Chapter 26
I wake to Valerius watching me. He sits against the headboard beside me, one leg bent beneath the blanket, his back pressed to the dark wood.
He's still wearing yesterday's torn black shirt.
Someone cleaned the blood from his face, but the fabric across his shoulder remains stiff and dark where the Remnant clawed him.
His hair is disordered. His eyes are red.
His hand is wrapped around mine so tightly that his knuckles have gone pale.
He didn't sleep, I see it in his face. I know by the tension in his jaw. By the Shadowflame circling his wrist in restless black threads. By the way his gaze searches my face as if he has been waiting for me to open my eyes and prove something inside me survived the night.
The room is unfamiliar. Stone walls. Narrow windows. Heavy curtains. Old silver wards carved around the door. A fire burns in the hearth, low and red, but it gives no warmth. The lower observatory. They must have brought us back here after the battle.
After my father died.
The thought arrives simply. My father is dead.
I wait for pain but nothing comes. No tearing inside my chest.
No grief rising through my throat. No memory of his blood on my hands strong enough to make me shake.
Only the fact, Alaric Starling stepped in front of me, a Remnant killed him, Magistra Voss caused the attack, the Ancient Masters escaped.
All of them require correction.
Valerius's fingers tighten around mine. "You're awake," he whispers. His voice is rough.
I turn my head toward him. "Yes."
Something in his face changes. His eyes move over mine, searching. "What hurts?"
I consider the question. "My ribs." I say. His expression sharpens. "My arm. My head." I shift slightly beneath the blankets. My body objects with distant aches, bruises, cuts, and Starfire exhaustion. All manageable.
Valerius leans closer. "What else?"
I look at him. "I don't understand what you're asking."
His throat moves. "The bond."
I focus on it. The connection is there. Gold and shadow threaded between us.
His fear presses against it, hot and violent, his relief, his exhaustion, his grief for my father because I grieved, even if he hated the man for what he did to me, his fury at Voss, his terror that I will close my eyes again and disappear somewhere he can't follow.
I can feel everything in him but when I search for myself... Silence. Not emptiness exactly, this feels sealed. A door without a handle.
Valerius's face pales. He felt me look. He felt what I found. "Valentina."
I tilt my head. The way he says my name should affect me, it usually does. His voice has always been able to change the air around me. Make my heartbeat stumble. Make warmth spread beneath my skin. Make me feel safe or furious or reckless depending on the shape of the word. Now it is only a sound.
His hand rises toward my cheek. He stops before touching me. I don't lean into him or pull away either, I don't feel the desire for either. His hand remains suspended between us. Pain crosses his face.
"You don't feel me," he whispers.
"I feel you." I correct him.
"No." His voice breaks slightly. "You feel the bond."
I study him. His hazel eyes are raw from a night without rest.
There is dried blood beneath one fingernail.
The mark over his heart glows faintly through the torn fabric of his shirt, answering mine beneath my ribs.
He looks beautiful. He looks devastated.
I know I love him. The knowledge is stored inside me like a line from a book. True but untouchable.
"I remember loving you," I say.
Valerius goes completely still as if what I just said to him is a shock. The fire in the hearth bends toward him. Shadowflame climbs his forearm. "What does that mean?"
"It means I know that I do."
His face hardens around fear. "But you don't feel it."
I look down at our hands. His fingers are threaded through mine shaking. "No."
The word destroys him, I see it happen. The bond floods with pain.
His, only his. It reaches for me, desperate and instinctive, searching for the girl who always answered him.
The girl who sent safe. The girl who said always.
The girl who chose him in front of her mother and stood beside him in war. Nothing inside me moves.
Valerius closes his eyes. I watch him absorb the wound. "Is this because of the battle?" he asks.
"Probably." I say dryly.
"Because of your father?" He asks.
"And Seren." I add. Her name is another fact. Seren Ashwick betrayed me, she helped Voss, she used a severance spell against the bond, she stood beside the Ancient Masters while I asked if any part of our friendship had been real.
I remember the pain but I just can't feel it. My mind shows me the shape of heartbreak without allowing me to enter it.
Valerius opens his eyes. Rage flickers through them at Seren's name. "What do you feel when you think of her?"
"Nothing." I shake my head.
"Your father?" He narrows his eyes.
"Nothing." I shake my head again.
"Voss?" He asks.
I pause, not because there is emotion, because there is intention. "I want her dead."
His expression changes. Valerius has wanted Voss dead for days but he hears the difference. There's no anger in my voice, no grief, no trembling rage, only decision.
The bedroom door opens. Valerius turns so sharply that black fire flashes across his palm.
Professor Thorne enters slowly. His side is tightly bandaged beneath a plain dark robe.
His face is pale, and he walks with one hand braced against the stone wall.
Professor Vale follows, hovering close enough to catch him while pretending she is not.
My mother comes last. Her black dean's robes are gone.
She wears a simple grey dress, wrinkled at the sleeves, and her blonde hair hangs loosely over one shoulder.
Her eyes are swollen, she's been crying. She stops when she sees I am awake.
"Valentina." Her voice breaks. She crosses the room quickly.
Valerius shifts between us before he seems to realize he's doing it. My mother stops. The old hurt passes over her face. I see it, I understand it but I don't care. That realization should disturb me, but it doesn't.
"You're awake," she whispers.
"So everyone keeps saying." I say with annoyance.
Professor Thorne's eyes narrow. Valerius looks at him. The exchange is brief. Something is wrong, Thorne knows immediately.
He limps closer to the bed. "How long has she been awake?"
"A few minutes," Valerius says.
"What happened?" Thorne asks.
"She remembers emotion." His voice turns raw. "She doesn't feel it."
My mother covers her mouth. Professor Vale looks at me with sudden alarm. Thorne studies my face. "Valentina, tell me what happened after you released the Starfire."
"I lost consciousness." I give him a look. He knows this... he's acting as if he wasn't there.
"Before that." Thorne states.
"I destroyed the Remnants. Forced the Masters through the gate. Healed you." I give him the run down.
His expression tightens. "Your father?"
"Died." I say.
My mother makes a broken sound. I look at her.
She presses one hand against the bedpost to hold herself upright.
Her husband died... My father. I should reach for her but I remember wanting for her comfort all my life, I remember the little girl who sat at her feet and believed her mother could solve anything, I remember loving her even when I was furious.
Now she's crying in front of me and I couldn't care less.
Professor Thorne notices where I am looking. "This isn't ordinary numbness," he says.
Valerius's gaze turns lethal. "What does that mean?"
"It means I don't know yet." Thorne confirms.
"Find out." Valerius snaps.
"I am trying." Thornes looks at him.
"Try faster." he says.
My mother steps closer despite Valerius's position. "Sweetheart?" I look at her. She flinches. There has to be something wrong with my eyes or my face. She searches me desperately. "Do you know who I am?"
"Amara Vale Starling. Dean of Arcana Academy. My mother. You sealed my Starfire when I was an infant to hide me from the Ancient Masters."
Her face folds. "That isn't what I meant."
"I know." Her tears fall, still nothing. Valerius's hand tightens around mine until it almost hurts.
Professor Thorne sits heavily in the chair beside the bed. The movement costs him. Professor Vale places one hand on his shoulder, but he barely notices. "The sovereign heart absorbed the seal key," he says slowly. "Then Valentina released more Starfire than any bearer has survived in centuries."
Valerius's eyes flash. "She survived."
"Her body did." Thorne corrects him. The room goes silent. Shadowflame crawls up the walls.
My mother whispers, "What are you saying?"
Thorne looks at me, not unkindly, not clinically either. He looks afraid. "I'm saying the sovereign heart may have protected itself."
"From what?" Valerius demands.
"Everything." Thorne says.
I consider the idea. It does make sense. Pain became dangerous. Emotion triggered Starfire. My grief opened the sovereign heart and nearly consumed the archive. So the magic removed the cause.
Professor Vale's voice is quiet. "It locked her emotions away."
Valerius stands. The bed shifts as his hand tears from mine. The sudden absence registers physically. The bond stretches. His distress sharpens but still, nothing rises inside me.
He turns away, dragging both hands through his hair. "No." Thorne's expression tightens. Valerius faces him again. "Undo it."
"I cannot simply undo sovereign magic." Thorne informs him.
"You know what she is. Her mother sealed it once. Do it again." Valerius paces back and fourth.
My mother flinches. "Valerius—"
"Put them back." His voice breaks. He looks at me. The strongest boy in Arcana Academy looks at me as though I'm dying in front of him and he's the only person who can see it. "Put her back," he whispers.
All this and I still have no urge to comfort him.
Only the memory of wanting to. I force myself to lift my hand.
Valerius freezes. I place my palm against his cheek like he would do to me, I remember that would help.