‘You’re alright?’ he added in a lower voice, watching me closely. Was I alright? I should have been. I should have been bursting with joy. The world had been saved, hadn’t it? The empire had been defeated? This was what I’d worked towards since the day I woke up in my burning village, this was what I’d braved curses and gods and bargains for – and yet … Yet the contentment wouldn’t come. Now that the Mother was gone, now that the archipelago was free, everyone would return to their homes and families … and I? I knew what I wanted. I just didn’t have the faintest idea where it was.
