Chapter 22
War preparation begins with silence. Not weapons. Not flames. Not Professor Thorne barking orders while Valerius glares at him and Seren threatens to haunt anyone who makes me bleed.
Silence.
Heavy, stunned, terrible silence. It sits in the hidden chamber after the queen's echo disappears, pressing against the old stone walls and the bowed torches and the dark basin where Starfire burned a moment ago.
Three nights.
The words do not leave me. They move under my skin in time with my heartbeat. Valerius stands beside me, his hand still locked around mine, his Shadowflame curled low at our feet like a living warning. He hasn't let go since the queen spoke. Not once.
I think if someone tried to make him, the chamber would burn. I think if someone tried to make me, I might let him.
Professor Thorne is the first to move. He crosses to the basin, studies the cold iron rim, then presses two fingers against the place where the queen's echo stood. The blue torches near him flicker.
"No residual projection," he says quietly.
Seren blinks from beside me. "I'm sorry. Did you just inspect a dead queen's ghost message and decide to sound bored about it?"
Thorne shakes his head. "I am not bored."
"You said residual projection like we didn't all just hear a murdered sovereign tell us war is coming in three nights."
"I am preventing panic." Thorne corrects her.
"You are doing it terribly." Professor Thorne turns and gives her a look.
Seren lifts both hands. "I'm panicking with excellent accuracy."
My mother stands on the other side of the basin with one hand pressed against her mouth. Her face is pale, her eyes red-rimmed. She keeps looking at me, then at Valerius, then at our joined hands, as if every glance adds another wound.
I don't know if she's thinking about the seal, or the queen, or the warning.
Sacrifice the boy. The bond tightens around those words. Valerius feels them. His head turns slightly toward me.
His voice enters my mind, dark and immediate.
Don't.
I look at him and send back.
Dom't what?
I immediately received it.
Think about it.
A broken laugh almost escapes me. Thorne, Seren and my Mother attention turn to me. "How am I supposed not to think about it?" I say out loud.
His jaw clenches. "Because I am standing right here." That hurts more than comfort should because he is standing right here, because for now, his hand is warm around mine, his shoulder is near enough to touch, his heartbeat is still somewhere I can feel if I lean close enough.
The queen said they would try to make me sacrifice him. She didn't say how. That's where fear grows teeth.
Professor Thorne turns toward us. "We need order."
Valerius's eyes lift. "We need to move her somewhere Voss can't reach."
"We just did." Thorne reminds him.
"For how long?" He asks. Thorne's silence is not encouraging.
My mother lowers her hand. "The hidden chamber will hold as long as Valentina's concealment does."
Everyone looks at me. My stomach twists. "Don't say that like it's stable."
"It was stable," Professor Thorne says. "Until the queen's echo activated."
Seren looks at the basin as if it personally betrayed us. "So the dead queen made our hiding spell worse?"
"She did not make it worse," Thorne replies. "She changed the chamber's focus. It's still hidden, but the magic is awake now. Awake things can be noticed."
I look around the chamber. The starlight under the stone has dimmed, but I can still feel it beneath my feet, soft and alert. The academy is listening.
"I don't know what to do with it," I whisper. Valerius's thumb moves over my knuckles.
Professor Thorne hears me anyway. "That is why we train."
"Now?" Seren asks.
"Yes." Thorne nods.
"She just almost died." Seren lashes out.
"She has three nights." Thorne says.
Seren closes her mouth because that's the terrible truth beneath everything.
I don't have time to recover. Not from the Remnant.
Not from healing Valerius. Not from learning that I am Starborne, sovereign, hunted, and apparently important enough for dead queens to speak through old basins.
Not from being separated from him and breaking because the bond went silent.
Not from the memory of his body against mine in the old gallery before sundown, when the world was ending and we chose each other anyway.
Heat rises to my face. Valerius's gaze sharpens. He heard enough. Of course he did. His own memory answers through the bond before he can stop it. Darkness. His hands. My whispered yes. The impossible ache of knowing they could take him from my room but not from what had already happened between us.
My breath catches. His does too.
Professor Thorne's eyes narrow. "Whatever you are silently exchanging, stop."
Seren's eyebrows fly up. "Oh, that was a whole exchange?"
"No," Valerius says too quickly.
Seren stares. "That means yes." My face burns hotter. My mother looks away so fast it becomes painfully obvious she understands enough.
Professor Thorne closes his eyes. "Wonderful. War preparation with emotionally unstable fated souls."
Valerius's voice turns cold. "Say emotionally unstable again."
"Do not prove my point in the first minute." A strange laugh slips out of me, small and shaky. Completely inappropriate. Everyone looks at me.
I press my fingers to my mouth, but the laugh breaks again, half-hysterical and half-real. "I'm sorry. I don't know why I'm laughing."
Seren's eyes soften. "Because if you don't, you'll scream."
That's exactly it. Valerius's hand tightens around mine.
Professor Thorne steps to the center of the chamber. "First lesson. Starfire answers emotion, but if emotion rules it, you will become a flare. Bright, destructive, brief."
Brief. The word lands cold. My mother flinches. Valerius goes very still. I look at Thorne. "You mean dead."
He doesn't soften it. "Eventually."
Valerius's Shadowflame rises. "Thorne."
The professor turns to him. "She needs truth, not comfort."
"She needs both." He says. The words hit me so hard I forget to breathe.
Valerius doesn't look at me. Maybe because he knows what he just said. Maybe because he can't bear to soften it by pretending he didn't mean it.
Professor Thorne studies him for a long moment. Then, quietly, "Yes. She does." The agreement feels like another shift in the room.
My mother steps closer to the basin. "Starfire is not conjured like branch magic. You cannot command it by force. If you try to dominate it, it will answer the strongest feeling in you instead."
"So fear," I say.
"Today, yes." Thorne nods.
"That is not reassuring." I look at everyone, one by one.
"No." Her voice trembles but steadies. "But fear can become focus if you know what you are protecting."
My gaze moves before I can stop it. Valerius. His eyes meet mine. The bond warms.
Professor Thorne mutters, "Predictable."
Seren whispers, "Romantic, though."
"Miss Ashwick." Thorne shoots her a stare.
"What? The world is ending. Let me have this." Seren shoots a look back.
Valerius ignores them both. His gaze stays on me, dark and steady. I feel the question before he sends it.
Can you do this?
I don't know but I know the answer he needs, so I send back.
Yes.
His eyes soften by a fraction. Then the accusation comes slamming in.
Liar.
A small, helpless smile pulls at my mouth. His mouth almost curves.
My mother watches us, and something in her expression breaks open. Maybe wonder. Maybe regret that I found this kind of connection in the middle of all the danger she tried so hard to keep from me.
Professor Thorne clears his throat. "Valentina, stand before the basin." I do. Valerius moves with me. Thorne lifts one brow. "Alone."
"No," Valerius says.
The word is instant. Thorne's gaze sharpens. "Five steps, Mr. Draven."
"No." Valerius eyes sharpen. The chamber cools.
Professor Thorne's voice hardens. "This is not council cruelty. This is training. She must learn whether her magic answers her, not only your proximity."
Valerius's jaw tightens. He doesn't move. I understand why. Five steps isn't ten, five steps isn't the council chamber but after what happened, after the bond tore at eight, after they blocked him from me and the shadow came through my door, any distance feels like betrayal waiting to happen.
I squeeze his hand. "Five steps," I whisper.
His eyes snap to mine. "No."
"I need to know." I whisper.
"You don't need to be hurt to learn." He says.
"I need to know if I can stand without you." The words hit us both. His face changes. Pain first, then understanding. because I don't mean I want him gone.
I mean I need to know I exist outside the bond. That Starfire is mine. That choosing him doesn't mean disappearing into him. His throat moves. The bond opens. I feel his resistance. His fear. His devotion, too fierce to name. Then slowly, he releases my hand. Cold slips between our fingers.
Valerius steps back once. Then again. I breathe through it. Third step. My wrist warms. Fourth. The Starfire stirs. Fifth. The bond stretches, but doesn't scream.
Valerius stops.
His hands are fists at his sides. His Shadowflame coils around his wrists, ready to break any rule at the first sign of pain but he stays put because I asked. My chest aches with something bigger than fear.
Professor Thorne watches closely. "Good." Valerius looks like he wants to murder the word.
My mother gestures to the basin. "Place your hands on the rim."
The iron is cold. Too cold. The second my palms touch it, the little teaching flame returns. White-gold, small and waiting. It leans toward me. My breath catches.
"Do not reach for power," my mother says.
I almost laugh. "I wouldn't know how."
"Yes," she says softly. "You would."
Something about that settles under my skin. Maybe because she sealed me. Maybe because she knew me before I knew myself. Maybe because she has spent my whole life terrified of this exact flame and still believes some part of me recognizes it.