34. Kira
Chapter 34
Kira
CONGRATULATIONS
“ Y ou may enter,” Fyrris declares from the other side of the room.
I shiver as my heart flails around inside my chest. I glance to the side, as if I’m looking for Matius, but he’s not there. He left hours ago, at the gates of the Towers before the last bell chimed, and I can’t blame him. I know why he wouldn’t want to enter this place.
It just happened so quickly. We spent seven days together, dragging ourselves out of the Daggers, across the Sea of Grass, and onto the barge at Deep’s Crossing that carried us back to Silver City. We rarely spoke, but the silence that grew between us felt almost comfortable. It’s like we’d both been wounded in the same battle, and we were limping home together with injuries no one else would be able to understand. When I first saw the brilliant white Towers of Silver City rising above the Ever-Reaching River, I turned to Matius.
But the words didn’t come. And I spent the rest of that day, as the barge beat on against the current and the Towers grew larger, trying to think of how to tell him how grateful I was for his quiet companionship and how sorry I was for what happened between him and Tholious.
Even as we walked together through the streets of Silver City just hours ago, my fingers clenched around the damned amulet hidden in my pocket as I turned the words over in my head and then silently dismissed them all. None of them fit.
And then we were at the gates of the Towers, and Benja took my arm and told someone to notify Fyrris, and Matius frowned like that invisible wound we shared was suddenly much harder to bear, and all I could think to say was a whispered thanks before the gate shut between us and Benja pulled me into a small room and fired round after round of questions at me, until the answers all blurred together. The only one that seemed to matter was the first.
“Do you have it?”
I nodded, then pulled the amulet from my pocket. It gleamed in the light like it was covered in oil. I stared at it as Benja asked me question after question, waiting to feel something.
Nothing. There’s nothing at all inside of me.
Finally, another Guard came to the door and whispered something to Benja. I was handed the amulet, then led through the main courtyard and into the very same room where I’d been told to prepare for a journey to the Daggers with Tholious. Only there’s no Tholious here tonight. Now the room holds only Fyrris and another Exemplar, a woman wearing white robes and a scowl.
Fyrris frowns at me like he’s disappointed already. “Enter,” he says again. “And be seated.”
I stumble into the room and sink into a chair.
“Where’s Tholious?” I ask. My voice sounds like a rasp dragged over splintered wood.
Fyrris makes a face that suggests I’ve just said something off-color. Some insane part of me wants to apologize.
“Tholious is indisposed,” the woman replies.
She gives me a smile that makes me think she personally stabbed Tholious in the back. I shiver. My fingers tighten around the slick sides of the amulet cupped in my palm. Matius is going to be upset about this. Despite everything, I don’t think he would want Tholious dead. But since when do we get what we want?
“Show us,” Fyrris says, with an impatient gesture toward the table.
Right. He might have been more delicate with Tholious, or more polite with Zayne and the other mercenaries. But I’m no mercenary and no star pupil. I reach forward with the amulet. My fingers feel stiff; it takes more effort than it should to pry them away from the smooth metal.
The amulet falls to the table with a solid thump, a sound far louder than its size would suggest. My mouth feels dry. Slowly, I pull my hands away from the amulet of the Godkiller.
Fyrris and the woman both stare at the damn thing like I’m not even here. Minutes slide by silently, dragging cold fingers across my skin. I wonder where Matius is right now, and how he’ll react when he hears about Tholious. I wonder if the sun is shining in the Daggers, if it’s streaming through the window of the cabin?—
Fyrris makes a snorting sound. His hands hover over the amulet like a man trying to warm himself over the ashes of last night’s fire.
“Not much in here,” he mutters.
“I felt it,” I announce.
Fyrris and the woman ignore me. She runs her fingers over the thing, and her expression tightens.
“Maybe we have to dig deeper,” Fyrris says.
“Or maybe I’m correct, and there’s a synergistic effect between the device and the wielder,” the woman says.
Fyrris scowls like that’s the stupidest idea he’s ever heard.
“That’s not how we designed the arcanite containment system,” he growls. “The nightmare steel alone should contain the entire force of the creature.”
The woman leans back in her chair and crosses her arms over her chest. There’s a look on her face that suggests this is not their first argument.
“We’ll do what we can,” Fyrris declares. “Hopefully the next one won’t have the same complications.”
“Syrus is more docile,” the woman replies. “We’ve got that going for us, at least.”
I can’t stop the little gasp that slips from my lips. I thought Syrus was dead. I thought all the other Elites were dead.
Both Exemplars turn to stare at me. The woman looks like she’s surprised I’m still here, and I realize making any sort of noise was a mistake. I should have slipped out of the door like a ghost.
“Did you see him use this?” Fyrris asks, waving his hand over the amulet.
I shake my head.
“Was he wearing it?” the woman asks.
I shake my head again. Now both of them look disappointed. Their white robes gleam in the low golden glow of the lanterns on the walls.
“Very well,” Fyrris says. “You’re dismissed.”
I come to my feet, then hesitate before the door. My heart flutters in the back of my throat. I feel like I’m standing tiptoe on the point of a blade. I turn back to Fyrris.
“Sir?” I ask.
“Is there a problem?” Fyrris replies.
My pulse hammers inside my skull. My gut shifts like it’s looking for a way out. Still, I have to ask. I felt the magic. I came back to the Towers.
I’m ready.
“Shall I join the Entrants?” I say. “I’m ready for my magical training.”
The air in the room turns to ice. For what feels like a very long time, nobody says anything.
And then Fyrris laughs. It’s cold and brittle, the sound of something breaking. The woman next to him starts to laugh too, until the stone walls ring with the sound. My eyes sting. Something bitter and sharp climbs the back of my throat.
“Kira.” Fyrris grins at me like the rattlesnake who sang to the mice. “You’ll join the Guards.”
I try to breathe, but my throat is too tight. The room spins. My heartbeat pulses crimson behind my eyelids. My hands curl into fists. I’ve tried so hard to be silent here, to blend in and follow the rules. But I can’t just let this go.
“I felt the magic,” I say again. “In that, that damn thing. I felt it!”
“Do not push the limits of my gratitude,” Fyrris snaps, in a voice as low and cold as the snow. “I was not making a request. You will serve the Towers as a member of the Guards, or you will not serve the Towers at all.”
I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut. “But my—my parents—” I stammer.
Fyrris said they were Exemplars. Gods know I’ve memorized every story I’ve ever heard about Exemplars, and I’ve paged through those dusty records until my eyes watered.
Perhaps they died in the explosion that ruined the Broken Tower. Perhaps they traveled to the far continent in search of more magic. But someone here has to know who they are, what in the nine hells happened to them, and why they didn’t want their own daughter.
The woman laughs again. It’s a sound that brings back every nasty memory I have of parties and festivals, of the highborn lords and ladies on the other side of the crimson ribbon or the crystal panes of glass.
“Your parents?” the woman says. “You’re one of Lord Castinac’s many bastards, girl. Your mother was a whore who died on the birthing bed.”
Fyrris scowls at her. I gulp for air in a room with walls that are closing in all around me.
“Then—why?” I manage to whisper.
It doesn’t make any sense. Why pull me from the orphanage? Why tell me to develop my magical potential?
“So that you could serve as a Guard,” Fyrris says, folding his hands neatly on the table in front of him. “Or you will leave the Towers in a coffin. Do I make myself clear, Miss Kira Silver?”
Like Tholious , my mind howls. The woman said he was indisposed, which I assume is her polite Towers way of saying he’s been murdered and sunk to the bottom of the Ever-Reaching River. Maybe it even happened in this same room. I try not to look down. If there’s blood on this floor, I don’t want to see it.
I manage a nod. My hands are shaking so badly it takes me several tries before I can get the doorknob to turn. Benja stands in the hallway just outside the door, his arms crossed over his chest, waiting.
“I hear you’re officially joining the Guards,” Benja says. “Congratulations!”
I press my hands to my eyes and try to breathe. Benja takes my elbow, then gently leads me to the Guards’ quarters.