exactly as they’d wanted to. She had just never anticipated that doing so would destroy her. “Have you been all right?”
“Do you even care?”
Kreya considered that. It was an honest question; it deserved an honest answer. “Yes.”
Zera sank again onto her couch. “I told myself you’d come back. For a long time, I made excuses. ‘She just has to grieve.’ ‘She needs to be alone now.’ ‘She cares, but she doesn’t know how to express it.’ I waited for you. Kept my heart open for you. And then, when you didn’t come, all that hope switched to anger. I succeeded here, built all of this, in part to spite you, to show that I could be fine without you.”
Kreya didn’t know what to say, but she didn’t need to, because Zera wasn’t finished.
“And you know what I discovered? I am fine. Without you. Now that you’ve come back, I look at you, and I know I should feel all that old anger and hate. I know that’s what they”—she gestured to where her sycophants had disappeared—“expect. But you know what I feel?”
Kreya shook her head.
“Nothing.” Zera scooped up a few of the fallen pearls, spread her fingers, and then let them fall again in her lap. “I feel nothing for you, Kreya, because you are nothing to me now. You are the past, and I’ve let go of the past.”
Kreya felt as if her ribs had tightened around her heart. She deserved that. And more. She hadn’t expected forgiveness. Still, a piece of her had hoped for it all the same. After all this time, she did still care what Zera thought and felt. “Very well. I understand. But the talismans—”
“What will you use them for?”
“I . . . I can’t tell you that.” She had intended to tell Zera the truth. She’d thought she owed her that much. But now . . . There was too great a risk that she’d be overheard, or that Zera would disapprove and try to stop her.
Zera laughed, an empty sound. “You came here, after all this time, to ask a favor and won’t tell me why? You have not lost your nerve.”
“It is for a good cause.”
“Is it? That’s nice. I charge for good causes. And for bad. My power bones are among the most coveted, and therefore most expensive, in Vos. How much gold did you bring with you, Kreya dear?”
“None. I had hoped our past friendship would be enough—”
“Friendship means connection. And for that, you need to actually stay connected. You are nothing to me now, Kreya. I don’t think you understand that. Nothing. And so I will give you nothing.” She rose and crossed the room. Holding open the front door, she waited. Her expression looked, more than anything else, tired. And a little sad.
Kreya tried again. “It’s important.”
“To you. Not to me.”
“If you knew why . . .”
“Will you tell me?”
“I . . .” Kreya wanted to say the words: I can bring Jentt back! He can live again! But the words stuck in her throat. Could she trust Zera? Years ago, she would have said, Yes, no question, I trust her with my life. This wasn’t Kreya’s life, though; it was Jentt’s. Given Zera’s flair for theatrics, combined with the prohibition against using human bone for magic, she couldn’t guarantee that Zera wouldn’t immediately rush to the guild and kill any chance that Kreya ever had of restoring her husband. Or rush to her tower and destroy Jentt’s body. “I . . . can’t. I ask you . . . I beg you, in memory of the friendship we once had, to please help me.”
She couldn’t trust her with the truth, but Kreya would happily sacrifice her pride.
Gripping a skeletal pillar for support, Kreya lowered herself to the floor and knelt. “Please, Zera. I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important. I would have left you in peace—”
“You left me in war. That was worse.”
“I apologize. On my knees.”
Zera wrinkled her nose. “Yes, I see that. It’s pathetic. Stand up.”
Wincing as her back twinged, Kreya stood. “Zera. Please give me another chance.” Another chance at happiness. At hope. At the life she was supposed to have.
“You had your chance. We all did. And now it’s time for you to leave.”
Quick thoughts flashed through her head: she could beg more, explain more, try to overpower her, try to blackmail her, try to steal from her, but looking at Zera’s painted face, Kreya knew she’d do none of that. She’d find another way that didn’t involve her old friend. I’ve hurt her enough, Kreya thought.
She walked past her without a word and kept walking out of the fifth tier, out of Cerre, and did not stop until night fell on the mountains. Only then, in the darkness, did she stop and cry. Not for herself. Not for Jentt. But for Zera.
She had not realized until now that the war had also broken her best friend.
Chapter Four
Zera had her old nightmare, the one she’d banished many years ago, for the next three nights: She was back on the plain, facing Eklor’s army. Jentt was dead. Kreya was gone. Stran was using his talisman-fueled fists to pound soldier after soldier made of armor and bone. Marso was whimpering as he stabbed and slashed the smaller bone critters with his knife. And she was searching through the pockets of a coat she’d trashed long ago, the twin to the one Kreya still wore.