The first time I die, I see her.

Our eyes meet on the battlefield. The ground is slick with mud and fresh blood, the rain cold on my hands, numbing my grip around the hilt of my sword. I know my shoulder is wounded, but I can’t feel the pain. I have to keep moving, keep fighting, keep killing.

Dozens of enemy soldiers have fallen beneath my blade already, the gush of their blood hot on my boots, on my hands and my face. Sometimes they’re close enough that I can feel their last wheezing, shuddering breath against me. In those moments, when everything falls away and it’s just me and them, their final exhale and the fear in their eyes fading to emptiness as they gaze into mine, I feel a moment of peace, of reverence.

To them, in that second, I’m a goddess. Their final and only thought when they die.

Our eyes meet.

She’s wearing the colors of Erast—invaders once exiled across the Endless Sea, come back to reclaim the lands—her blade glistening crimson with the blood of my allies. There’s a confidence in her gait as she strides towards me that I feel myself mirroring.

Our swords come together. In no more than a few seconds, it’s over. I’m wounded and she’s not.

Her blue eyes are colder than the rain, colder than the mud I’m sinking into, colder than the clutch of death around my heart. They’re on me for only a second, just long enough to confirm her killing blow, and then she’s gone.

As I die, I think that perhaps, if she wasn’t my enemy, I would have respected her unexpected grace on such a nightmarish battlefield. 

 

~*~

 

The first time I awake from death, I’m nothing but pain.

The hoarse scream that rattles free of my throat tastes of blood. It echoes through the silence of the once loud battlefield, followed by the cawing of crows come to feast.

Where she split me open—a precise, masterful slash down my torso that sent my own insides spilling against my boots—itches and crawls and burns like the wrath of the gods themselves. It hurts. Gods, it hurts. But when I heave myself up, blinking grime and rain from my eyes, and pull aside my blood-soaked armor, my flesh is whole. All that remains is a thin, white scar curved from breast to navel.

How?

All around me, the ground is littered with corpses. Nothing moves and it’s clear that I’m alone. The battle has ended, or perhaps moved on for another time, another place, and the carnage is all that remains.

How am I alive?

I get to my feet, now free from the pain that welcomed me back into this world. Even my shoulder that had been wounded is now healed.

Then, in the near silence, I hear a sudden gasping, shaking breath.

Not far away, I find her.

Even so close to death, her eyes blaze with fury and disgust. Even pinned to the mud with a sword through the gut, she pulls at the blade with determination as though she intends to get up and kill me once more. For a second, I think there’s recognition in those eyes as I draw near. Or perhaps it’s just the recognition that all enemies feel.

I don’t know how she’s still alive.

“Demon,” she hisses through teeth bared like a feral animal. “Filth.”

They are her final words as I pull the sword free from her stomach and slice her throat. Blue eyes turn glassy, hateful words dying as her lips go slack.

The battlefield is quiet once more.

I don’t know what to do or where to go. If there’s anyone left for me to follow. Why death released me and what it means.

But I’m thirsty, an aching in my gut and throat, my tongue a physical weight in my mouth and against my teeth. Water, then a plan.

I’m on my fifth body, rolling them over and checking belts for waterskins, feeling the mud around them, desperate and trembling, when I hear it again.

A gasping, shaking breath that punches through the quiet.

My knees are unsteady as I rise and turn around, only to find her crawling to her feet. Before my very eyes, the gaping wound on her throat closes, the one in her gut already healed. And those cold eyes are once again piercing the feet that separate us.

My shock and hesitation cost me.

She lunges at me, grabbing an axe from a body between us.

There’s a thud that I feel through my body before I hear it as the axe edge buries itself in my shoulder, my neck, there’s no way to know for sure. The ground rushes to meet me and I taste a bitter, hot gush of blood as—

Darkness.

 

~*~

 

Light.

I scream, back arching off the ground and fingers scratching through the mud. I can feel the axe still in the meat where my neck meets my shoulder and retching, bile sour and hot in my mouth, I find the handle and manage to pull it from my body.

I roll over and throw up what little is in my stomach, and by the time I reach for the wound once more, my fingers find nothing but unblemished skin.

Across the field, I see her frozen, watching me.

I pant, huffs of my breath hanging suspended in the cold air. My pain is gone, my thirst is back, and she is still here.

I’m alive.

Again.

She takes a step forward and my hand finds the leather grip of the axe that I dropped beside me.

 

~*~

 

At some point, I lose track of how many times I’ve died, each wrench from the dark clutches of death and into my agony-filled body blurring into the next. The only victory I have here, the only fleeting satisfaction I’ve felt, is that I’ve killed her just as many times as I’ve been killed.

I’ve learned to go for the fatal blows. Slashes and stabs disappear within seconds, leaving behind nothing but a smear of blood and for me, the memory of pain. For her, she appears to feel nothing. I don’t know if I’m inflicting pain; but at the very least, I get a few minutes of respite if I manage to kill her first.

With each new awakening, I scream and retch, kicking and clawing like I’m being dragged from the world beyond by my hair. For her, it’s always the same, that shaking, gasping breath, then cold silence.

I wonder if this is a curse of her doing. I wonder if this is a task from the gods. I wonder if I live until I can kill her for good.

I wonder if this is the same thought that drives her to pick up her sword again and again.

And by the sunrise of the second day, I wonder if this is divine punishment for the both of us.

We circle each other once more as the sun crawls higher in the sky, weapons raised between us. Her arms tremble, her once blonde braid undone and tangled with bits of gristle and smears of blood. We both shed our armor the night before upon realizing it was useless, and her slashed up undershirt is stuck to her body with sweat.

I am so tired of fighting. Of killing. Of dying.

The dirt of the field feels like it’s burrowing underneath my skin, crawling behind my eyes and coating my mouth. The air is throbbing and pulsating before my eyes, distorting the horizon I can’t help but flick my gaze towards in longing.

There’s something unfamiliar here, in this moment, between us. Hanging, swelling into something greater, something different.

She should have attacked me by now. Or perhaps it is my turn.

Neither of us move.

“Witch,” she croaks, her only words to me since I first killed her. She has screamed in rage and frustration, howled like an animal, but never spoken. “Why have you done this?”

I want to laugh. I want to cry. I want to cut her open once more. I want to turn my sword on myself.

“This is not my doing,” I tell her, in a voice I don’t recognize as my own. “And if it is not you, it must be the gods. A curse.”

Yesterday, I died as her sword slashed me open. Yesterday, I awoke when the crows came to feast upon my corpse. Yesterday, I killed her time and time again, and died and died again. We traded deaths, traded rebirths, then started again.

Today, I am just tired. I find myself craving the pain of death, the pain of waking up, just to feel something other than the hollow numbness that has spread through my whole being. I want her to end me. I want to be free of this.

I drop my sword.

She watches me warily and I see the point of hers waver in the air between us.

“Keep killing me if you must,” I say, spreading my arms wide. “Whatever string of fate that has tethered us together cannot be cut with a blade, that much is clear.”

Her teeth bare in a grimace and for a second, I think she’s going to charge me again. Instead, her sword joins mine in the dirt.

I sit and a second later, she does the same, careful to keep distance between us. I want to laugh at her caution, the pointlessness of it.

She doesn’t speak and I take the silence to study her as I haven’t yet been able to. Her pale skin has freckled from the sun in some places, burned to a red and angry shade in others. She’s slender and fine-boned like a bird, even more evident now that she’s shed her armor and sits still against the dirt. She doesn’t look like someone who belongs on the battlefield.

That she managed to kill me, the first times and all the ones that followed, should shame me. Looking at her now, it feels impossible—nearly as inexplicable as neither of us being able to stay dead.

“What is the purpose of this?” I ask her.

Her mouth twists, like she’s bitten into an unripe apple, like she’d rather die once more than answer. But she says, “I would never presume to know the plans of the gods. It is clear they intend for us to live, though I don’t know the reason.”

“A task, perhaps? A quest of some kind?” The words feel wrong in my mouth. So far, this has been nothing but a curse. Surely the gods would not be so cruel unintentionally. “No matter the reason, we are clearly bound together by this.” She looks confused and I gesture to the day’s old corpses around us. “Many have died here, yet we are the only ones to come back. There must be a reason.”

To my surprise, she reluctantly nods.

“The thought had occurred to me as well,” she admits.

If anyone had told me as we’d marched into battle yesterday, that it would end with me having a civil conversation with an Erastian, I’d have laughed myself to tears. Now, I was just glad to not be fighting any longer.

“I’m Farryn.” I give her my true name. She’s wearing my blood like warpaint, seen the shape of the things inside of me—there’s nothing left for me to keep hidden.

“Farryn.” She says my name like it tastes strange on her tongue, but nods. “I’m Ayana.”

Ayana.

It fits her, a soft name for a delicate looking warrior with cold blue eyes.

“We should move on from here,” I tell her. Death has been a distraction, but now, hunger gnaws at my stomach and I ache with thirst. Clearly whatever is healing my wounds and keeping me from true death does not save me from such basic needs. It’s a strange relief to still feel discomfort. “Food and water, then sleep. Tomorrow, we can question the god’s intentions and decide where we go.”

She doesn’t protest, knowing as I do that we’ll be traveling together.

~*~

 

Long after we’ve left the stench of the rotting battlefield behind us, after we find a clear stream to drink from and wash up in, we reach the edge of a forest.

We scavenged what we could before we left. The Erastian attack had been a surprise, many of our supplies dropped the moment we spotted the enemy marching in our direction. They’d been well picked over by whichever side had come out victorious—strange how little I care about that now—but we still found bedrolls, clothes that fit us passably well and weren’t slashed up or blood-soaked, and usable waterskins. No food, of course, but Ayana proved adept at finding edible plants as we walked.

She leaves me now to search the edge of the forest while I lay out the bedrolls, several feet apart. It is too risky to start a fire with potential enemies for either of us in the area, but as the sun sets, the night air doesn’t cool much.

We eat in silence when she returns with a shirt full of greens, watching each other as we chew. Unspoken words linger heavily in the space between us, murderous rivalry set aside but not forgotten.

I wonder if Ayana is feeling the same as I am, this dark, frightening thing just under my skin. Despair, perhaps. Fear, certainly.

Nothing was free of death, aside from the gods, the land beneath my feet, and the Endless Sea. It was the way of things, the way they should be. Such thoughts have never frightened me.

Death has always been a constant for me, death in battle a promise. Born into a family of warriors and generals, I never knew anything else. It was to be the end of my road, an enemy’s sword bringing me an honorable death, if such a thing exists. The certainty of my looming death was what made me feel alive some days. It was the night before battle that wine tasted the sweetest, that the toughest bread melted on my tongue.

And now, what? Will I be cursed to walk this land, unable to die and thus unable to live? Will food become tasteless, water refusing to quench my thirst, the touch of another person like a ghost against my skin?

What will I become?

I shiver, rubbing my hands together in an attempt to warm them.

Across from me, Ayana watches with shadowed eyes.

“Do you want to go home?” I ask her, surprised when the question falls from my lips.

She is quiet for a long second. “This is supposed to be my home.”

I can’t tell if she’s being stubborn or honest. Erastians haven’t called this land their home in many generations, long enough that the trees and the animals have probably forgotten they were ever here.

“This land isn’t yours,” I say simply, despite knowing it’s not that simple for her. “Why is it worth dying for?”

“Aren’t you dying for the same thing?” she shoots back.

I’m defending my home and my people—there’s a difference.

Ayana closes her eyes and shakes her head, her blonde braid nearly glowing as the darkness deepens. “You wouldn’t understand. We were forced from here, from our towns, our farms, our temples, the places sacred to the gods. Things that have been here, waiting for our return. They belong to us too. The children of my people deserve to live in their ancestral homes, worship in the temples their ancestors built, and visit the lands that were touched by the gods themselves. That right is worth dying for.”

I give her the respect of listening to her words and the passion that permeates them before I respond.

“And is it not my people’s right to defend ourselves against you? Do our children not deserve the same things, and to sleep in their beds at night knowing they won’t be slaughtered in the morning by an Erastian army?”

Her head cocks slightly to the side. “I would argue that all children deserve peace. Unfortunately, your people decided against that when they sent us to a dead, barren land to die and waste away. They weren’t thinking of our children then.”

We could talk circles around each other all night if we wished.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore,” I murmur.

Our eyes meet and I know we are both wondering if we’ll return to our people, our armies, our cause. I find the thought souring in my stomach. I’ve given a hundred deaths to this fight, isn’t that enough?

It’s a selfish thought, one that makes me think I deserve this curse.

“Do you want to go home?” Ayana asks.

I should have expected her question and I pause, if only because the answer comes to me without hesitation and I find myself irrationally afraid of her judgment.

“I have no home to return to. Once I came of age, I was sent to train with armies and it was always expected that I would spend my days going from battle to battle, city to city.” I stare down at my boots, remembering the day I left my mother and knew I would never see her again. “I said my farewells a long time ago. News will reach them that I died in battle and they will feel pride, then move on. As it should be.”

There is no doubt in my mind that my father would rather think I was dead than know I had dropped my sword before my enemy and now shared a meal with her.

“Did you want to be a warrior?”

“What?”

“When you were a child and dreamed of the future as children do… Did you want to be a warrior?”

I stare at her. Not one person had ever asked me that.

“I… I’m not certain.”

“Were you not allowed to dream? Are the fates of children decided for them at birth here?” Her tone is scathing, and I know she’s trying to entice me into another argument.

She doesn’t realize I have no defense here.

“Mine was,” I just tell her honestly, and there’s a bitter edge to my words that I know we both hear.

She falls silent after that.

We finish our meager meal, the ache in my stomach lessening, and wordlessly go to our bedrolls. One of us should stay up and keep watch, but I know we are both exhausted and would undoubtedly fall asleep anyway.

I can hear her breathing, steady and slow—so different from the gasping, shaking ones that pull her from death—and wonder if she’s already fallen asleep. I want to turn and look, but I don’t. I want to ask her what she dreamed of as a child, but I don’t.

As the moon rises above us, I’m lulled to sleep by the sound of her and the rustling of the trees overhead.

~*~

 

I awake with a dagger at my gut.

Ayana is on top of me, the tip of the knife held steady against me. It’s still dark, the moon not much higher than when I last saw it.

My heart is racing in my chest as we stare into each other’s eyes and I think I can feel hers too. Steadier, stronger than mine, as she takes me in.

I’m helpless beneath her.

“Do you wish to kill me again?”

“Yes.” She breathes the word like it’s a release. “Perhaps that place, that field, was the true curse. Now that we’ve left it behind, do you think you’ll die?”

I feel foolish that the thought hadn’t occurred to me. I suppose if she’s right, the price for my foolishness will be my life.

“I don’t know. Do you intend to find out?”

Slowly, I slip my hand under the edge of my bedroll where I’ve stashed a knife of my own. My fingers find the hilt.

Rather than answering with words, she shifts her weight forward slightly and lets the dagger slide into the soft flesh of my gut.

Hot, searing pain doesn’t stop me from returning the favor, though my thrust is a little weaker than I would have preferred. Still, it thuds solidly into her side and hot blood trickles over my hand.

She gasps, a tiny sound from her parted lips, but doesn’t move.

We’re pressed together—holding each other up, maybe—her blood dripping down to mix with my own. She smells of sweat and dirt and green, and I want to breathe it in. I’ve tasted her blood on my lips, inhaled her last breath into my own lungs, seen all the soft, vulnerable parts tucked away inside her body. Has anyone ever known a deeper intimacy than us?

This will be my sweetest death so far.

My hand finds her wrist and I curl my fingers around the delicate bones there, tight enough that I can feel her pulse pounding. I mean to push her away but I pull her closer, wincing as her dagger slides in deeper. She exhales, warm against my face, and leans into me.

I’ve returned from death more times than I know, yet I can’t remember feeling more alive than I do at this moment, impaled upon Ayana’s dagger, sharing the air between our lips, feeling our heartbeats slow then pick up once again.

We heal. I can feel it in my gut, that itching, burning, crawling sensation I’ve grown too familiar with these past days. I can feel the trickle of blood from her wound slow and then stop, no longer searching out my own.

Stab me again if you wish. Hurt me. Kill me.

Make me feel alive.

The words claw at my throat but I swallow them down. What need do I have for pain when Ayana is this close, looking at me the way she is?

She moves away first, taking her blade with her and leaving me empty and aching.

“Go back to sleep,” she says roughly, as if she hadn’t just tried to kill me. As if we hadn’t both just felt that. “It would appear the gods aren’t yet done with us.”

She pulls my knife from her side and sets it, almost gently, next to my bedroll. Her eyes won’t meet mine and I wonder what she thinks she has left to hide from me.

Somehow, we sleep.

 

~*~

 

We decide to travel to Mordin, a large port city where the Erastians first emerged from the Endless Sea and docked. Bound in laws declared by the gods themselves, it’s a peaceful city where no violence may take place.

I doubt either of us expect to find answers there. We decide on it for lack of other options, and as the nearest large city, it’s still a two-week journey by foot.

We do not try to kill each other again. I find the thought unwelcome, a rotten pit in my mind as we travel together.

Perhaps it’s just self-preservation, the fear that without Ayana, I will know the true meaning of cursed as I walk alone, unable to die. With her beside me, I am still one of two. I am still human.

On the second day of the journey, she starts to talk.

“The grass here is much greener than Erast,” she says conversationally. “I didn’t realize it could get this green until we came here.” She crouches down to brush her hand through the long strands that rustle in the breeze. “So lush, not dry and brittle. The grass in Erast could hurt you, it is so stiff. As children, my brothers and I would challenge each other to walk through fields barefoot. My youngest brother never lost—he thought he had something to prove, being the youngest and the smallest—but his feet would be so sore after, I’d carry him home on my back.”

There’s a fond smile on her face that I haven’t seen yet. She sees me staring and tucks her chin to try and hide it.

I crouch next to her and pluck a few strands of grass, offering one to her. “Taste it.” I tuck the base into my mouth to show her how.

She does so warily, and her eyes widen in surprise. “It’s sweet!”

Her reaction pulls a laugh from me. “These longer grasses have sweet ends. When I was young, I’d finish my chores early and go lay in the fields, eating grass and watching the birds until my father came to fetch me.”

I’d steal those moments as often as I could, dozing as the clouds crept across the sky and the birds sang in nearby trees.

There’s such a look of childlike wonder and appreciation on her face as she shifts the piece of grass around in her mouth, that I find myself sitting on the ground, unstrapping my sword and placing it next to me. I cross my legs and pull a handful of grass from the ground, placing it in my lap.

“Sit. I’ll show you something my mother taught me.”

Ayana joins me, her curiosity pulling her close enough that the end of the grass in her mouth tickles my cheek. She doesn’t notice and I don’t say anything.

I take two strands and fold them into each other tightly, adding a third piece, then another. My fingers remember what my mind does not, creating a tight weave.

A memory of the day my mother first sat me on her lap and taught me to weave grass rises in me. How she guided my clumsy hands and hummed under her breath, a simple little tune that she said was to help keep the rhythm of her fingers but I always thought she just enjoyed.

I hum the same tune now as I fold in more strands and my creation lengthens. We’re wasting precious daylight sitting here, and on such an inconsequential thing, yet neither of us say so. Ayana hasn’t looked up from my hands once.

When I finish, I have a thin strap of woven grass and I hold it up to show her how I connect the ends together. It makes a loop and gently, I place it on her head.

As children, we would pretend they were crowns. On Ayana, it’s more of a headband, a headband that doesn’t fit particularly well, though one would think it was a crown from the way her face lights up.

For the first time, she looks at me and her blue eyes are warm.

 

~*~

 

The next day, Ayana keeps her hands busy as she walks, occasionally pausing to gather more grass. I’m curious if she’s having any success with the simple weave but I leave her to it. We talk instead about our childhoods more, our cities and families, always carefully skirting around the war that brought us together.

Then, as we stop to sleep for the night, she approaches me, her steps hesitant, so different from her confident stride that day on the battlefield.

“For you,” she says and holds out her hand.

She gives me a woven loop, almost identical to the one I made but significantly smaller. I’m confused until she gestures to her wrist, perhaps embarrassed I didn’t immediately realize what it was for.

“To wear.”

Ah, like a bracelet.

I slip it on and it’s a tight fit but I manage without ruining it and it settles lightly on my wrist. The weave is rather clumsily done—tight in some spots, bulging slightly where it’s loose in others—and if my hand was any bigger, it wouldn’t have fit.

“You are quite skilled to make something so lovely on your first try,” I tell her honestly and stroke the soft weave with my thumb, liking how it catches on the grooves. “Thank you.”

“Or you are just a good teacher.” Despite her words, she looks pleased. “Perhaps in another life…” She trails off.

“What?” I prompt gently.

“Perhaps you wouldn’t have been born a warrior,” she says softly after a long pause. “And perhaps we would have met under different circumstances.”

Her words settle uncomfortably in my chest.

This uneasy truce between us has changed these last few days. I see it in Ayana too.

“This is another life. A hundred lives and a hundred deaths after the one where we first met. And perhaps I’m a warrior no longer.” I sigh, staring down at my dirt and blood-crusted fingernails, and beneath those, my dirt and blood-crusted boots. “I don’t know the purpose of this…curse. And I don’t know if we will ever know. My heart only tells me that I don’t wish to fight anymore.”

It’s an admission that should shame me but instead, I feel free from a heavy weight.

A long silence follows.

“If you don’t wish to fight,” Ayana asks, “what will you do?”

I have no answer for either of us.

~*~

 

At some point, we slow down.

It starts with a river, cold and clean and refreshing. We stop for a drink and when I glance over at Ayana, I find her slipping into the water, fully dressed aside from her boots. She groans at the relief from the heat, at the current tugging at her dirty clothes and grimy hair, and the sound makes me follow in after her.

We end up spending the rest of the day here, bathing, swimming, cooling off, until we drag ourselves onto the shore and dry in the sun, eating berries from bushes that line the shore.

For the first time, I find myself jealous of the sun. The sun, that on some days, I welcome with a sigh, and others, curse when there’s no relief from the heat.

Today, I watch Ayana and feel envious of the sun’s rays that have kissed the freckles upon her nose and cheeks. And then of the water, as beads roll down her collarbone and arms when she lifts herself up to pluck more berries from the bush beside us. Of the shirt that clings wetly to her skin and the sand of the riverbank that curls around her body as she lays back down.

I am jealous of all that gets to touch her like I cannot.

After that, it’s an abandoned orchard only a day later. There’s no sign of pillaging—the owners more likely abandoning their home to avoid the war—and the trees are heavy with apples.

Loading our arms with the fruit, we sit in a nearby meadow and feast until we’re drunk on the sweet fruit. We end up stretched out in opposite directions, head-to-head, hands and lips sticky with apple juice, while Ayana tells me of traveling on the Endless Sea.

Her slender hands paint pictures in the air as she speaks, and I find myself mesmerized by their movement. The soft pink of her blunt nails, the way her fingers flit around while silhouetted against the blue sky, the calluses that I’ve felt scrape against my own skin. I turn my head to watch her and find her looking at me.

That night, I dream of her hands. And all the nights that follow.

The days pass quickly with her and before I know it, we’re only a few days from Mordin. I find myself strangely apprehensive to reach it, afraid that whatever has bloomed between us on this journey will wither and die once we reach civilization.

I want to ask Ayana if she has the same fear but the words won’t come. And perhaps it’s my imagination, hopeful wishes playing tricks on me, but I swear her steps are slower today as we draw near the city.

Perhaps, had I not been so distracted, I would have heard the group come upon us before it was too late.

One of the men grabs Ayana first, knife at her throat. I see it from the corner of my eye and instincts send me whirling, sword out, in time to catch the second man coming up on me. He freezes as I level my blade at his chest.

A tall woman joins us from the side of the path, making it clear this was a planned ambush.

It’s not uncommon for bandits to linger along roads outside of the cities to pick off travelers, but it’s something I haven’t worried about since I started traveling with the war party. As a party of two, Ayana and I should have been more wary.

I glance over at the man who has his knife to Ayana’s throat, arm across her chest. He doesn’t look worried that I’ve got a sword on one of his companions.

And Ayana is as calm as always. Perhaps there is enough fear in me for the both of us.

“Release her,” I tell him. My hand is steady where I hold my sword.

“Hand over your belongings and I’ll let her go,” he counters. “There’s no need for things to get bloody.”

He doesn’t realize that no matter how this goes, he’ll be dead on the end of my sword by nightfall just for touching her.

Maybe he does realize though, or sees something in my eyes, because he pulls Ayana tighter against him, stepping away. His female companion shifts uneasily, while the man I’ve got at swordpoint is barely breathing.

“We have nothing except the clothes on our backs and bedrolls.” I try to sound calm, to will him to let Ayana go. Most of these robbers don’t want to fight, hoping the element of surprise will be enough. The knife is most likely just a bluff. “There is nothing worth taking. Unhand her and we can part ways as nothing more than strangers on the road.”

As I speak, my eyes find the blood crusted around the base of the knife and around the nails of his hand. The splatters on his pants and boots. The look in his eyes that I recognize.

I realize he’s a true killer less than a breath before he moves. A breath where I can only meet Ayana’s blue eyes.

“Farryn—”

My name is all she gets out before his knife slashes across her throat, a smooth, practiced, familiar move. Red paints the dirt of the road as she falls. Red glistens on his blade. Red is all I can see.

My wrath is an ice-cold thing that rises in my chest and clutches at my lungs.

The man at the end of my sword is dead before he can move, his insides hitting the ground before he does. The woman is next as she charges me, axe held overhead, lips curled in a snarl. I duck out of the way and come up behind her, cleaving through flesh and spine to leave her broken on the ground.

Ayana’s killer is waiting for me, frozen with fear or waiting in arrogance, I can’t be sure. It doesn’t matter.

I disarm him quickly and kick out his knee so he kneels before me. He’s done nothing but his chest is heaving, sweat slicked across his brow. He knows I’m going to kill him and shuts his eyes like a coward.

“Your death will be a slow one for killing her,” I tell him, plunging my sword carefully into the softness of his belly. I withdraw it just as carefully and leave him there to bleed out and die.

His moans and cries fill the air as I crouch next to Ayana.

She hasn’t healed.

I lift her head gently from the ground, fear turning my fingers numb as her wound gapes up at me, hot blood slick against my hands. Her skin is still warm.

Many nights, I would wonder about the limits of this curse. If we had an unknown limit of lives. If we could still die of natural causes. If we could kill ourselves.

If, despite being unable to die at each other’s hands, someone else could kill us.

She hasn’t healed.

Is this it?

Unable to kill her and in the end, unable to protect her.

A curse then, truly.

I feel something dark and ugly growing inside of me, grief and fear so large that it will swallow me whole. If this is the doing of the gods, I’ll travel to the world beyond and make them bring her back. And if they don’t, I’ll kill them. I’ll show them what a mistake it was to do this to me, to take her away from me. I’ll do anything it takes to—

A gasping, shaking breath nearly stops my heart as she jolts back to life in my hands.

Our eyes meet.

“Farryn,” she murmurs, and something hot and hard swells in my throat. “Are you… What happened?”

I help her sit up with hands I hope she can’t feel shaking. When she wipes the blood away from her throat, a thin white scar is revealed. I can’t help but push her hair from her face, lingering against her cheek.

“I killed them,” I tell her as her eyes find the bodies on the road. I hadn’t noticed her killer has fallen silent until now. “They shouldn’t have—I should have heard them—”

“Were you hurt?” she asks, cutting me off. Her blue eyes scan me.

“No.”

I’m rewarded with a small smile. “I’m glad they didn’t hurt you.

“They couldn’t have done anything to me.” I know that now.

“And yet, I’m still glad.”

I don’t dare move as she leans in and rests her forehead carefully against mine. Her eyes are shut and I allow mine to do the same, content to just breathe her in.

I hope the gods heard me. And I hope they were afraid.

 

~*~

 

When we make camp that night, Ayana is quiet, thoughtful. I catch her gazing at the trees, tracing the line across her throat more than once. Even more often, her eyes find me.

I clear my throat to get her attention. “I hope you know… If you have anything you wish to say, you can do so.”

“You do not know what I wish to say,” she says, her voice low and resigned. She sounds unhappy and that worries me.

“I know that whatever it is, I will hear it. You can be honest with me; I don’t want you to be afraid of me.”

She gets to her feet and to my surprise, sits so we are facing each other, knees nearly touching. It’s felt like many days since I last flinched at her closeness and even now, I wish to draw her nearer.

“Perhaps,” she tells me softly, “it’s me that I’m afraid of. Not of what I wish to say, but what I wish to do.”

It’s not cold, yet I feel a shiver run down my body.

I swallow. “Then I hope you know if you have anything you wish to do, you can do so.”

Ayana lets out a soft breath as if my words have wounded her. “I think that’s what I’m afraid of.”

She leans in and kisses me on the mouth. It’s just a soft press of her lips against mine, hesitant, delicate, and lingering just long enough for me to feel the warmth and sweetness. Long enough for me to reach for her so when she goes to pull away, my hands find her waist and the softness of her hair and beg her to stay.

At my touch, she lets out a soft noise against me then lets me tug her closer, until she’s nearly in my lap, her legs around me. I deepen the kiss, capturing the soft swell of her lower lip between mine, my stomach clenching as she sinks into me. One of her hands—hands that I’ve been watching for days, dreaming of for days—finds my face and I feel myself tremble as she traces the shell of my ear, down to the curve of my cheek and line of my jaw.

We separate and Ayana looks at me with wide, luminous eyes. She reaches down and brings my hand up between us, kissing my fingers and my palm, even though they’re marked with her own blood.

My chest is aching, a deep-down pain like there’s a bruise on my heart.

Her touch is warm and it undoes me. I’m desperate to touch her, to feel her, to taste her, and I haul her back against me, kissing her with hunger and teeth and the only things I know.

Before my first death, I could only find reverence in violence. The only worship I practiced was in that moment when I took a life and held someone close to watch the life fade from their eyes. The brutality, the fear, the pounding of my heart while on a battlefield, it all made me feel alive in a world that wanted me dead.

Now, my heart is pounding harder than it ever has before.

I feel unworthy before Ayana, a dirty, brutal, bloodstained being who doesn’t understand how to be soft and gentle like she deserves. But she shifts closer, murmuring into my skin as I kiss and mark her, letting me take what I need.

I want to tell her that I’ll learn to be all of that and more, for her. To worship and revere her touch and her breath and her beauty.

For you, I think as she leans in to press another sweet kiss against my ready lips.

 

~*~

 

We decide not to go to Mordin. Ayana tells me she dreams of discovering if the Endless Sea truly has no end, so we’ll return one day to find a ship and set out. For now, she wishes to see the land she died a hundred times for, to explore the parts still untouched by the war.

I simply dream of my days ahead with her.

I take her to the places blessed by the gods, the temples and altars, and the cities and towns between them. We sleep beneath the trees and the stars and eventually, we light a fire to keep us warm. We stop in towns for food and conversation and stay as long as we desire before we are once more on the road. Ayana starts keeping a map and her pack fills with an odd assortment of things she finds until I too am carrying them for her.

Time moves forward and things change. We do not.

When it becomes clear we aren’t growing older, I find myself unafraid. I’m one of two and I realize now this curse is actually a blessing. Ayana and I were given the gift of a thousand lifetimes together, to watch the world change before us.

Years later, we revisit the battlefield. The once blood-soaked mud has grown over with green grass and wildflowers. Ayana lays me down on the lush land and kisses every single scar she left on me, mouth hot and eyes hotter.

Those days are nothing more than a distant memory and a collection of scars. In the end, Ayana buried herself deeper into my skin and my heart than her blade ever did.

The time might arrive when the gods come for us. When we are finally welcomed into the world beyond. Until then, we intend to make the most of this gift.

We travel, we discover, we learn, we kiss, we touch.

We are together.

We live.