Chapter 34
When I reach the atrium, I suck in a breath, trying to cool the burning inside of me. Everything is so overwhelming. My chest is too tight. The scar-knotted flesh is so tender it hurts with every shift of my jerkin over my shirt.
I want to scream.
But instead, I force myself to keep calm and head toward the residence hall, pausing at the central dragon statue to catch my breath. As I do, I try to ignore the lifeless eyes glaring down at me, the way fear prickles under my skin. It knows what I am.
This power… Maybe it’s because I’m Valor Reborn. Or maybe because I am dragon cursed. If the dragons are beings of Etherlight, then of course I could draw magic. And both times it emerged as heat. This burning inside of me, threatening to consume me.
My gaze is drawn to the copper dragon tapestry.
Am I one of you?
A pair of footsteps comes up quickly behind me, and I straighten. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, and my stomach twists. The vicar must’ve followed.
He’s going to take me away again. I know he sensed it, the moment I drew from the Font without a sigil again in the refectory, however slight it was.
A shoulder brushes mine as someone comes to a stop beside me, and I nearly break down in tears when I find myself face-to-face with Lucan and not the vicar.
He stares down at me through his mess of dark-blond hair. In the fading sunlight, there’s something almost radiant about him, despite his exhaustion. I still see the strands of gold threaded around him, in his eyes, in his hair, in the air that surrounds where he walks.
“Lucan,” I say softly, keeping this conversation just for us and not possible nearby inquisitors.
Somehow, his name eases the tension from my shoulders, as if my body still remembers earlier—how comforting his presence was as he held me steady.
The way the Etherlight of our sigils danced together alongside our breaths.
He props an arm on the dragon statue, looking completely at ease, but his eyes dart to the corners of the room. “Don’t let him get to you.”
I force the corners of my mouth up. “I’ll be fine.”
“You will…but you also won’t.” Lucan’s expression doesn’t change in the slightest at my hollow smile.
He sees right through it. “You’ll tell everyone you’re fine.
You always do. But when you think no one’s looking, you stare like you want to save us all but know you can’t.
” His voice drops, low enough to cut. “And that resentment is going to make you want to burn it all down.”
My jaw slackens. Mercy, he’s so close to the truth.
“I’d never burn it all down,” I whisper, though my throat tightens.
“I want to save Vinguard. I want to see children playing in the sunlight, to walk beyond the gates, to know the world isn’t just stone and shadows and the red of the scourge.
” The vicar and his Creed, however, could be nothing more than cinder if it were up to me.
“But I can’t seem to find the strength. No matter how much they train me, I always come up short. ”
“You are stronger than you think, Isola.” His voice is soft but firm.
I sigh. The pretending to always know what I am, what I’m supposed to be, and what I might really be is suddenly too much. “I want to be enough, Lucan. But I’m not who all of them think I am. I’m afraid I might never be.”
He shifts and leans even closer. Close enough I can feel the heat rolling off him. Close enough to touch if I just leaned in ever so slightly.
“You are enough.” His warm, hazel gaze holds mine.
I shake my head, shoulders sagging, thinking of how the vicar could reduce me to such a pathetic state with such little effort. “No, I’m not. Not by any measure.”
“You are,” he insists. “I know you.”
“You know the idea of me, Lucan.” Guilt compels my words, making them hasty and messy.
“I want to be enough to save Vinguard, save everyone—but I’m terrified of dragons.
” The moment the confession leaves my lips, I want to pull it back, but I can’t.
“You saw me on the first night—I freeze up. I run. I can barely handle them when they’re lying dead in the street. ”
“You did fine in the pits.” He tries to get an edge in on the conversation.
I don’t let him. “It took a lot of effort just to be ‘fine.’ And that’s not even the half of it.”
He doesn’t say anything. Just holds my gaze, giving me the space to figure out my own words.
“I finally drew from the Font without a sigil—but not intentionally and not with purpose.”
Still nothing from him. So I keep going, the fear dragging the confession out of me.
“It finally happened, I finally did it, and nothing has made me feel less like Valor Reborn. I didn’t feel like a crusader of hope.
I felt…” My voice cracks, dropping. “I felt like I might be the monster. Something dark and twisted. Like fire was in my bones and I could turn this whole place to ash faster than I could save it.”
He continues to hold my gaze, patient. I don’t want to share any of this with him. But it’s like he knows I want to—need to. And, damn it, he’s right.
I speak even faster, little more than a hasty whisper.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Why sometimes I have this power and sometimes I don’t.
And it feels as though not knowing might tear me apart…
if whatever this thing inside of me is doesn’t do it first. My skin itches, sometimes doesn’t even feel like my own.
My scar burns, my heart skips, I’m hot and cold all at once. Without my mum’s tinctures—”
“Tinctures?” His tone hardens.
I flinch. “Her research, generally, led to her finding a tincture that helps with…with whatever it is I have. Something changed in me the day that dragon attacked me—and not for the better. Maybe I’m just broken.” I don’t dare say cursed.
I watch the muscles in his jaw tense. He’s too smart not to hear what I’m avoiding saying. “You’re many things, Isola, but broken isn’t one of them.”
“Maybe I’m not broken,” I admit. I try to shake the pathetic mood the vicar has put me in. It’s just so hard when an entire city expects more of you than is fair. “But I’m also not Valor Reborn.”
“Maybe you’re not Valor.” He says it so easily, like it’s not borderline treason, like every fear and worry I’ve ever had was unnecessary.
In a breath, it’s almost as if he’s lifted the veil of an identity that never fit.
It might still be attached to me, but there’s a whisper of freedom that I’ve barely dared to imagine.
Saipha is the only one who’s come close, but even she always carried the weight of a said, or unsaid, But what if you are?
No one in my life, other than Mum, has ever accepted that I probably am not Valor Reborn.
“But that doesn’t mean you can’t save this world,” he continues. “If anyone can find a way, it’d be you. And if not, Isola… You didn’t break it in the first place. It’s not even your responsibility to fix.”
“That’s…liberating.” The skipping in my chest finally calms. “But I want to fix it. I want to help humanity and heal the world, if I can.”
Lucan shifts, his hand sliding against the base of the dragon statue. His fingertips touch mine, and I can’t decide where to look: the contact or his face. We were closer than this in the sundering pit, and yet something feels different now.
It’s because this is a choice. Him leaning closer.
The way he seems to hold his breath. I ache, but it has nothing to do with what I fear is the curse.
Every part of me feels so brittle. And, for the first time, I want to break.
I want to be weak, just so his strong hands can be what puts me back together.
“Isola!” Saipha calls. The moment—whatever it was turning into—evaporates the instant she comes running.
Lucan straightens away, barely perceptible to anyone else, but it’s all I see. Especially as he curls his fingertips into a fist away from mine. Why is it that he always withdraws? Every time he does stings more than the last.
“Oh, good. I wanted to make sure there wasn’t anything bad happening up here. You missed Cindel absolutely losing it, furious that there are new kids joining the group from the Undercrust. Says it’s ‘against the Creed’s teachings’ like the vicar doesn’t get to dictate what those are.”
“That’s all we need. An even more pissed-off version of that girl,” I say. But it is odd to hear anything but utter deference to the vicar from Cindel.
“Yeah, probably best to give her space,” Saipha murmurs, starting toward the room.
“Already my plan,” I agree.
“Want to plan our strategy between now and the next test? Assuming it’s not tomorrow?” Saipha asks.
“I’m exhausted. Can we do it in the morning?” I say, starting for the stairs that lead up to my room.
“That works for me.” Saipha yawns, as if I’ve given her permission to be exhausted as well.
“I’ll meet you both on the fourth floor at first light,” Lucan says, splitting off at the second-floor landing.
He pauses for a second, eyes meeting mine, steady and unguarded.
For the first time ever, my heart skips a beat for a reason unrelated to dragons or Etherlight.
My chest squeezes, and I’m breathless as I wait to see what he has to say next.
Dragon-burned hells, what’s happening to me?
“Good night, Isola,” he says after a tiny eternity.
A million unsaid words dance across my tongue. None escape. “Good night, Lucan,” is all I manage.
“And good night, Saipha,” he adds hastily.
She glances between us. “You too.”
I can’t get up the stairs fast enough. As if I could outrun Saipha and the question that I know is burning her tongue. But, of course, I can’t. Not when her room is right across the hall from mine.
With every other step, I scold myself: one day, one firm set of hands and soft eyes, and I’m twisting in knots for him.
I’m better than being distracted by this.
But, then, on the opposite steps, I suppress a smile.
I fight a tiny giggle. He’s not what I thought he was, and maybe…
maybe I like that? I’ve never given much thought to what I “like” in the ways of romance before.
I always thought it’d find me if I was lucky.
And maybe it has? But in Lucan of all people… And then it’s back to scolding myself…
“What was that?” The question explodes from her as we reach the top and are more than confidently out of Lucan’s earshot.
“What was what?” I try to play dumb.
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe him coming to check in on you earlier—because it certainly wasn’t for me.
Or him chasing after you, after the vicar made you his living doll.
Or that look you two gave each other.” Saipha leans in, excitement shining in her eyes.
“I thought you said you didn’t flirt with him to get him to ally with us? ”
“I didn’t.” I look away, fighting a blush.
“Does he know that?”
“Saipha, it’s nothing.”
She repeats, “Does he know that?” I glare at her, and she just laughs. “Look, would I have expected you to pick the vicar’s son? No. But there are worse choices out there. Especially when he’s showing us by the day that he’s not as bad as we thought.”
She makes a fair point. But… “I can’t focus on that right now,” I murmur, trying to douse my own feelings. “I’m just trying to survive in here.”
“Yeah, yeah, we’re all trying to survive, Isola. Not just in here. But in general. To be alive is to survive. That’s why you’ve got to look for the things that make it worth living.”
I give my friend a smile. Small but sincere. “You know, for being obsessed with seeing what’s the biggest crossbow you can lift or how fast you can climb a wall, you’re pretty insightful.”
“Oh, I know.” Saipha turns to her room, a triumphant sway to her steps. “That’s why I’ll leave it be, for now.”
“Why do I get the feeling you’re threatening me?”
“Because I am.” She winks and retreats for the night.
I smile after her. At how she can make even one of the worst days of my life bearable. Fun, even. At least for a second or two.
Because the moment I open the door to my room, my jaw drops, I freeze, and all other thoughts vanish as I meet a pair of all-too-familiar eyes.
“Come in and close the door,” Mum says.