He did not tell her how much he did not want to leave her; did not tell her that he loved her, and how much he’d feared losing her in the horrors of the temple, and all the horrors that came before it. The sickness on their journey to Alor. The bandits, the hunger. The roiling waters around the village. The yaksa who awakened beneath the monastery, and the fire. But he said, “Bhumika.” And she knew.
