I swallow and shove some more food in my mouth.

  I wasn't sure I would ever wake up, and now that I have, I'm not really sure how to feel about it or what to do. But the mechanics of maintaining my body are long ingrained, so for now I'll just chew.

  So it's Zan who next abruptly breaks the silence. "I was betrayed. A potential contact I was evaluating, so it's not a huge shock, but the timing was unfortunate. I had to risk using them after a run-in with the priesthood so I was already low in magic."

  "Why?"

  "Why what?"

  All of it? "Why were you low on magic?"

  Zan shrugs. "Hadn't transformed in a while. This mountain is—was—the only place in Kameya where it's safe for me to. I normally use dyes to hide among the people in this empire, but I've been active here for long enough that the priests have become cannier about preventing me from accessing their sages."

  An old, vague memory surfaces. It's been so long since he's told me anything, I hadn't realized— "You're still smuggling sages out?"

  Another shrug. "These days it's mostly only if I can find them before the priesthood does. That's gotten harder, too."

  Oh.

  He's been doing that for so long. A dedication so profound my mind has trouble encompassing it.

  And yet—it hasn't gotten better.

  It's difficult for me to know how to reconcile that.

  "So you came up here so the priests couldn't follow you?" I ask.

  Zan looks me in the eyes. "No. I came here in hope that your magic might prevent me from involuntarily transforming after death, so the priests couldn't strip me for parts."

  My breath catches.

  I was right. He did mean to die here.

  Is that why he's annoyed with me?

  If I'm feeling conflicted discovering how much hasn't changed in five hundred years, what must it be like for Zan, who's lived it?

  "But then you transformed anyway," I say, which isn't my fault. "And how can you shift back to human form so quickly anyway? Especially when you were so low on power."

  "I'm fine for now."

  What?

  I stare.

  He stares back.

  I swallow hard, the sweet creaminess somehow clogging my throat now.

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  There's a gap between us. Zan and I have been in proximity to each other, we've helped each other, but we don't know each other, not really. I shouldn't feel hurt that he's not telling me all his secrets. He's under no obligation to.

  I do anyway.

  That's not his problem, though; it's mine.

  So I take a breath and summon my extensive emotional regulation training and look away first.

  And then I notice that unlike me, the temple is clean. Like, pristine clean.

  I swipe a finger along the ground like I did to my arm, and it comes back with only crumbs from my bread. What in the world?

  "How am I so dusty when the rest of the temple isn't? People couldn't get in, but air could, and there should have been—I mean, from before, weren't there—"

  Zan clears his throat. "I did some spring cleaning while you were sleeping."

  I stare at him again after all. "You what?" And then my brain catches up, and I realize— "Your fire. You burned all the grime out of the temple? And—there were bodies, then."

  Zan shakes his head. "No, mostly just bones. Teeth. They take a long time to decay." He hesitates, and then adds more quietly, "Someone once told me that if you were ever to get a taste of freedom, the first thing you saw should be hopeful."

  The awfulness of my past cleansed in fire.

  I wouldn't have expected that to make a difference, but somehow it does.

  Zan asks lightly, delicately, like he's not sure how I'll react, "Do you want to see? Your first view isn't what I would have hoped, but we can try again."

  He means facing the priests.

  But my first view of freedom was him shattering the walls around me.

  "Can we?" I ask. "Try again."

  Seriously, Zan tells me, "I hope so."

  And suddenly, even though we don't know each other, this moment has become intimate.

  No one has ever seen me, truly, before. I both crave it with the intensity of all the wrath I've ever felt and also don't know how to deal with it, so I get up.

  Zan gathers the food back into his pack quickly and efficiently; a person who is used to having to flee at a moment's notice.

  To avoid being murdered and stripped for parts.

  "Would no one have hidden you?" I blurt. "I know the Quiet was strongest up here, but it extended through the island, and there used to be a town—"

  "There still is. Crystal Hollow. It's bigger now, actually. And most people who live there do it to be freer from priest oversight, but not because they're willing to take an actual stand against them. They mostly just keep their heads down and wait for problems to go away, but if a priest came to their door and pressed them..."

  "Oh," I say softly.

  Zan glances up at me as he stands. "There are people in Crystal Hollow who would have hidden me. But their neighbors might have sold them out, and then I'd have just gotten more people killed."

  I nod. "I understand. I'm extremely familiar with the concept of collateral damage."

  Zan also nods, more slowly. "Yes, I suppose you must be. But let me show you something that hasn't taken collateral damage."

  He starts to extend a hand to me then appears to think better of it, his jaw tightening as he tucks his hand away.

  I feel a pang in my chest.

  I would have taken his hand.

  But I also don't feel like I can demand it.

  We're both very practiced at pretending to be what we're not, though, that everything is fine, that there's nothing worth noticing going on beneath the surface, so we stride easily toward the temple doors.

  "How dramatic was my entrance?" I ask him lightly.

  Zan's lips quirk. "Extremely well executed."

  Well, execution has always been a strength of mine, I think wryly.

  Zan belatedly realizes his word choice too, a flicker of chagrin through his eyes which I wave off before he says anything.

  I have killed lots of people. Pretending otherwise won't change that, and I have had five hundred years to accept the choices I made when my options were extremely limited.

  The first time I had an opportunity that would mean saving more people than killing, that would actually change anything, even at the cost of my freedom, I had taken it.

  I have to believe that counts for something.

  This time, Zan and I reach the doors at the same time and exchange a weighted look.

  Here it is.

  My second chance.

  Am I ready?

  I swallow; nod.

  And together we open the doors one more time.