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My family missed the love-starved girl from Swana. The one who worshipped her friends, and whose anger could be cooled with a kiss. They missed the tree in its gilded pot. The girl so afraid of herself, and so grateful for a family, the world could burn to ash, and she would smile and call it paradise. And though I loved my friends—though I would still die and live for them—I would never be that Tarisai again.
A smile stretched on my face as my stomach sank, sour with the certainty that this lie would be the first of many. “I’ll be just fine.”
“I once promised,” he said, “that I would never ask you to be less than who you are. But if you set yourself on fire to warm a frozen world, I will not stand by and watch you burn.”
If the world didn’t care about justice, then I would simply have to care enough for all of them.
“Gods don’t sleep, Jeet,” I mumbled. “They only rise and fall.”
“I need help,” I said. The words echoed in my ears. I blinked, stunned at how natural they sounded. Why hadn’t I said them before?
Guilt is self-centered, and leads only to destructive obsession. But conviction brings balance—a sense of purpose beyond oneself.
“Do not ask how many people you will save,” I murmured. “Ask, to what world will you save them? What makes a world worth surviving in?”
You will try to hold me, to knock me down. But I will always get up. And I will come back. Behold what is coming.
Yes, Zuri of Djbanti had died for justice. But he had also died to escape—to kill the guilt that had plagued him all his life. He had looked at comfort with disdain and regarded rest as weakness. Zuri had died because it was easier to be legendary than human.
