“Saya,” more fleeting breath than voice is her name, as chest barrels for center, arms out and stabling before they both can fall. Cold as torment reframed horselord into khaan, there is a spellbound part of him that clutches Sayana, and a second concern that she may view Noyakin as Tselmuun does— veiled in so much death.

That ambivalence is alive in the turn of ears, while nose consumes the good scent of horse and earth from her travels. He’d lodged so many into the past, his friend, his brother’s bride, tucked away as a ghost into evenings, no longer certain in whose village she lived; if she lived at all. Grief had rehearsed him to measure for loss, but to find her alive is a painful relief, in the same way nostalgia hurts.

Last do eyes find the clear pool of her own, “I have you.”