Page 171 of Seasons of War
Lance smiled, still close.
“What does it mean?” Miya asked, resisting the voice in her head warning her to sit back.
“Life is bitter and sweet, bitter and sweet at the same time.”
The tartness of the apples hung on her tongue, but the warmth and the sweetness washed over it. “That one word means all that?”
“I don’t know a word to capture it fully.”
Charlotte tapped her shoulder. Miya stared, forgetting that she still held a dessert too. The girl's dark eyes sparkled as she clasped her hands together, opening her mouth wide. Miya gave her the dessert, trying to calm her storming heart. When Charlotte ate it, she jumped up and down. “Yummy!”
“Charlotte,” her mother said.
She covered her mouth and then spoke while still chewing her food. “Mahzi.”
“Silly girl. Swallow first.”
The girl giggled, swallowed her food, and said it properly this time. Now she beamed. “It was so good! Do Mahzi with me again.” Without having the decency to offer Miya some warning, Charlotte jumped onto her lap, clutched her neck so tight it hurt, and squealed. “Do Mahzi with me every day!”
Miya patted her back, jerking toward Lance, hoping he would pull the child off her.
Charlotte caressed Miya’s hair. “Can I have your hair when I get big?”
“I don’t usually give people my hair,” Miya said.
Charlotte covered her mouth and laughed so hard that she fell onto the ground. A knot lodged in her throat as the girl met her eyes with all the innocence that must have been left in the world.
“You’re funny,” she said.
Miya swallowed down the knot, practically able to feel the captain reaching around her for the child. The sounds around her amplified, all the happy children eating their dessert and playing, unaware of the war creeping their way.
It would shatter their world, whether Ciondo drew them into fighting or she and Zayne stopped them first.
Before her, the two siblings bounced away from the fire for wherever their feet might take them, because for now, they were truly free. Amelia and Hakym went their separate ways, and Lance alone remained at the fire with her.
A breeze shifted the direction of the smoke their way. “Did you cut this wood?” Miya asked.
He nodded.
She looked at him, still able to taste the sweet, tart apples. When they’d stood on Krowe’s steps after the captain attacked her, she’d come so close to saying it. What would happen to him when this was over? Would he be a suspect even though he was innocent? “Lance…”
He reclined back against his hands. “Yes?”
Run.
She looked off to the woods on the outskirts of the village. Pink swirled with the clouds and dusted the bare trees in the reddish light of the setting sun. Miya didn’t have room for mistakes. “I hope you got enough done for your family.”
If only she could get the entire village to run, with Charlotte and Gabe at the forefront, sprinting for some place where the war would never find them.
CHAPTER 40
Kira
The Capital
Kallum, Ciondo
833 P.C. [Post-Collapse]
