my sleeve to my shoulder, where he plays with the collar of my tunic. “I want to memorize every flash of your eyes and every smile. You have so many different smiles, and all of them mean something different.” He skims a finger over my bottom lip, making my stomach flutter. “The slope of your neck, the furrow in your brow, the way you watch and watch and watch but rarely share what is inside you. I want to know all of it.” His eyes meet mine. “And I admit: I want to be the only one who knows all these secrets about you. Unless . . .” He sighs.
“Unless what?”
“Unless someone else already does,” he murmurs, his eyes straying to the wall of drawings behind me.
“You are speaking about Bo.” When I say his name, Melik tenses beneath me. “I will not lie to you and say that Bo is not important to me, and I will not pretend that I do not think of him, even now.” I think of how he has decided to kill his soft, human side, how he will die a machine, and it fills me with sorrow so deep that it is its own kind of grave, one from which I must walk away. I lean my forehead on Melik’s. “But I spent the last year dreaming of you, Melik.” I poke him gently in the nose. “And saying your name in my sleep.”
His gaze returns to mine. “I would like to hear about those dreams. I wonder how closely they match my own.”
“You think we found each other there?”
“All I know is that I searched for you every night until I found you, and when I did, you always welcomed me.”
“Is that what ‘yorh zhasev’ means?” I whisper.
“Yorh zhasev ve bana sevye,” he murmurs, clasping the back of my head and kissing my neck. “It means all those things.”
I bow my head against his shoulder. We hold tight, and I feel the moment another wave of grief hits Melik. But I have him, and I wrap myself around him, and I offer him the comfort of my body. “What do you believe happens to us after we die?” Melik whispers.
“Many Itanyai believe you go to a nice place, a beautiful place, where you join your ancestors and watch over your family and your descendants.”
“Do you believe that?”
I rest my forehead against his throat. “I don’t know. I want to. I like the idea that my mother has not left me completely, even though I cannot feel or see her. What do you believe?”
“We believe you return to the birthplace of all souls, a beautiful glittering sea that is the source of all life, from the beginning of time until the end.” He presses his face to my hair. “You rejoin all the souls who have ever been, and perhaps you will be born again once more. Like you, I want to believe, but right now it seems as real as the story of the boy king and his winged lion.”
I thread my fingers into his hair. “I did not know Sinan as well as you did, but if anyone could swim his way through a mystical sea to be born again, it would be your little brother.”
Melik lets out a raspy chuckle, and his arms pull tight around me. “I believe you are right. He was so alive.” His voice breaks again and he takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Maybe he will find a way to return someday. I hope that is possible.”
We go quiet with that thought, that hope. It seems we have few words left now, and few tears. Sinan’s loss is just as big, and the fight to come is just as frightening. But Anni told me that the Noor never assume that there is a better time to be joyful and thankful than the present, and I believe that now. I will take the solace of being here with Melik, and I will not spend this time worrying. I will bear what we’ve lost, and I will be thankful for what we still have.
I kiss the side of Melik’s neck. In the lantern light goose bumps ripple down the column of his throat. I pull back the collar of his tunic to follow their progress. Melik’s head falls back, and my fingertips drift down his skin. When they settle over the exposed stretch of the scar on his chest, he presses his palm over mine. His heart bumps