It was with a light heart that El Aran dove into the cold crush of the ocean, and hope that gave her legs strength as she swam through the salty waves as she headed for Salem. The dark sky seemed to blend with the water ahead of her, but she was not afraid. Benim için izlemek, benim oğlum, she thought as her legs churned. He was a sensible stallion. He would not turn her away before she had a chance to speak her piece (or peace, as it were), as she would have done to a repudiated herdmate, and she was counting on that. He need not agree to let her stay. El Aran did not intend to stay. She had friends awaiting her on the mountain. Family.

Orhan would be better off, she thought as she finally climbed out of the frigid waters to walk dripping away from the shore, without her. Even striding back into this land she once called home was a trial, for all of her nerves were on end as she expected to see enemies in the shadows. The Desert was not a healthy place for her, and she would only infect the herd if she stayed. El Aran could see that now. She paused for a moment to breathe deeply and was pleased to recognize her son’s scent, still strong, among the sands.

But there was another that came to her, and she frowned. Maslakhat? With that recognition came the memory of her last meeting with the sly buckskin, and El Aran felt her legs tremble. She had demanded from him an unspeakable thing. Her eyes slid skyward: the first pink tinges of dawn had begun to thread through the dark. He had not yet come to her on the Crossing. Perhaps there was still time. The seer surged forward, grunting at the simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar sensation of pulling her weight across sand, and headed inland at a gallop.

She saw the slender stallion and swung toward him, head up and tail half-flagged as she thought of A’idah— how could she have considered such a thing, after all she had been through? The matte-black mare felt no better than the Purebreds as she hastened to the Akhal-Teke’s side, having cried out for blood against a mare whose only crime against El Aran was her bloodlines. Was that not the very same offense she herself had been vilified for in the desert?

"Maslakhat," she called, sending a prayer up to Aşk that he had not yet carried out her terrible deed, and saw too late the fleabitten gray Arabian who stood solidly before him. El Aran dropped her haunches and dug her hind feet in as she braked in a spray of sand. "You," she said, and her voice rose and cracked on the word as the mare turned to flash her bloodmarked shoulders in the growing dawn.

“Oh yes,” the Arabian smiled, her dark eyes widening along with her lips. “Hello again, Kör Kahin.”