CHAPTER 18 ADRIA #3
He shouldn’t have known I was here. I was loath to admit my weapons training with Kori, given Thaane’s initial disapproval of her continued presence here at all.
But old friend that he is, my brother-in-arms, at my side before and after everything changed, he knew where I’d be despite my calculated silence, knew me better than I know myself.
Vaguely, I process that behind Thaane is a newly arrived regiment of my soldiers.
Most are focused on fighting—blades and guns raised, blasts of gifted energy primed to launch, wings splayed, teeth and claws bared to slice and tear—but a few take direct notice of me on the ground, wounded and gasping.
General Isek’s voice rises above the din: “My lord! Hold fast, a healer is coming!”
In Thaane’s vicious grip, the gagging rebel goes deathly still.
Thaane tosses the body aside with the others scattered about, blood splattering when it lands, and turns back to me.
But my head lolls. My vision clouds. I can’t keep a steady gaze on him; I can hardly keep my eyes open at all.
My sternum tingles and shudders and burns.
Russ howls, and my heart splinters.
“Look at me.” Thaane pants, kneeling somewhere beside me. “Zalel is on his way. It won’t be the first freeze-wound he’s healed. You’re going to be fine, Adria, all right? Please look at me.”
I almost smile, but spit blood instead. My voice stings on the way out, each syllable an icicle behind my tongue. “Get … Kori … safe.”
Darkness cloaks and carries me into nothing.
I fade in and out, a struggling dwarf planet on the brink of collapse, suspended only by gravitational pull. At first all I know is that the pull is toward warmth. The gentle brush of synthetic fabric barely conceals
the living heat beneath, a pulse that syncs with my own and bids me to keep fighting.
When I was barely a child, when my parents yet lived and I yet slept without seeing their ghostly faces, I remember testing my growing wings to see if I could fly high enough to brush a star with my fingers.
Mother restrained her laughter, and Father chided me for not training myself in more useful skills, bellowing that no one since the Cataclysm had traveled far enough to brush a star’s very surface.
But it hadn’t stopped me from wondering. Back before I dreaded dreaming, I dreamed of stardust, always waking without words to describe the sensation of galactic dust, the fabric of the universe, sliding like so much Passage sand through my outstretched fingers.
But that’s what the warmth feels like now.
In contrast to the scrambling cold hands of my own kind, and the exquisite cold of Zalel’s healing gift restoring my body, these gentle, testing touches make me shimmer and spark, a dark star reborn from the collapse of another.
It takes a while for the touches to register as those of a hand, not a star.
And when I open my eyes to Kori’s mask, bent close to my formerly sleeping face, I feel her eyes look through the helmet and into mine.
I’m a goner. In my hazy, wounded mind, it’s among the only things I know for sure.
I fell like a comet the moment Kori plummeted into my dark world, and no matter what troubles followed her here, no matter what ransom her mother offers for her safe return, I’m afraid this strange, nameless light in my chest will flicker out forever when she leaves.
The room around Kori swims and ripples before coming into focus.
I was hoping I’d be back in my own bed, or at least the infirmary, but I don’t recognize the strange, twisting expanse of the malformed tunnel I now find myself in.
The improper bed at my back is just a slab of rock padded with spare fabric.
Footsteps, both the scattered footfalls of various servants and the rigid, regimented march of my soldiers drilling,
sound somewhere far above and echo down through the ceiling before reverberating about the chamber.
The cloying, icy scent of freeze-burned flesh lingers in my nostrils, but when I tentatively press an open hand where the rebel’s blade entered, I find only a thin, half-faded scar—certainly Zalel’s work.
I’m lucky to have him on my side, after everything.
Almost as lucky as I am that Thaane found me before the frozen blade’s infection had time to get worse.
But Zalel is nowhere in sight now, and neither is Thaane. There’s only me and Kori, whose gaze bores into me despite the barrier between us, whose gloved fingers ever-so-lightly trace the half-moon of my new scar.
“Careful.” I cough, my throat raw from disuse. “That scar … could still … split.” And spill lingering freeze, potentially costing Kori the same finger with which she so carefully outlines my wound, my throat, my collarbone.
“I wear protective gear for a reason,” Kori says, utterly undeterred.
Silly, stubborn girl. She should be somewhere protected, especially after the grievous breach of security that was this last rebel attack.
Where the hell was General Isek when the attackers arrived?
Where was Thaane? I’m tired of resorting to violence to quell violence, but I cannot allow this to stand without harsh reprimand.
It would make me look pathetically weak to Azarii’s rebels, and worse than that, to the Shadow Court, whose belief in me is already wavering like a buffeted brazier flame.
I will need to call upon the darkest, cruelest parts of me to answer such gross incompetence.
But all I can think about right now is that Kori should be anywhere but here. And isn’t that exactly the problem? When did this girl invade my bloodstream as surely as the freezeblade? And is there any healer to be found on Pagomènos who could purge an infection such as that?
Kori should be somewhere safe. Not here with me, wherever here is—alone with me, no less, and my shattered strength nowhere near enough to stop it if a fresh wave of armed insurgents were to burst in and take my valuable captive for themselves.
“Protective from … the planet,” I sigh. “Not half-clotted … freeze-infected blood.”
“I’d be awfully surprised if any of that were still in you,” Kori says, poking my scar for good measure. “Even given the speed of spread once a freezeblade reverts to liquid, taking into account a presumed rapid heart rate on your part upon receiving the injury—”
I have a rapid heart rate now, too, but Kori doesn’t need to know that. “Since when … are you an expert on nightfolk weaponry … and wound care?”
“You were asleep for a while. I needed something to do. And you did just give me access to your entire historical records, remember?”
“I’m glad you didn’t … trouble yourself, staying … with me the whole time.”
I could blame my sleep-addled brain, I suppose, but I can almost see a light blink into being above Kori’s head. Knowledge is a drug to this girl, despite an unending sun that should’ve baked curiosity out of her, beaten her down like the rest of the dayfolk.
“We’re in the Underground, according to Thaane,” Kori explains.
“There’s an elaborate network of escape tunnels underneath your fortress, but oddly enough, no record of it in your formalized data,” she says, crossing her arms. “I did stay. I just … looped back aboveground and brought some reading material with me.”
Suddenly I have a pounding headache. Having only just now regained full consciousness, forming words is uncomfortably difficult. “You took … our historical records. Out of the archives. And into an underground tunnel. That nobody knows about … or would be able to search. If they had gotten lost.”
“I put them back.” Kori at least has the courtesy to attempt an apologetic shrug. It’s transparently false, but she does try.
I grit my teeth against a reflexive curse. “That’s what I get … for sheltering a memory smuggler.”
“And company.”
“What?”
Kori laughs. “And the pleasure of my company.”
“Pleasure’s all mine,” I unfortunately say before my still-recovering mental filter can kick in.
By the Beyond, as if nearly dying in front of a prisoner whose protection was my responsibility weren’t enough, now I’m making the heart palpitations she causes this agonizingly obvious? I’ve never hated myself more, and I’m well acquainted with self-loathing as of late.
Another thought gnaws at the edge of my consciousness. “Where is Russ? Aspect?”
“Russ is having a luxurious shower in my quarters, where no one will find him to question the necessity. Aspect … was surprisingly excited by the idea of tinkering with their busted knee. I needed them to stay put with Russ, stay distracted, for me to come check on you, so … I may have left them with assorted spare parts and encouragement to give repairs their best shot.” Kori gulps. “Am I a terrible person?”
“It’s taken you … this long … to ask that?” I say with more bite than I planned, choking a bit on the volume. I try to walk the words back, but I’m probably only succeeding in making things more uncomfortable. “Sorry. Head still isn’t … quite right.”
“No apology needed,” Kori says, every syllable thick with sincerity that only makes the combined pounding of my head and heart that much worse. “I’m … I’m just glad you’re all right. Your friend, the healer—”
“Zalel.”
“He seemed confident you’d recover, but you looked …” Kori gives her head a little shake. “Let’s just say that if any of you could’ve seen my face, you’d know all the blood drained out of it like juice from a fruit. And I’m certain you looked worse, of the two of us.”
“You shouldn’t have seen that.” My retort hisses through my teeth like a glacial wind through bony, dead branches, more forceful than I intended. “You’ve seen far too much.”
Kori lifts her chin, defiant. “You granted me permission to access the archives. You personally walked me through how to fire freezeshot—”