Onya was born in a river. That's the story her nomon told her, anyway, that she felt that sharp, rolling pain and waded into the river that ran just a short distance from their house; that it was still and quiet that night and her mother knew, just knew the gaun was welcoming her baby girl.
Onya had light hair and bright eyes, and the boys in her village sang sing-song jeers about how her mother must have snuck out into the tri and built a fire with another man, until she picked up a stick and learned, through slow painful experience, how to make them run before her shadow.
/
"You must be joking," Onya hisses, looking at these branwoda girls, all soft hands and clean faces.
"I won't have this argument again." Leksa's voice is firm, unbudging, and Onya snarls before stomping down the hall. At least, she supposes, an intruder will have to kill his way through her new housemates before he makes it to Leksa.
Onya stands in her new room and feels the carpet between her toes, the sun streaming through the window. She lifts a hand and watches the light play across her skin.
/
Onya met Leksa when she was ten-fai years old, while she was training at the capital to be a gona, join the Heda's Guard. She's a year away from speaking her swega, pledging allegiance, when she sees the natblida training in the courtyard. Leksa is the smallest, the skinniest, and Onya remembers seeing her and thinking she won't last a second in the conclave, that little girl with the scrappy knees and too much hair.
"The natblida," Indra tells her, and Onya nods at her fos. "One of them will lead us all, one day." Indra smiles at her, a rare sight; Onya has just won the youngon trainee tournaments, unarmed and armed, and Indra has been smirking nonstop, pleased at the success by proxy. They stand at the balcony and Onya's ribs are cracked, her body bruised. She thinks her arm may be broken. She has never felt so good in all her life.
Indra pauses by the edge of a balcony, looking out at the grounds. "One day soon you will have the honor of a seken natblida."
Onya frowns. "Are you not satisfied?" she asks, the last trace of teenage insecurity. "I am not natblida."
"You have never once disappointed me." Indra grips her shoulder, tight. "You may not be special but you are strong, Onya. Never forget it."
/
Klark's keys are on the armchair, and Onya smirks a little to herself when she sees them. Leksa doesn't like her to follow her to classes, not anymore, and Onya has grown to enjoy the time to herself, the house empty of chatter and noise. She runs in the mornings, listening to her feet thump on the pavement, the vague echo of Leksa's music leaking from her headphones, and sits crosslegged in their room while Leksa showers.
She tries to meditate, reaching out-this world, the skaikru world, slaps her back into her body. It's too loud, the cars and the tall buildings made of glass and metal and the language Onya still struggles with. Onya misses the stone buildings, the miles of grass. She misses the tri and the rivers and hearing her name said correctly; every time she hears the name her nomon gave her in gonasleng, butchered on a skaikru tongue, she wants to scream so badly she can taste it, rage in the back of her throat burning like the flame in Leksa's spine.
/
Onya is ten-sen when she takes Leksa as her seken. Leksa is still the smallest, the skinniest, but Onya watches her take down a boy three years older and twice as big, her lips pulled back over her teeth, the way her breathing stays calm even as she rages in the middle of battle.
"Em," Onya grunts, when Indra arches an eyebrow at her.
Indra looks at Onya, surprised. "Bilaik gada?"
"Sha."
"This is great koma, to choose a seken. Are you sure?"
Onya looks at her former fos. "I am."
Leksa, Onya learns, is smart. She's quick, she's bright, her gonasleng is better than Onya's. It's two weeks before Onya praises her, and Leksa frowns to hear it. "I don't care for false promises," she says. "I want to be the best." There is a cut, high on her cheek, from when she wrested the sword from Onya's hand, a twisting move that caught her completely by surprise, learned from watching Onya fight and learning, always learning. There's another laceration on her left wrist that will scar faintly, where Onya cut her with the small dagger she keeps in her boot. It was shocking, a gada her lesser by fai years, disarming her, winning a sparring bout. Now Leksa is standing here, frowning. She believes that Onya threw their match, to boost her confidence.
Onya clasps her shoulder, careful. It is the first time she has touched Leksa. She feels delicate under Onya's calloused palm, small boned and underweight. She trembles with the force of herself; dedicated, intelligent, lethal. "You will be Heda," Onya says, and believes it.
/
Onya wakes when Leksa's phone buzzes on the desk. She lies still, listens to Leksa murmur, curse, poke at her phone, and murmur again. "I'm going to pick up Klark."
Onya snorts. "Let the prisa handle her own problems."
"Don't be cruel, Onya. I'm taking your car."
Onya doesn't sleep well when Leksa is far from her, and not at all when she knows Leksa is so near. She tucks her own phone in her pocket and walks silently through the dark house. She climbs the tree in the backyard and settles against the thickest branch, watching the stars wink through the leaves. Her phone vibrates against her hips and she answers it, letting the click be her greeting.
"I'll be back tomorrow."
"How late?"
Leksa hesitates. "We'll see."
"Do you need me?"
"No."
"Text me your address."
"Sha," Leksa agrees. She hesitates. "It is only for a night, Onya. Nothing has changed."
Onya hangs up. She dozes, for a while, until the birds light on the branches around her and start to sing. She chitters at them, so they don't scare when she moves. The light in the garage is on, and she peeks, curious. Reivon is asleep on a workbench, a wrench dangling precariously from one hand, a still burning torch lit in the other. The door creaks when Onya enters.
"You're touching my things," Reivon grunts when Onya takes the fire from her fingers.
"I'm saving you from yourself."
Reivon hefts-something, Anya doesn't recognize it-and waves it through the air, vague, her eyes still shut. "I don't like it when people touch my things. I like things in very specific places."
Onya puts the torch aside and catches Reivon by the wrist, firm. She twists, and catches the tool as it falls from Reivon's limp fingers. Reivon curses, wakes up enough to glare.
"Shof op. You will like not having a house on fire more."
"Even I know shofop."
"Then listen." Onya tosses the tool aside, clanging hard on the concrete. She turns.
"Not going to tell me to go to bed?" Reivon's hair is half out of her ponytail, her eyes faintly swollen from sleep. When she yawns her whole face contorts, her nose wrinkles. Her fingers are slim and stained, grease marks back to her elbows and around her jaw. She is, Onya supposes, attractive, probably. She is, definitely, the most intelligent person Onya has ever met.
"You may do what you like," Onya tells her. "What concern of it is mine?"
/
Tris was the one to call them skaikru, in the shelter where she and Leksa and Kostia slept in the same bed and Onya sat against the wall next to them, dozing and keeping watch. She pries the long nails from the bedframe legs and hides them up her sleeves, down her socks, in her braids.
Onya speaks gonasleng well enough, but she fumbles with this jargon, legal nonsense, complicated requests for asylum, papers on papers. How this country has any trees left, Onya doesn't understand. Leksa reads them aloud and after, she sleeps, her face pinched and creased, Tris held protected against her side, Kostia pressed against her neck, Onya squints at the files and files and forms they're given in the faint light, sounding their syllables on her tongue. She crumples them in her fists and wished she'd worked harder in her classes.
Skaikru Tris mumbles one day, after another meeting with men in suits. Too concerned with things in the air to notice the ground at their feet.
/
There is a note under their door. It's a printout, for some kind of fancy tool, a pricetag from a website. Onya frowns. She thumps a fist against the closed garage door. "Explain yourself."
"You threw my shit. It's expensive, and I'm broke." Reivon doesn't even look up.
"You nearly set your own face afire." Onya paces, fuming. "What-repons-" She loses the edge of gonasleng and makes a noise, inarticulate. Reivon slams something on the workbench. It's the tool, from the night before, and Onya can clearly see it is warped. She frowns.
"I'm not trying to fleece you, okay? I just need a replacement." Reivon is wearing some kind of goggles, protective. She pushes them up to look at Onya in the face and they leave sootmarks in her eye sockets.
Onya snarls. She slams the door behind her.
"I need," she repeats, slow through her gritted teeth. "A specific tool. Can you help me with that, or can't you?"
The employee in the blue polo shirt sweats, noticeably. Onya curls her lip at him, disgusted.
"I went to three stores." She lays the case down on Reivon's table.
Reivon blinks. "You've been out shopping all day? It's almost midnight."
Onya, in fact, had run several other errands and arranged another meeting for the next day, but she sees no need to disclose any of that. "It seemed very important, for you to pass notes in the hall like a child."
Reivon casts her a look, cutting, but her fingers are deft and careful when she opens the case. She touches the tools inside and clicks it shut, sliding it across the table. "I can't accept this."
Onya gapes. "What?"
"This is too expensive. Just return it, give me the cash I priced you, and I'll pick something out. Or give me the receipt and I'll do it myself."
"You refuse-" Onya sputters, "You-" Reivon peers at her.
"Are you having a stroke?"
"Keep it," Onya snarls. "I do not have a receipt." She spins on her heel, flushed and still furious.
"Wait!"
Onya wrenches the door open before pausing, although she refuses to turn. "We have nothing more to say to each other."
Reivon catches up to her halfway across the yard. "Wait, Jesus Christ. You know I've got a bum leg." Onya's jaw works. She considers throwing off Reivon's hand. "Did I seriously offend you?"
"I-" Onya huffs. "These tools are not familiar to me. I spent a great deal of time…" She makes a frustrated noise. "It is no matter. Do what you want."
"Okay, fine. I owe you one, then. Something in the future." Reivon tries a smile at her. Onya frowns.
"That isn't wise," she tells Reivon. "You shouldn't offer such blank promises."
"Yeah, well. I already did. We're good?"
"As good as we will ever be," Onya says. She watches Reivon go back to the garage.
Onya lies in the top bunk on her belly, looking out the window. She can see the light in the garage burning, late into the night and into the early morning. Reivon, she thinks, must not be skaikru. She is trikru in her spirit, to understand the earth the way she does, to make its laws and its minerals bend to her will.
/
Tris is fou and Onya has come to visit, Leksa with little wooden carvings for Tris and her tu bro. Tris runs to them, and Onya swings her into the air, pleased to see how well Tris has grown, how strong. They visit Onya's parents, and her nomon is spinning sugar into layered braids, hanging them from clips to form crystallized sweets. It is summer, and the humidity is stifling. They have to wet Leksa's hair in the river every day before it's able to be braided, and Onya's hangs, limp and sweaty. They climb the nearest mountain, Tris on Onya's shoulders, and sit in a tri, the air ruffling past, refreshing, and Onya eats candy with her fingertips and listens to Tris and Leksa bicker like sis.
/
Thanksgiving, Onya learns, is a fool's holiday. It means more people in the house, more talking, more shouting. She plans to stay out of it.
"Beja," is all Leksa says, faintly pleading. It has been so long since Leksa has asked for anything that Onya hesitates. "Sweets," Leksa tempts, and Onya sighs.
"A curse on your clan," Onya hisses, furious. She narrows her eyes, the slitted eye glare that's made men twice her age and three times her size shake in place and retreat before her rage. "May your bloodline dry in the fires of war."
"Trouble?" Onya spins. Reivon has snuck up on her, which only serves to sharpen her fury. She can't find her gonasleng fast enough, and Reivon comes further into the kitchen, curious. "What are you making?"
Onya sighs. She slides the printout across the counter. "Pie," she says, short.
Reivon picks up the paper and scans, reading. "Ambitious. Any particular reason?"
Their first year in this country, they'd gone to a shelter for Thanksgiving, Leksa explaining the origins of the holiday while they stood in line. Tris had hated the yams, made too sweet and so unlike the food of their homeland, but she'd loved pumpkin pie, stealing bites from their plates while they weren't looking. Her mischievousness had been the first thing to make any of them smile, wan and pinched, Onya still walking with a limp and Leksa staring at her hands when she thinks no one is watching, her gaze drawn and haunted. "No," Onya says, flat. She snatches the paper from Reivon's hands and throws it into the trashcan, angry again. "I will buy something."
"Hey now." Reivon fishes it out. "You gonna let something like canned filling and a premade crust defeat you like that? I thought you lot were warriors."
"If I could beat this into submission I would have," Onya mutters, turning to her failed creation. She glowers.
Reivon rolls up her sleeves. "Yeah. Let's do this."
Onya blinks at her. "What?"
"Cooking." Reivon takes the paper from Onya's surprised fingers. "It's basically chemistry, right? Hand me that bowl."
"How good," Onya asks, half an hour later, "at chemistry are you?"
Reivon glowers at the blender before her, the lid blown off. There's orange muck on her face, dripping, and droplets on the ceiling. "You were right, fuck this thing. What's that thing, you said when I came in?" She says something, garbled, nothing like what Onya had threatened, and it should make Onya just as angry as whenever she hears some skaikru goufa butcher her language, but she finds she has to reach for her frown.
"Fuck this thing," Onya says, and says it three more times before Reivon can pronounce it well enough to be understood.
"Fuck thing," Reivon manages, triumphant. She tips everything into the trash and sets the dishes soaking. "You have a car, right?" She sticks her wallet in her pocket, yanking a jacket around her shoulders. Onya watches her, motionless, and Reivon rolls her eyes. "We'll get a storebought one, but like, a shitty one, and say we made it. We just have to dispose of the packaging somewhere discreet."
"Why would I require your assistance in this matter?" Onya lets her gaze fall deliberately to the mess of the kitchen. "So far you have been more hindrance than aid."
Reivon rolls her eyes. "Because I'm offering and because you need me to keep my mouth shut anyway. And it was my idea." Onya stares at her without blinking. "And because I want a ride to the grocery store, Jesus, stop looking at me like that."
Reivon reaches for the radio dial in her car and Onya growls. It's preset to a classical music station, and Reivon fidgets, her hands in her lap, for almost five minutes before she has to ask: "So this what you like? Musically?"
Onya's so impressed by Reivon's restraint, five whole minutes, that she responds. "Yes."
Reivon lets the silence drag. "Because…?"
Onya makes a turn, feels the wheel slide against her sword calluses. "I like it."
"You're real difficult to get to know, you know that?" But Reivon is smiling a little, almost fond, and Onya lets the corner of her mouth tug up, on the side Reivon can't see.
They find what they need in the store quickly, and Onya refuses to hold the basket so she trails after Reivon while Reivon picks through packaged noodles and discount meats, muttering to herself. "Okay," Reivon says finally, "I'm ready."
She leads Onya towards the front registers, going down the candy aisle, and Onya separates from her, drawn to a little display of sweets in cardboard boxes, the size of her palm. The picture is familiar, little rocks of spun sugar, translucent. "You want?" Reivon asks, coming up beside her. "My treat."
Onya thinks of Tris, giggling in the garden with Onya's nontu. "No," she says, and turns away.
/
Leksa is ten-fou and has met a girl. She comes back from the fisa with a bandage and a smile, her cheeks pink. Onya thinks, for a few days, that it's the fisa himself, who is tall and dark and muscled, until she sees the gada trainee in the halls and Leksa trips over her own heel, knocking hard into Onya's side. She rights herself and glares.
"Very smooth," Onya notes. "So it's her you've been lovestruck for."
"You are wrong," Leksa says, "as you so often are."
Onya waits for Leksa outside the room where she learns things Onya can't teach her, languages and history and how to rule a nation and command an army. When Leksa emerges Onya tosses the slim book at her face. Leksa turns it over and flushes. "You can't even read this," she mutters, and Onya lets the grin play over her face, pleased at her own joke.
"I have heard gadas like gonasleng," she says. "Very romantic. And everyone enjoys poetry."
"I plan to write my own," Leksa says.
Later, Onya will think this the last time she laughed, the sun streaming down on her through the open window, the breeze in her hair; Leksa's face scowled only in adolescent frustration, warm at her side.
/
The meal itself is just as annoying as Onya thought it would be. She tries a smile when Leksa shoots her a look across the table and Klark drops her plate into her own lap. It's almost worth the annoyance, just for that. When the pie is served Reivon grins at her, conspiratorially, and Onya-she doesn't smile, exactly, although she thinks she almost wants to. But she quirks her eyebrow and Reivon winks, exaggerated, and Onya eats her pie and thinks of Tris for the first time without feeling the yawning hollowness in her chest, devouring her organs. Even so, Onya leaves as soon as she is able, and she takes the pumpkin pie with her into the yard. She climbs the tree and shares the crust crumbs with the squirrels.
Reivon's face peeks up from the lowest branch. "So this is where you hide."
"I hide from nothing and from no one.".
"Yeah, you're the baddest ass around. But we need that plate. To wash."
Onya hands her the plate. Raven hesitates, her arm still reached up. "Happy Thanksgiving, Anya."
Onya watches her disappear back into the leaves, then leans over, a controlled fall to the next branch, so she can watch Reivon walk back into the house, shouting something bright and mirthful to her friends. She makes her tongue twist into the unfamiliar syllables. "Happy Thanksgiving, Raven."
/
Onya remembers running through the tri, the wind in her hair. She remembers how she knew the graun, really knew it, so her feet fell between the roots silent and strong and the wind was always at her back when she needed it. The bark of the tri clung to her palms when she scrambled up their trunks, and she smiled when she threw fruit down to Leksa, eating on the banks of the rivers with fresh tart juices dripping down their chins and across their fingers, walking back with her arm slung over Leksa's shoulders.
/
Linkon is Onya's contact. He picks her up in his car and they drive in circles while they watch the mirrors in stony silence, until they're satisfied they're not being followed, and he takes her to the meetings. They're in different places, each time, warehouses and basements and empty lots, and they speak in soft hushed whispers.
"I am most worried about the timeline," Onya says. "Our people have waited too long already."
Linkon only shrugs. "And if we rush and fail, and Heda is captured, it is all over."
Onya grumbles, but she agrees. She checks her phone and finds a text, from Leksa: At an art show with Clarke. There's an address attached, and Onya frowns. Leksa had promised not to go out, and she knows that neighborhood makes Onya antsy and anxious. "Fine," she snaps to the group at large. "We meet again in four days."
She is leaning against the wall, waiting for Linkon, when she hears Quinn rumbling to the others in gonasleng. "How do we know she's even Heda? I'm not saying we don't go in, but she never had the flame-" Onya steps around the corner and they fall silent. Quinn draws up, his jaw set, but his hands shake at his side. He and Onya had fought together, when they'd made their way to the airstrip.
"Speak true," she says, mocking. "Jomp Heda op en yu jomp ai op."
"You know I respect you. And I will follow Heda. If she is Heda." Quinn casts his gaze to the sides, where his friends shift, unwilling to back him up in the face of the knife slipping from Onya's sleeve to her hand, the grip familiar and steadying.
"Leksa burns for the Trikru," Onya snarls. "If you have doubt, come and meet my edge. Your spirit will confirm it on your way to your next life."
"Anya," Linkon says, from beneath a streetlight. "They're tired, it's late. We will address it at the next meeting. "Kom, sis. Leksa waits for you."
/
Onya was waiting in Leksa's quarters when she returned, late with mussed hair and a soft clinging smile, and Onya hates to have to be the one to take it away. "You and Kostia," she'd said, exhaling.
Leska edged into the room, her shirt untucked and loose. "Yes," she'd said, lifting her chin. "Me and Kostia." She goes a little dreamy. "Onya," she said, hesitant, "does it always-feel like that? Like this?" She sat on the bed.
"You will be Heda," Onya reminded her. "You will have only one priority. It is a disservice to Kostia, once you ascend."
Leksa lifted her chin, teenage defiance. "I am not Heda yet."
Onya growled at her willful misunderstanding, and had moved to leave before stopping. She sat beside her seken and rested a hesitant hand on the back of Leksa's neck. A soft bruise is blooming on her throat, and Onya watched it while she told Leksa, "It feels that way because it is special. Because em ste hod."
"Hodnes," Leksa murmured, wondrous, her eyes shining like sunbeams. Onya stayed in her room, crouched at her bedside and then leaned against the wall, watching Leksa smile in her sleep and feeling it hurt, in her heart, to know it is only temporary.
/
Reivon is watching television when Onya comes in, still breathing through her nose, her wrist pressed against her leg to feel the comforting press of her knife. "Yikes," Reivon says, craning around to watch her stalk through to the kitchen. "Bad day at the farm?"
Onya snarls at her, stomping wordless into the kitchen. She tries to pour a glass of water from the pitcher in the fridge and her left hand gives out, abrupt. She shouts, furious, and the glass shatters, shards falling onto her foot, water splashing harshly against the tile. She leans her palms on the counter and bows her back, breathing even and willing her heartbeat under control. Violence crackles in her, demanding release, and she's so busy forcibly calming herself she doesn't notice Reivon coming in behind her.
"Hey," Reivon says, cautious. "You uh, doing okay?"
"Nou," Onya growls. She hisses something low and snarly, in her village dialogue, so thick even Leksa would need a second to understand it, and when she whirls around-Reivon doesn't flinch, she braces. Feet dug in and chin lifted, jaw set and eyes flashing, and it draws Onya up short. Onya doesn't apologize, but she does recognize the pang of regret in her chest. It takes her five beats of her racing heart to find gonasleng, and it comes out more heavily accented than she'd like. "You should not be in here," she says, as even as she can, "there is glass on the floor."
Reivon looks at her, and she looks back, and there's nothing except the hard glint of her brown eyes and the tick of the clock on the wall, but when Reivon says, "I'll get the broom," Onya's breath wooshes out in a long exhale and she is-she is settled, somehow. She breathes soft and easy, and when Reivon comes back with shoes on so she can walk across the floor she hands Onya the broom and takes a roll of paper towels off the fridge, bending to start to mop up the water. Onya watches Reivon, knelt careful, and her knuckles creak from how tight they are around the broom handle.
"Beja," she says, bending her legs to crouch. "Let me."
Reivon passes her the roll of paper towels and stands, leaning a hip against the counter. "So. Someone forget to kiss your ring?"
Onya throws the sodden wad in her hand without looking, hears it plop satisfyingly into the trash can. "I am not in the mafia," she says, standing. "Nor is Leksa." She takes the broom back and starts to nudge the glass into a pile on the floor, the bristles leaving damp streaks.
"Why do you say it like that?" Onya arches an eyebrow. "Lexska," Reivon tries. Onya snorts.
"Leksa," she says, slow to let Reivon hear it right. "It is the right way to say her name, in our language."
"Lex-Leksah," Reivon says, slow and careful, her brow furrowed. "Not an Alexandria after all. Octavia owes me a dollar. How do you say your name?"
"Onya." Onya reaches under the sink for the dustbin, and cleans the glass with quiet tinkles. She says it four more times, "Onya, Onya, O-n-y-a, On-ya," before Reivon manages it, grinning.
"You must hate it when people call you Anya," Reivon muses, and Onya's eyes jump to hers as she puts the cleaning materials away, surprised. She says nothing, and Reivon is watching her face, intent, but she lets the matter drop, switching topics neatly. "What happened?"
Onya stares at her. "I dropped a glass," she says, disdainful. It's quite obvious what's happened.
"You with the ninja cat reflexes?" Onya is ready to snarl again, drive Reivon away with the force of her ill nature, but when she turns Reivon's hand is outstretched, a crystal candy on her palm. "I bought these the other day, seems like you could use one."
Onya takes the sweet from her, her fingers brushing Reivon's palm. It may be the first time they've ever touched. It melts on Onya's tongue like summer, and for a second she can smell Trigeda again, feel its sticky heat and its cooling breeze; she hears her nomon's voice. "I have-" she stumbles over the words, unfamiliar to her in both languages, "-damage. In the nerves." She holds her left hand up and flexes it, watching the muscles and bones play and flex under her skin. "It impacts mobility."
She waits for Reivon's next question, but Reivon just offers her another piece of candy. "How do you say my name?" she asks, like Onya hasn't just talked about her injuries for the first time; not even when Leksa's asked has she admitted her hand isn't what it used to be, what is should be; she is broken in this way.
The door bangs open and Okteivia spills through, shouting about something Onya couldn't care about if you held a knife to her throat, and Reivon tips the candy into Onya's hand, smiling half apologetic as she moves away.
This is two things she owes to Reivon now, at least, and Onya is hardly the right person to figure out how to balance favors that don't involve violence or planned revolution. It doesn't make them close to even, Onya knows, but she writes Reivon's name in her language on an index card, looping and in the dark ink pen Leksa keeps in her desk for official signatures, and she slides it into an envelope with 'Raven' printed in Onya's small blocky handwriting. She slips it under the garage door in the early morning, and leaves a corner peeking out. When she gets back she checks; it's gone.
/
Tris's nontu was from Onya's village. It makes Tris her sis-youngon, or close enough to. Enough that Onya had attended her birth, Leksa trailing after her in the early days of their partnering.
Leksa cradled Tris close, peering at her, marveling at her tiny fingers, her toes, the tuft of her dark hair.
"She will be gona one day," her mother had said, proud. "Will you take her, Onya?"
"I will be Heda by then," Lexa'd said, her tone factual rather than braggart. "She will be treated well."
Onya reached out. Tris caught one finger, her grip tight and strong. "I will look after her," Onya had promised.
/
Klark delivers pizza to their door, flushing. Leksa frowns after her retreating back, puzzled. Then she half-smiles. "Kefa," Onya warns. She has seen that smile before, and it's bittersweet. How long has she wished to see happiness across Leksa's face? "This can only end one way," she says, as gentle as she's capable of being. Leksa's smile disappears.
"I am," she says, cold and flat and pure Heda, "more than capable of separating my feelings from my duty." She is, Onya thinks, speaking more to herself than to Onya.
"I have never doubted you," Onya says, simply.
Leksa takes a deep breath. Her fists clench, her spine is iron. "Ai get em in."
Leksa sleeps below her, fitful, and Onya lies awake, staring at the ceiling. When Leksa's breathing has gone deep and even, interrupted by little mutters, Onya slides a hand under her pillow. There's a creased picture there, folded over and worn, faded. It's Leksa, very young, cradling an infant Tris against her chest. She is smiling, soft, and Tris' tiny face is scrunched up, mid-scream. It is the only photograph Onya has. She wishes, fierce even while it irks her to dwell on things that can't be changed, that Leksa had one of Kostia, to bring her comfort in the cold dark hours of the night when every person is most alone.
Onya sleeps with the picture pressed against her chest. She dreams of hou.