He was right. They found a small trade outpost erected just outside the white city walls, well-worn and beaten from desert windstorms. They were able to trade half of the weathered coins that Jotin had given them earlier for food and water, plus a small jar of the sticky paste they had used in Moswar to keep the insects away.
“This stinks,” Yudai said, lip curling in disgust as he palmed the vial.
“It’s worth it if it keeps you from being eaten alive,” Tatsu said.
“We don’t have much more, do we?” Yudai asked, and when Tatsu’s eyebrows raised in confusion, clarified, “Money. We’re nearly out. I saw you trying to disguise how few coins were in that pouch, but you’re terribly unsubtle. We’re not nearly close enough to the pass to make it without more.”
“If we get to a place that I can hunt, we’ll be fine.”
Yudai’s mouth twisted down further. “And if we don’t?”
“If you’re trying to tell me that you think it was a bad idea for us to come alone, it’s a little late,” Tatsu replied, more of a snap than he intended, and only because he’d come to the same conclusion two days earlier.
“I didn’t say that.”
“Thank the gods for small favors, then,” Tatsu said. He was suddenly eager to get away from the traders and their undisguised interest. They watched the two of them snip without bothering to pretend they were busy with something else. The desert was a boiling wasteland beneath even the early morning rays, but still, it was preferable to the stares.
“You’re frustrated with me.” Yudai sounded more amused than anything else. “I don’t think that you of all people get to be frustrated right now. After all, you’re the one who chose this.”
This seemed to imply more than just their ill-advised trek through Joesar’s expansive borders. Tatsu ignored the comment in favor of checking the sun’s beginning arc to gauge which direction they would want to move towards before setting up camp outside the settlement’s line of sight.
A few minutes later, Yudai sighed from Tatsu’s left, clearly exasperated. “Tatsu, come on. This is ridiculous—just talk to me.”
“I thought you said that this was the way it has to be now.”
“Don’t you know me?” Yudai huffed. “You know very well why I said that. I was angry. I just wanted things to be like they were before.”
Again, Tatsu said nothing, biting down on his tongue to keep everything from escaping, and it was the only thing that kept him silent.
“I miss you,” Yudai said, voice low, and if Tatsu stopped walking then, it was only because he’d decided that they were far enough away from the village to set up camp for the day. He shrugged his pack off and knelt down next to it, pulling out the small posts and the rolled leather.
“Tatsu,” Yudai tried again.
All of it burned, hotter than the sun, but Tatsu handed him one of the stakes and said, “It would help if you could get these pushed into the ground.”
Two days later, as they picked their way across the rolling dunes, it began to rain.
The clouds formed quickly—too quickly to do much about when there was nothing around them but the sand. The rain picked up and didn’t let up, coming down in sheets and pelting their skin even through the layers of linen they had wrapped around themselves. For several stretches of time, as they cowered beneath the thin leather that provided no protection against the pooling water around their feet, the rain mixed with small balls of hail that fell like marbles and wobbled around against the puddles and hardened ground, unused to being assaulted by the moisture.
Rain storms and flash floods weren’t unheard of in the desert, but they were uncommon enough that Tatsu hadn’t planned for it. Sitting in the torrential downpour, it felt like a foolish, naïve oversight that could doom them.
The only positive was that they were able to refill their water skins until they were bursting, and Tatsu’s thirst was sated fully for the first time in what felt like weeks.
“We have to keep going,” Tatsu yelled over the thrum of the rain against the sand. “We need to get to higher ground.”
Yudai’s eyes tracked down to the water gathering around their feet, rushing across the top of his boots in strong bursts of waves.
“The flooding will concentrate in the natural valleys,” Tatsu said.
Yudai nodded sharply and allowed Tatsu to lead them further up one of the slick, treacherous dunes. With the clouds that poured rain down on them, Tatsu could not see the sky. He led them as far away as he dared without knowing the direction they were moving in and then no further to avoid having to double back over their own footprints once the cloud cover cleared.
His boots, not intended to be worn while sloshing through standing water that hit him mid-shin, were quickly soaked through. The pull of the water tugging between the dunes and further down, like a river forming before their eyes, was difficult to walk against. More than once, he slipped on the overwhelmed sands. He feared falling forward, afraid that the sudden jolt of his full weight would re-injure the nerves in his hand that were still only slowly regaining the range he used to have.
Near the top, his heel slipped, catching in a dip in the sand that had hardened once the rains had started. His sole shifted down, and then, as the flow of the water rushing down the dune’s side swept across his feet, his whole body fell with it. He scrambled to grab hold of something, but there was nothing—only the shocking cool rain beneath his palms. The last thought he had as the barrage overtook him was that drowning in the desert seemed a very ironic way to die.
As the water pulled him under, he spun, toppling down the side of the sand dune to the rain-river formed between the hills, angry and furious and fed by all the surrounding ridges. He hit his head against the water-hardened sand and his vision went momentarily black, coming back later with dark spots circling at the sides.
The rain and wind around him stopped as Tatsu’s terrified and aching lungs gave a last sputter of panic that he’d finally reached the end. He’d die in a rainstorm, and his body would continue with the water until it tracked back towards the Dar-Itusk Basin again. Then it became apparent that the world actually had paused, at least the water around him. The stillness bubbled, slowly expanding, until the rainwater exploded both outwards and up, propelling Tatsu’s body towards the top of the dune he’d just been washed down from.
He ended up kneeling there, sputtering and gasping as the rain continued to belt down against his face even as he struggled to catch his breath. He spared a look over his shoulder to see Yudai’s hands raised and outstretched.
“Thanks,” Tatsu managed to grit out, with another bout of coughing quickly following.
“Are you hurt?” Yudai asked, and as he leaned in, the control he’d had over his abilities fizzled out with a snap. The remaining water fell back down into the rush. Yudai clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth with a tsk of disappointment and frustration. “I lost it again.”
“You had it when it mattered.” Tatsu pushed himself back up to his feet. The rain didn’t seem to be letting up any, but his body was shaking with gratitude towards Yudai’s regain of control over his magic, even if it wasn’t complete. “Thank you for saving me.”
“Did you think I was going to let you die?” Yudai asked, frowning. The creases around his mouth deepened after a second. “I’d hoped that you thought better of me, no matter what’s going on between us.”
Tatsu wanted to get them out of the rain, but the only way to go was back down, and it seemed too soon to tempt fate by wading into the bulk of the water again. “That wasn’t what I meant. I never thought you’d let me die.”
“We’re stuck up here, aren’t we?” Yudai gestured with his arms held out at either side. “We can’t go down or risk drowning again, and until the rains stop—”
“—we stay here,” Tatsu finished. “You’re right. If I’d known that the storm was coming, I wouldn’t even have left the village. Coming out in this was the most dangerous decision
we could’ve made.”
“And now we’re soaking wet.”
Tatsu couldn’t suppress the shiver that worked its way up his spine.
“We’ve been through worse,” he pointed out, thinking of the snowstorm spent holed up in a cave.
“I’m not sure that’s the thing we really want to be aspiring to.”
Tatsu sat down on the sands. The dune was steep enough that nothing was pooling at the top, so as long as he didn’t let the waters sweep him backwards, it was the driest place they were going to get. He stared up at the gray cloud cover for a while hoping to see a crack, though he never found one.
Yudai settled down next to him, with strands of his hair sticking flat to his forehead.
“Maybe it’s an omen,” he said.
“You don’t believe in that sort of thing.”
Yudai shrugged. “The Joesarians do. Maybe that’s enough. After everything, it certainly seems like I’m cursed, doesn’t it?”
“You’re not cursed,” Tatsu said and sighed.
“How do you know? You’re hardly an expert in the subject.”
“If you were cursed, I wouldn’t feel—” was as far as Tatsu got before he clanked his teeth together hard enough to send a ring of pain through his jaw.
When he failed to start again, Yudai leaned closer. “You wouldn’t feel what, Tatsu?”
“There’s been so much going on,” Tatsu said. “You’re just scared. Once the rain lets up, you’ll feel better about it. Remember, you got some control back, and now the siphon isn’t draining wildly anymore—those are all positives. If you were cursed, I doubt things would go well enough for that.”
Yudai clicked his tongue again, pushing his sopping hair out of his eyes. “Quit changing the subject. You’re awful at dancing around things.”
Even if it was true, it didn’t matter. The only defense Tatsu could cling to was silence. If he didn’t say the words out loud, he could pretend that they weren’t true. He sat very still as Yudai stared down at his palms beneath the sheets of rain in a deluge from the sky.
“I ruin everything I touch,” Yudai said, softer and almost swallowed by the storm.
“No you don’t.” Tatsu reached over without thinking and grabbed Yudai’s hand, mostly just to stem the man’s self-loathing.
“I ruined you, didn’t I?” Yudai said. “Or at least I ruined us.”
“No,” Tatsu repeated and squeezed Yudai’s fingers. “That part was all me.”
“We can be that again, you know,” Yudai said. “Us. I’m not—I’m not angry anymore.”
Tatsu looked at him through the rain, and Yudai tilted his head a little to the side before adding, “I sort of understand why you panicked.”
“I didn’t panic.”
“Yes you did,” Yudai said with an airy sort of half laugh. “But I get it. The crown is… a heavy burden to bear.”
They sat like that for some time, letting the sky fall down around them as the waterlogged sands shifted only slightly around their weight.
“I’m sorry,” Tatsu said softly, afraid it was too quiet for Yudai to hear it, “for pushing you away.”
Yudai regarded him for a very long time with an unreadable expression. “I’m still the same person I always was, you know. I’m still… me.”
“I know,” Tatsu admitted, “but it feels different.”
“Technically, I’m not even king yet,” Yudai said. “And due to losing my throne in a coup, I suppose I’m not even royalty at the moment. If you want to really get down to it, since your mother stole my crown and declared herself queen, by virtue of your bloodline, you’re closer to the throne than I am right now.”
“I hadn’t actually thought of that.” Tatsu wasn’t sure whether he wanted to laugh or not. Above them, the storm seemed to be letting up, and there was a noticeable shift in the rain, to a lighter, slower shower that stung less.
Tatsu looked at Yudai with his hair matted around his ears and stuck in looping curls to his cheekbones. Yudai’s expression was both hopeful and cautious, the strange sort of marriage that somehow always seemed to work on him and look regal despite its vulnerability. Tatsu wondered how many moments he’d lost simply watching Yudai and cataloguing the lines of his face and the curve of his mouth, especially at times when no one was paying him enough attention to notice. Yudai was hauntingly beautiful in a way that was all hard angles and bristling pride, half the mask he wore to protect himself and half real frustration that bubbled up and over.
Tatsu hadn’t realized he was leaning forward until Yudai’s palm pressed against his chest to stop him.
“Don’t,” Yudai said, voice hoarse and low. “Don’t do this unless you mean it. Don’t do this unless I can keep it—”
Tatsu closed the gap between them and swallowed any words that were meant to follow. There was none of the desperation from their first kiss; after all, they’d both been pushed to the limits of their own courage, afraid to look over the edge for fear of falling completely away. The rain pooled where their lips were joined and ran rivulets down Tatsu’s chin as they kissed, the type of unhurried exploration that sent a barrage of flutters down to Tatsu’s toes and then up again. Yudai’s lips were warm and soft, pliable as they parted with a soft sigh, and Tatsu pressed his fingers against Yudai’s cheek to let his thumb caress the skin there.
Tatsu was slightly breathless when they finally parted, and he had to wipe at the rain gathering on his eyelashes. Yudai tilted in to press their foreheads together.
“I was never sure,” he said quietly. “I thought maybe I was reading all the signs wrong, and then I was terrified that you’d push me away completely, so I was never willing to step over the line. I just knew… I just knew I’d rather have you with me, even if I couldn’t have you the way I wanted to.”
There was so little that Yudai ever conceded on—it made the confession ping that much harder against Tatsu’s ribs. His hand at Yudai’s cheek curled around his ear, lost in the soppy strands of Yudai’s hair.
“When have you ever refused to just take something you wanted?” Tatsu asked, trying for a joke and deflating a bit when Yudai’s features hardened into a distressed sort of unhappiness.
“Not with you,” Yudai whispered. “Not with this.”
Unsure of how to deal with the warmth that washed over him, Tatsu simply leaned in again and hoped that Yudai could feel his agreement against his lips, over and over.
Eighteen
Their progress quickened after the rainstorm due to an unspoken concern that settled sticky over both of them. It stretched on like the nights seemed to, an expanding darkness as the days limped towards their shortest valley. The desert was still shimmering with heat, but back home, Tatsu knew his woods were covered each morning in a white frost. Winter would make the Arani Pass all the more treacherous, and going through the mountains themselves would be impossible. Their trajectory, already shaky and foreboding, would be dictated by the weather, and the notion was unsettling.
Failing to have a backup option could force them into far more dangerous situations than they could escape from.
Tatsu’s heart grew heavier with each thud of his boot sole as they moved, because the danger awaiting them once they left the desert was nothing compared to the confrontation Yudai was willingly walking himself into. When the sun broke over the dune-strewn horizon at dawn, the discomfort in his stomach grew more pronounced. He knew, rattling nervously in his fingers, the truth of what was waiting for them. Yudai wasn’t going to be able to defeat Nota without full control of his magic.
He was afraid to voice it, as if giving the words sound made them all the more real, but from the shadows on Yudai’s face, Tatsu thought maybe Yudai knew anyway.
They found one more trade outpost as they neared the Turend Mountains and their jagged, snow-covered peaks, so Tatsu used the remainder of their Joesarian money, though it only half-filled their packs and water skins. He traded away half their garments for thicker leathers that wo
uld keep them warm in the mountains. Despite Yudai’s newfound control of the siphon, Tatsu still felt more comfortable sleeping beyond the village limits, near the wooden pens where the traders kept their mounts.
It wasn’t until three days later that they stood at the edge of the sands, staring at the grains mixed in with clumps of weeds. Beyond their boots, the rocky mountainsides sloped up and away in sharp swatches of dark gray, and the color was harsh when all they’d seen for weeks was the yellow-orange of the sand. They were right back where they’d started. Staring across the lines, Tatsu swallowed down the rising bile and tried not to think about the fact that, once they crossed into the mountains, they were on both Chayd’s and Runon’s doorsteps as unwelcome guests.
“Do you think the queen still has the mercenaries after us?” Yudai asked as Tatsu continued to hesitate. “Or have they lost their tracker and given up without Leil to tip them off?”
“I don’t know. But I hope…”
He couldn’t find enough energy to finish the thought.
“They may not expect us to have come straight back to Runon.”
“Or maybe that’s exactly what they thought we were going to do,” Tatsu said.
He let his eyes linger on Yudai’s face. Despite his attempts to keep them out of the brunt of the desert sun, weeks spent in the desert were painted across their skin. Tatsu’s wrists and hands were a mild brown that faded out beneath the layers of cloth on his forearms, and Yudai’s normally light olive face bore a darker tan that made the white ends of his hair stand out even more. Tatsu’s limbs carried a perpetual heaviness from too little water rationed for far too long, but at least the snowcaps to either side of them promised a respite from the thirst that his throat ached for. They were tired, both of them, the sort of weariness that even standing on the brink of inevitability couldn’t chase away.
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