Mirrored Heavens (Between Earth and Sky #3)

by Rebecca Roanhorse

“I will pray for you.” “To whom?” He barked a sharp laugh. “I go to kill our god.”

“I know you said I need not earn your love and that it is freely given. But if I survive this day, I will spend the rest of my life striving to be worthy of you.”

“I would suffer it all again for you. Every hour buried in the cold ground, every minute on that ship with my rotting feet and poisoned blood. Know that it was worth it, Nara, for this time we’ve had together. You have been my redemption, my peace. Never doubt it.”

She had never touched a book, but once a merchant had come to the Maw and set up a stall selling small palm-sized scrolls of folk stories. No one bought one, so he didn’t linger, but Naranpa had watched him all day and wondered what it might be like to unroll the bark paper and decipher the glyphs, to read for herself the wonders they held locked inside.

“You are my home, Xiala. My present and my future, and in the face of that, what is the past but the dust of memories best forgotten?

He wanted nothing else. Not power, not Tova, not the acceptance of this stranger who was his father. He knew that. But what was new, what shook the very foundation of who he was, who he had been for so long, was that he did not even want his god.

But now his mistake was clear. Xiala was his everything, and if he won, he would lose her. He would rather lose the wars.

I have saved a place for you, my love, In the quiet spaces between the stars.