Staying outside, Liyana checked the horses’ hooves. She left their hides matted with caked-on dirt and dust—it would protect them from the worst of the sun, plus Fennik preferred to curry them himself, or at least he did when he wasn’t doting on Pia.

Liyana kicked a barrel cactus and wondered why Pia’s frailty bothered her so much. The cactus broke at its stem. Carrying it into the shade of the tent, Liyana sliced it open with her sky serpent blade and scraped the insides out. She held a clump over her mouth and squeezed. Liquid dribbled onto her tongue. It tasted sweet.

“Fennik and Pia, are you thirsty?” She thrust the remainder of the scrapings into the tent. She listened as he offered it all to Pia. She refused, insisting he share. Liyana prevented herself from rolling her eyes at them by checking on Korbyn.

He was squatting next to a half-dead plant, and he was deep in a trance. His face looked too thin, as if he’d aged a year over the past week. This is why it bothers me, she thought. Pia’s needs on top of their survival needs were exhausting him. Keeping an eye on him, she started a cooking fire with a chunk of flint. She patted the dried cactus innards into cakes and baked them while she waited for Korbyn to finish. At last his eyes rolled back. She lunged forward past the fire and caught him before he slumped into it.

In front of him, the plant was covered with berries.

She dragged him by the armpits into the tent and laid him next to Pia, who was sleeping curled up like a cat with her head on Fennik’s thigh. Without a word, Liyana went back outside to pick the berries before the sun withered them. She then rescued the cactus cakes from the fire.

Tasks complete, she sat alone in the sand, looking out across the desert. Heat waved over the desiccated soil. The forbidden mountains rippled in the distance. She wished Korbyn were awake to sit with her. She would have told him a story to make him laugh. Gray Luck nipped her shoulder, and Liyana shared her portion of the berries with her favorite mare. She was beginning to hate the rest times. There were two vessels left to find, and Korbyn still would not share any details about their final destination. The lost deities could be on the other side of the sands. She was acutely aware of the vastness of the desert around them, and with every delay, the distances seemed to stretch. But she could think of no alternative or anything she could do to lessen the shadows under Korbyn’s eyes.

Late in the afternoon, after Korbyn and Pia woke, they continued on. But only a few hours later, they had to stop to camp for the night. Again Korbyn placed himself in a trance—he healed Pia’s new blisters, he sealed a wound in one of the horse’s hooves, he summoned water from the roots of nearby plants, and he flushed out desert rats from the rocks for Fennik to shoot. He finished after the moon was high, and then he collapsed. Liyana lay next to him in the tent, listening for the sound of his nightmares and waking him as needed. He woke three times. She didn’t ask what he had dreamed.

The next day was more of the same.

While Fennik catered to Pia, Liyana continued to watch Korbyn. His eyes began to look like hollowed-out rocks, and he shuffled when he walked. He’s getting worse, she thought. God or not, he had limits. He could only focus his magic on one task at a time, and there were simply too many tasks that needed to be done. As their only magician, he had no time to recuperate between trances, and with each additional task, they lost travel time. She found herself wanting to take him into her arms, like a mother with a child, and stroke his hair and say, “Stop. Stop before you hurt yourself.” But she didn’t.

On the fifth day, Liyana squatted beside Korbyn as he prepared to summon more water for the horses from a seemingly dead plant. “I was wrong,” she said. “Pia isn’t the problem.”

He nodded as if satisfied with her. “As I told you—”

“The problem is you.”

“Excuse me?”

“You told me that only people with reincarnated souls could become vessels,” Liyana said. “And you said ‘or magicians.’ ” She touched one of the brittle branches of the desert bush. It didn’t snap. Its inner core was still alive.

“I may have said that. I say a lot of things.”

She tried to imagine leaves bursting out on these branches—and what it would feel like to make that happen. “So can a vessel become a magician?”

Behind them, Pia gasped. “You cannot! Vessels do not work magic!”

“Can’t or don’t?” Liyana countered.

“Banish such thoughts from your head!” Pia said. “We must preserve these bodies and protect them from unnecessary harm. Working magic is too dangerous!”

“Starvation and dehydration are also dangerous,” Liyana said, eyes still on Korbyn. “You know you need the help.”

“Training a vessel—it’s forbidden,” Korbyn said.

“Like the mountains of the sky serpent were when you stole flint for the clans? What’s more important: tradition or success?” Liyana asked him. “You want the deities back. So do I.”

Pia’s voice rose to a squeak. “Fennik, tell her no! Expediency does not triumph over right. She risks too much!”

Korbyn studied Liyana’s face as if he were trying to read her thoughts. “It has never been done.”

She leaned closer to him, so close that she could feel his breath. “Once, the raven and the horse had three races. . . . You bent reality to win. And that was merely a race. This involves the fate of your beloved and five entire clans.”

His lips twitched and then broadened into his bright smile. His smile washed over her, and she realized how much she had missed it these last five days. “Very well,” he said.

Chapter Thirteen

Overhead, the stars filled the bruise-black sky. Liyana breathed deeply. The night air crinkled inside her lungs instead of scorching her throat.

“You can still change your mind,” Korbyn said behind her. He was close enough that she inhaled his scent. “Magic is forbidden to vessels because it is dangerous. If you try to reach too far . . .”

She realized that this was the first time they’d been alone since the other vessels had joined them. Behind them, Pia and Fennik slept cocooned in their sleeping rolls. The horses dozed in a semicircle around the tent. “I don’t need to work miracles,” Liyana said. “Just teach me enough to help.”

“Magic isn’t about miracles,” Korbyn said. “All we do is speed up or slow down what happens naturally.” He pointed to a shriveled bush a few feet in front of them. His arm brushed against hers, and her skin tingled. “For example, this plant is capable of blooming. We can induce it to bloom faster. But we can’t cause it to sprout wings and fly.”

Causing a plant to bloom was a miracle. Talu couldn’t cause a bush to bloom. She could improve its health, thicken its roots, and mend a few leaves, but not cause it to defy the seasons. Liyana wondered what Talu would say if she saw Liyana alone in the night desert learning magic from their goddess’s lover. “How do I begin?”

“Sit.” Korbyn pointed to the hard ground next to a shriveled bush.

Liyana sat cross-legged. She patted her thighs to wake up her sore muscles. Korbyn joined her on the ground, his knees almost touching hers. He didn’t look at her, and Liyana wondered what he was thinking. She wished he’d tell her a story, like he used to when it was just the two of them. It had been easy to talk to him then. She tried to think of words to say.

“Your soul fills your body.” He paused. Wind whistled across the dry earth. A desert owl cried out. “You can nod to show you’re engaged in the lesson.”

“I assumed that was an introduction.”

“I am attempting to be pedagogical,” he said. “I have never taught anyone before.”

“The stories say that deities were the ones who taught the first magicians. In fact, Talu said that Bayla instructed Talu’s many-times-great-grandmother—”