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“I’m— “

“Mad.”

Valdus pinches the bridge of his nose. “I was.”

My mind itches with the desire to run, hide, let the conflict unravel without my intervention. I’ve done it all my life, after all. Before I can do any of that, Valdus finally lifts his warm brown eyes towards me.

“You made it clear you didn’t want to see me.” He shrugs and his voice comes out even terser than before.

I open my mouth. When no intelligent answer comes, I close it back again.

“You left,” he says.

“I lost a friend,” I murmur, clutching the cuffs of my shirt. “They took Damen.”

The tears come all at once. Over Lara. Over how unfair I was to the family I don’t deserve.

Valdus sighs and wraps me in his arms. When we hear footsteps approach, he pulls me into the backyard.

“I know the weight you carry,” Valdus murmurs, drying my tears with his metal fingers.

It’s only under the cold light of the moon that I notice dark circles under his eyes. Guilt has been gnawing on him, keeping him awake. I’ve lost a friend, but he has lost another part of his family. I understand there and then that he’ll never forgive himself. Lara’s death will haunt his every breath. She was another soldier that has fought not out of greed or fame, but for the ideals we all share. She has died for him.

“I’m sorry,” I say, my voice breaking into a terse whisper.

Valdus puts his hands on both sides of my face with a sad smile. “You’re no longer alone in this desert. You have the rebellion, you have Inara”—his fingers run over my cheekbones, leaving a burning trace—“and you have me.”

My eyes dart to his lips, and I want nothing else but to burn in that kiss, but voices grow louder in the kitchen.

I pull away just as Numair and Inara appear in the backyard, but Valdus threads his fingers through mine as he looks expectantly at his family. A smirk dancing on Numair’s lips has me wishing for the desert to swallow me whole, but thankfully Inara backhands him.

Numair's expression turns serious. “It’s not every day we manage to grow our own food and become independent from the emperor. So, what do you say to a small celebration?”

Guilt and grief squeeze my lungs with a painful gasp. How can I dance and sing when my friend will never be able to do it again?

“Rev hasn’t left,” Valdus says. “We can’t afford the attention.”

My heart skips a beat. I’ve been so engrossed in my own sorrow that I’ve forgotten about my father’s foot-soldier scouring the town for The Lost Jewel.

“We can do it in the laboratory.” Numair shrugs. “No one beside the people we trust knows about it.”

Inara is the one who draws lines of kohl around my eyes this time. Less thick, they make my face look like an elegant doll’s. As she runs a brush through the long waves of her hair, I straighten the loose deep black shirt over her slender shoulders. Inara pats my hand, meeting my gaze in the mirror. “What do you say we go to The House of Eternity tomorrow?”

“It’s not the same without Damen.”

Sadness is a veil over Inara’s features when she speaks. “I’ve heard the new priest is Warren’s puppet.”

“I’ve heard he has an ugly mustache above his lip.”

I clamp my hands over my mouth. The priests of Evanae are sacred. A joke such as this would warrant a flogging back at the palace, but a wicked smile spreading across Inara’s lips tells me I’m not the only one with sin on her mind. “We can go just to make fun of him,” she says.

A nervous chuckle breaks out from my lips, and I feel lighter. Lara’s death feels bearable for the first time, if only for a moment. “We’ll go,” I answer with a nod.

I whisk Inara into the hall where everyone has gathered around a feast that we’ve spent hours preparing. I can feel the sadness lingering, but everyone is here because this is a new beginning. A new page in our history.

Valdus finds me after everyone has had enough to drink and laughter fills the hall, but before Numair has taken the stage to play some songs. We talk about everything and anything, laughter bubbling inside me. I can feel Lara’s presence missing, but it no longer stifles my breath, and that’s enough for me.

When Numair takes the stage, we dance. Long enough for my feet to hurt, short enough for me to miss the feeling of Valdus’s hand on the small of my back.