“That He did,” Yoris said.
Merik flinched—he’d forgotten Yoris was there. Forgotten that Evrane and Iseult were climbing up. Everything inside of him had been lost in Safiya’s smile. In the truth of her words. Noden had listened.
“That ship,” Yoris continued, “fell from the sky almost a year ago, somehow carried by a storm. She hit the earth with a shudder like you wouldn’t believe. Upside down, just as you see her, and with food bursting out the windows.”
Merik shook his head, forced his mind back to the present. “And … what about the ship’s sailors?”
“There was no one onboard,” Yoris answered. “There were signs of cleaving, though. A few black stains that we scrubbed away, and some damage on the hull that might’ve been foxes. But that was it.”
A cry sounded behind Merik—he jerked around. Evrane had crested the hill—had seen the forests and the life.
She crumpled to the earth, her palms hitting the dusty soil before Merik could reach her. She just waved him off, a prayer tumbling off her tongue and tears pooling in her eyes. Streaking down her dirty cheeks.
Merik’s own eyes started to burn then because this was what he’d worked for—what he and Evrane and Kullen and Yoris and everyone else from Merik’s childhood had worked for and sweated for and fought for.
“How?” Evrane murmured, hugging her rumpled cloak to her chest and shaking her head. “How?”
Despite Yoris’s long-standing distrust for Evrane, his expression melted. Even he couldn’t deny that Evrane Nihar loved this land.
“The river’s clean,” Yoris said, voice gruff but gentle. “We don’t know why, but we only discovered that—and the start of this new forest around it—when we found the ship. Didn’t take us long after to start a new settlement, and we have more families comin’ in every week.”
Families. For a moment, Merik wasn’t sure what that word meant … Families. Women and children. Was such a thing possible?
A new realization hit then, punching the breath from Merik’s lungs. If Yoris had created this in mere months, then what might happen with a steady supply of food? What more could be built and be grown?
Merik’s fingers moved to his coat, to the agreement there. He glanced at Safiya. She met his gaze and grinned wider.
And Merik forget how to breathe entirely.
Then Safi shifted away to help Iseult climb the rest of the hill, and Merik’s lungs regained their function. His mind regained clarity, and after a sharp tug at his collar, he offered a hand to Evrane.
“Come, Aunt. We’re almost there.”
Evrane dabbed at her cheek, smearing the dirt and tears more than wiping them away. Then she bared a tentative grin, as if she’d forgotten how to smile.
Actually, Merik couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his aunt smile.
“We are not simply ‘almost there,’ Merik.” She took his hand and clambered to her feet. “My dear, dear nephew, we are almost home.”
THIRTY-ONE
Noden’s Gift was easily the happiest village Safi had ever seen. She and Iseult followed Yoris, Merik, and Evrane over a crude bridge, the river below a choppy slice in the yellow earth. It led to an outer cluster of wooden huts with rounded thatch roofs and plank walls, as bleached as the trees from which they were hewn. The homes seemed awfully precarious to Safi—like the first big storm would bluster them all into the fast-moving river.
Then again, Nubrevnans were clearly a resilient lot. If a squall stole their homes, they would simply start over again. And again and again.
A sparrow plunged over the bridge, a raven croaked from a rooftop, and fat fern leaves shivered up from the steep riverbanks.
And everyone—everyone Safi passed—was smiling.
Not at Safi—she just earned curious stares. And definitely not at Iseult, who was hooked on Safi’s arm and slouched deeply within Evrane’s cloak. But Merik … When the people caught sight of their prince, Safi had never seen such brilliant smiles. Never felt such a burn of her witchery at the truth behind them.
These people loved him.
“You’re impressed,” Iseult said, her cloak’s hood pulled low so that no one could see the pallor of her skin, the pitch of her hair. She was walking slowly, breathing heavily on Safi’s arm, but she seemed determined to make it all the way to Yoris’s base before she acknowledged any sort of pain or exhaustion.
“Your Threads are bright enough to give sight to a blind man,” Iseult continued. “Do you mind reining it in? I might get the wrong idea.”
“The wrong idea?” Safi snorted. “In what way? Aren’t you impressed?” Safi jerked her chin toward a gnarled grandma in the doorway of a windowless lean-to. “That woman is actually sobbing at the sight of her prince.”
“That baby’s crying too.” Iseult waved to a wide-hipped woman who held a toddler at her hip. “Clearly the youths of Nubrevna adore their prince.”
“Ha-ha,” Safi said dryly. “I’m serious, Iseult. Did you ever see people react like this to the Guildmasters in Dalmotti? Because I didn’t. And the people in Praga certainly never fawned over their Cartorran doms and domnas.” She shook her head, pushing aside thoughts of her own estate, where no one had ever—ever—looked at Uncle Eron in this way.
Or at Safi. Her whole life, she’d told herself she didn’t care. That she didn’t want the villagers or farmers to like her—or even notice her. So what if they blamed Safi for her drunken uncle, as if she were supposed to stop his debauchery somehow.