without trouble, consumed by bigger worries and sharper pain.
Serik limps alongside the cart, silent for once in his life. When the sprawling white walls of Ikh Zuree appear through the mist, we both flinch. Anxiety thrashes in my chest like a wild bird. The monastery looks more prison-like than ever.
You deserve to be imprisoned, I remind myself as we pass through the gates.
With a wave of her hand, Ghoa dismisses the Kalima and the king’s guards to tend to their mounts, then she turns to me. Her gaze slams into my gut with the force of a battering ram, and I wilt even lower, wishing I could sink through the wagon floor.
Serik curses beside me—his fears coming to light as well. Ghoa sent a rider ahead to inform the abba of the day’s events, and the old man hobbles across the yard with frightening speed, his wiry eyebrows gathered and his cane waving like a club. He pinches Serik’s ear and drags him across the compound, making no concession for his injuries.
The last time the abba was this furious—after Serik tore every page from the book of transgressions he was supposed to be illuminating and spread them like straw in the mules’ stalls—he locked Serik in a prayer temple and refused to release him until he recited ten thousand penances. But Serik picked the lock and burned the temple to the ground. When the abba found him the next morning, dancing in the ashes, I had no doubt Serik would be cast from the monastery. Serik had no doubt either. But the abba wasn’t about to lose the holy war. Since liberation was the thing Serik desired most, the abba dug him a special underground “temple,” and Serik has fulfilled his punishments there ever since. At this point, I think he’s spent more of his life belowground than above.
To Serik’s credit, he doesn’t fight or cry out. He glances back at me, his expression miserable, but there’s a promise in his eyes: he’ll find me as soon as he’s free.
I muster a shallow nod, hoping he knows how grateful I am for his sacrifice. The boy with the jagged black hair may have saved me in the end, but Serik was there first—shielding me from Varren and the crowd. His poor face is covered in bruises, and I wish more than anything that I could slather them with witch hazel and wrap them in eucalyptus leaves.
“Go to your chamber, Enebish,” Ghoa orders. She dismounts and loosens her horse’s girth. “After I water my horse, I will speak with you.”
“What about the eagles?” I say, so softly that I’m not sure she heard me. I can hardly hear myself over the thundering of my pulse. I don’t want her to think I’m being defiant, but someone must return the birds to the mews.
“Someone else will take care of the eagles.” She says it with such sharpness, such finality. She doesn’t mean forever—does she?
“Go, Enebish.” Ghoa unleashes the full weight of her disappointment on me: burning eyes and pinched lips. It impales me through the heart as I wriggle down from the wagon.
In my room, I shed my tunic, which is soiled and ripped beyond repair, and step back into my penance robe. It’s old and shabby brown, the edges worn as thin as parchment. It makes me feel meek and contrite. I hope it makes me look so, too. As I unload my satchel and tidy up the clothing scattered around from that morning’s whirlwind of packing, I find my prayer doll and clutch its soft body to my chest. I whisper in its ears, begging for strength, for mercy, wishing I could turn back time and never leave Ikh Zuree.
“It was a terrible mistake,” I murmur as I tuck the doll gingerly inside my trunk and bury it beneath a heap of robes and scarves. Then I close the lid with a vicious grunt and swallow hard because the words taste false on my lips. It wasn’t all bad. The countryside was so lovely—the crystal sky and frost-tipped grass. And the shrine to the Lady of the Sky will stand forever as a monument in my memory. Serik’s laughter was so loud, his company so easy. And Orbai was a vision: pure gold and muscle and wind, swirling through the clouds.
And, of course, there was Temujin.
My pulse quickens when I think of him touching my arm without pulling away in disgust. I can still hear the fiery determination in his