Phoenix Unbound
Page 86

Halani groaned. “Probably another statue Uncle wants me to look at. I’m better than he is at spotting a fake. I’ll have to leave you again for a moment.”
“It’s all right. See to your uncle. We’ll switch places when you return.”
The moment Halani came back, Gilene planned to escape the trade stall she worked and find the Savatar encampment. Was Azarion here? Did he walk these crowded streets? Would she sense his presence even if she couldn’t see him in the throng of people? Her heart raced and her hands shook so hard, she abandoned the task of measuring tea.
He thought her dead, consumed by Agna’s possession. Did he mourn her? The thought made her cringe.
An odd prickling along her back warned her she was being watched. She made a show of straightening the tables, all the while casting quick glances into the crowd to find the source of that regard.
Her gaze lit and stayed on a dark-haired woman with a dour face. The woman’s eyes went wide when Gilene met her gaze, and she mouthed Gilene’s name as if she didn’t believe what she was seeing.
“Tamura,” Gilene said.
Azarion’s sister was too far away to hear her, but judging by her reaction, she’d read Gilene’s lips.
“Azarion! Come quickly!”
Tamura bellowed so loudly, it set dogs to barking, goats to bleating, and children to crying. The steadily moving traffic that wove a maze through the market halted, and people stared at Tamura slack-jawed.
She ignored it all and repeated her brother’s name in that same booming voice.
A ripple of movement in the crowd, and Azarion burst into the gap that had opened around Tamura, sword unsheathed, ready to do battle.
Gilene clenched her teeth to hold back her gasp. He’d aged in the months since she’d last seen him. Still handsome, still commanding, he looked haggard, weary. Bleak. He wore leather armor over a long, sleeveless tunic that highlighted his muscular arms. The summer sun hadn’t yet done its work in darkening his skin to the nut brown she remembered, but his green eyes were still as vivid. His hair had grown past his shoulders, and sunlight highlighted the silver filaments sprinkled in the long locks as well as in his beard.
He swept the crowd with a single glance before turning to his sister, confused and exasperated. “What? What is it?”
Tamura pointed to where Gilene stood behind the line of tables. Azarion followed the direction of her gesture and froze.
A muscle worked in his jaw as he continued to stare at her. Gilene drank in the sight of him like a woman dying of thirst who’d just been handed a cup of water.
She remembered their conversation in a qara on the eve of their separation.
Be my wife. Treasured and beloved.
This time if he asked, she could say yes.
He passed his sword to the now grinning Tamura. The slow, hesitant step he took toward Gilene quickly transformed to a ground-eating stride. People leapt out of the way before they were shoved aside.
He stopped in front of her, the table a flimsy barricade between them. Gilene could hear him breathe—arrhythmic pants, as if he’d sprinted up the side of a mountain without stopping. His hands curled into fists, the knuckles turning white.
Such agony in that long, silent gaze. Such disbelief. Gilene trapped a moan behind her teeth.
“I thought you were dead,” he whispered, voice cracking on the last word. “I saw you fade to nothing, consumed by Agna.”
It took two tries and a little throat clearing before she could reply. “I think I was consumed. So much power, Azarion. I can’t describe it.” She stared at him, willing him to believe she was real and not some simulacrum of the fire witch from Beroe. “Agna brought me back. I woke on the road to Wellspring Holt, sick and witless. Hamod’s trader band found me and nursed me back to health. I traveled with them here, hoping I’d find you again.”
Staring at his handsome face, with its elegant angles and lines of sorrow, became as difficult as gazing upon Agna in all her vengeful majesty. Gilene dropped her gaze to hide the tears threatening to spill over her lashes.
“Wife of my soul,” he said, and this time his voice didn’t shake but held all the command of the Savatar ataman who had led an army against the Empire and won. “Look at me.”
His words sent an arrow of euphoria straight through her chest. Still, she couldn’t look up.
“Look at me,” he repeated in the same tone. His fingers curled around her jaw to lift her chin.
She dragged her gaze to his, the drumming of her heartbeat making her ribs hurt. He leaned over the table, mouth hovering just above hers, eyes blazing with joy.
He shoved the table out of the way and pulled her into his arms. He raised his hand to drag a thumb gently across her lower lip before following its path with his mouth. Gilene sank into his embrace, kissing him back as fiercely as he kissed her. The market surrounding them faded as she reveled in his touch, in this reunion she never dared hope for since they went their separate ways at the boundaries of the Sky Below almost a year earlier.
Azarion kissed her until she was light-headed from lack of air. When they finally parted, they both gasped for breath.
His green eyes were soft now, but no less intense as he searched her face. She was reminded of their first true meeting, in the tenebrous confines of the catacombs on the eve of an immolation, when she avoided his gaze and prayed he wouldn’t recognize her.
He must have remembered the same meeting. His lips tilted in a faint smile. “Agacin,” he said reverently. “I know you.”