Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
DRYSTAN
Keep him under rubelline locks. I’ll come myself.
Drystan – Western Sultira
Ashiver racked my shoulders, and I glanced out the window, unable to shake the unease left by the snakes we’d barely escaped.
Shadows danced along the wooden panels of the old man’s cabin, the fire on the hearth casting a dim light along the wall.
A large form moved through the back of the room, and I tracked Ezrich’s shadow as he sat down at the table with the stranger.
Windsor.
His head bobbed, and I turned, realizing conversation must have started from the way the two shadows moved.
White hair hung in long, neatly groomed lines down the old man’s back, half of it pulled up behind his head. He crouched over the table, his back hunched in what appeared to be a permanent arch. I moved to the table and pulled out a seat as Windsor handed me a mug of tea.
“Says the snakes started coming from the south two months ago,” Ezrich said. His hand movements were slow to follow.
Windsor tracked the movements with his pale, blue eyes.
“From the desert?” I asked, doing my best to verbalize the words, knowing they didn’t sound exactly as they should as I marked the wince on Ezrich’s face.
Looks like his used to bury themselves in my psyche, a deep, defining part of myself marking me as different.
But after twenty-four years of this, the expression simply rolled off my sense of self like the drip of tea sliding down Ezrich’s mug after he brusquely set it down.
Windsor understood my words because he nodded and began to reply. “Yes— near the— not many survivors.”
His lips moved too quickly, and I grimaced as I missed half of his words, but I thought I understood what he meant. My head dipped in response, and I studied the old man, my brows furrowing as he looked at me. Something about him seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place it.
I slid my gaze over his hunched, slim frame, wondering how, exactly, this frail old man had survived any encounter with those snakes.
“We need to share this with Ronan after we find the edge.” Ezrich turned to me, and my pulse jumped.
My hands flew up in response, ready to silence him, but the damage had been done. Windsor perked up. The old man’s head cocked to the side, and I forced my face to relax.
“What are you looking for?” he asked.
Ezrich blinked, his mouth opening, as if unsure of what to say.
Shit.
I cut Ezrich a shut-the-fuck-up look, hoping like hell he didn’t say anything else.
“I’m sorry. Can’t share,” I replied, tilting my eyebrows and doing my best to mimic Lyvia’s father. He’d always had a way of connecting with people, persuading them.
“Of course,” Windsor murmured after Ezrich translated. He dipped his head in understanding. “You are welcome to stay— collect my traps— town is ten miles.”
I nodded my head in thanks, but signed, “We’ll help you set a few traps, but we should go soon.” I slid my eyes to Ezrich, who seemed partial to staying for a while as his eyes landed on the chest of furs in the corner.
Ezrich didn’t feel the same urgency when it came to finding the edge of the rubelline zone. He didn’t have powers. They weren’t left screaming behind a prison wall, scratching and clawing along it, searching for escape, desperate for air, for breath.
I’d had one glimpsing minute of the Advetis power when I’d finally unlocked it. One fucking minute to feel what I knew I was meant to feel. What had been waiting for me my entire life. The ability to move. To be free. To fly without wings. Before it was taken away. And I needed it back.
“Thank you for the hospitality,” I continued, slugging down my tea and taking a quick survey of my pack and weapons.
“—welcome,” Windsor murmured, adjusting his long coat as he stood and helped us gather our things.
“Drystan.” Ezrich turned to me. “We could use real rest, especially after the snakes. Stay one night. The horses could use rest.”
My lips pursed, and I looked out the window to where our mounts stood tied.
He was right. My molars scraped against each other, and I looked back at Windsor.
He seemed safe enough. And it would probably be better to hit the road well-rested.
I begrudgingly agreed, and Ezrich’s lips stretched into a wide smile as he turned to the white-haired Windsor.
I let my pack slump back to the ground and turned to find the two of them clasping hands.
A flurry of robed scholars bustled through the halls of the Temple of the Sky as I made my way to the grand lecture hall.
Morning sunshine cut through the windows of the domed structure, illuminating the various fountains in the center.
I let my gaze linger on the droplets sparkling like stars before they spattered against the surrounding black columns.
Something slammed into my shoulder, and I grappled for the books in my arms, cutting a glare at the students rushing past me before adjusting my spectacles. I hurried after them and into the lecture hall, finding my assigned seat in the sea of students.
Movement spread through the chamber like a wave, heads bobbing in conversation as students pulled out quills and notebooks, mouths still moving as they settled into place.
My gaze tracked the faces, finally stopping as it landed on Lyvia across the room.
She slid in between two boys our age, plopping her things before her in a messy pile.
My lips kicked up, and I shook my head as I straightened the quill next to my notebook.
She adjusted her skirts and took a seat before tucking her ebony hair behind her ears.
I waved as she glanced up, offering me a friendly smile. I returned it before the boy next to her mouthed something I was too far to lipread.
Lyvia’s eyes cut to his, her brows narrowing.
Pink rushed up her neck, and her lips pressed into a thin line.
The boy smirked at his friend on the other side of Lyvia, and she straightened her shoulders before pulling her gaze to the front of the room, where an old scholar sidled up to the center of the stage.
The movement across the vast chamber slowed like the stilling water of a wave slipping up sand. Mouths closed, and my eyes narrowed in on the scholar beginning the lecture. My gut tightened as he began speaking, his arms crossed in front of his chest.
Lip-reading it is, I thought. I’d need Lyvia to share her notes with me, again. I’d be lucky if I caught 20 percent of what he said from this far away.
Only about one-third of the professors I’d had over the past few years spoke my language with their hands.
I could feel Lyvia’s stare from across the room, but I didn’t dare look away from the scholar speaking as I furiously scribbled notes as best I could.
I knew I wouldn’t see pity on her face. I’d see anger.
And I didn’t need to add hers to the rising mix of resentment and frustration clashing inside me.
I was here. I was learning. I would become a Death Scholar.
That was enough for an orphaned deaf boy who’d spent the first few years of life on the streets of Krestwood.
My hand stopped scribbling as the scholar waited for an answer to the question he asked. Before I could raise my hand, he called on a boy at the center of the room.
Wrong, I realized, only catching the first few words.
Lyvia’s hand shot up, and she leaned forward, making her presence as obvious as a horse among mules. Not that she needed to make her presence known as the only girl in the room.
The scholar at the center of the room tensed, his jaw ticking as he undoubtedly noticed Lyvia and called on her with a reluctant nod of his head.
She eagerly spoke and signed her answer, the correct one, I knew, but her head snapped to the left mid-sentence as another male student in the crowd began to talk over her.
My brows narrowed in disgust as the professor’s eyes lit up, and he grinned at the male student in the crowd who interrupted Lyvia, nodding emphatically as the boy explained the same answer Lyvia gave using almost the exact same words.
Lyvia’s face fell, but only for a moment. She schooled her disappointment by squaring her shoulders and staring at the male student with eyes like ice before scribbling something in her notebook.
My teeth scraped against each other at the interruption, despite the occurrence happening on a regular basis.
Lyvia glanced at me briefly, and with a fleeting look, we shared our irritation, our otherness.
We stood out in this room of uniformity, together.
I held her gaze, giving her a slight, but firm nod of encouragement, and she returned to taking notes.
I pulled my attention back to the subject at hand until light leaked through the door in the back, draping the center aisle in a soft flood of a moon-blue glow before disappearing.
My eyes darted to the back hall where the high priest had entered.
His greasy, jet-black hair was pulled tightly back at the nape of his neck, and the deep blue, gossamer robes he wore fluttered as he clasped his hands in front of himself.
The silver belt secured around his waist was adorned with a wide array of white and gray coral.
He must have entered quietly, because as I scanned the rest of the room, the students’ focus remained pinned on the professor at the center.
High Priest Helmar loomed at the back of the room, his opaque blue eyes scanning the faces in the crowd and stopping briefly on mine. His lips tilted into a soft grin…
A deep ache at the back of my head pulled me from my sleep, my pulse banging behind my eyes like the woodpecker that left the marks on the pine outside the cabin. Forest light flitted through the window, and I blinked my eyes open to the glowing embers of our late fire in the hearth.
My hand slackened on the dagger in my grip, a habit I’d taken up after my time in Stynguard.
A shiver racked through my shoulders as the lingering image from last night’s dream crashed forward, and I failed to stop the haunting memories of my captivity in High Priest Helmar’s rooms in Stynguard.
His tests with Obscura Bone were nothing compared to the tactics he used when he suspected I could wield the lost arts.
Saliva flooded my mouth, the memories poisoning the late dinner still clinging to my stomach, and I rolled to the side, slamming on my knees before vomiting into a small bowl of breakfast left for me.
Gods, why did I have to be so weak?
My eyes caught on a slip of parchment next to the bowl, and I snatched it up. I pinched my brows as I read the note Ezrich left.
Helping Windsor with traps. Bringing my bow just in case. Back in a few hours. -Ez
I shook my head as I crumpled up the parchment. Fuck. Ezrich was too trusting. And why hadn’t he woken me? We really needed to keep moving, especially if those snakes returned.
I rubbed the exhaustion from my face and slugged a cup of water.
Relax, I told myself. It’d been weeks since we’d slept comfortably. I took a deep inhale, calming my nerves, and scanned the room. The soft light illuminated the lazy dust particles that floated through the air.
What was I going to do for a few hours? I craned my neck to peer out the window, noting Tempest and Anchor grazing in the small clearing, picking at bits of dead grass and muffling the dirt ground with their fuzzy lips.
I supposed they were better company than the paranoid thoughts I couldn’t seem to shake.