“Yes, we did,” I answered. “Thank you.”
She and Wren frowned.
“And?” Synové prompted.
I knew what she wanted to hear, and maybe she deserved to hear it. The words hovered on my tongue but then I couldn’t speak. Everything froze inside of me, and all I could see was Kazi.
She was blushing, and her cheeks were like a hot smoky sunset. I had never seen her squirm like that. She had stared for the longest time at Synové’s gift resting in her palm.
The package had practically unraveled in my hands. Maybe I had helped it along. I wasn’t sure, but I was curious, something inside of me eager.
What is this, Kazi?
Our words sounded in my head, clear as the moment we said them.
A feastcake, she had answered.
And then she lifted the cake, curious too, and there, tucked beneath the waxed cloth, was a long red ribbon. I lifted it, and it caught in the breeze, the red satin waving between us. What is this for?
Kazi shook her head. I’m afraid Synové got carried away. These are for—
She took a deep breath, her lips rolling tight over her teeth. Never mind.
I looked at her lowered lashes, maybe some part of me knowing already, a strange anticipation growing in me. Tell me, I said. I want to know.
Her mouth pulled, uncomfortable, and I wanted to kiss away her worry. A feastcake and red ribbon, she said, are part of a Vendan ceremony.
I had relived that moment again and again. When I was barely alive in the root cellar, I was certain that memory was all that kept me anchored to this world—“Patrei?”
“Jase!”
I looked up. Both of their gazes were fixed on me like I had grown horns.
“What’s the matter with you?” Wren snapped.
“It’s not important,” Synové said, furrows lining her forehead. “You can tell us when you’re ready. We don’t—”
“Tell me about your gift,” I said. Synové’s dream was suddenly urgent in my head again. “I need to know. The gift your queen has, the one you have, the one that—”
Wren lifted both of her hands in denial when I looked at her. “Not me,” she said. “I don’t have anything.”
Synové puffed a loose strand of hair from her face. “Everyone has something,” she countered and sat back on her heels, eager to talk about it. She told me the gift was a kind of knowing. “Almost like another kind of language, the queen says, one that’s buried deep inside us, but we don’t always understand it. It’s another sense that needs to be nurtured. It’s what helped the Ancients survive after the devastation. The queen says when they had nothing else, they had to return to the language of knowing to survive.”
She said it manifested itself in different ways for different people. The queen sometimes saw visions, sometimes heard a soft voice, and sometimes it was only a warning beat crouching low in her gut. Synové’s own gift leaned more toward dreams, but she had a hard time discerning which ones actually meant something. “I’m still trying to figure it all out. The queen tells me to be patient, to nurture my gift, but sometimes it scares me.”
“It always scares you,” Wren added.
“What about Death?” I asked. “Do you see him?”
She and Wren looked at each other, some sober thought passing between them. They knew about Kazi. “No,” Synové answered quietly. “I don’t. Not the way Kazi does.” She shivered. “And I think what Kazi has is more of a curse than a gift.”
Wren frowned. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
Synové hugged her arms. “I’m surprised she told you. She doesn’t like to talk about it, even with us.”
I nodded. “She told me that when Fertig’s crew attacked us and he was choking her, she saw Death standing over his shoulder, pointing at her.”
“Death was not in my dream, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Synové said, her fingers nervously twisting the end of her braid. “That much I know for sure.”