Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Hot wax drips on my face. I struggle to raise my hand to wipe it off, but my arm won’t budge, and the wax keeps burning long past when it should have cooled off. I get a wisp of sickly-sweet incense, candle smoke, and the metallic tang of blood.
“Strider,” a voice whispers in the darkness.
I force my eyes open and see a white candle in the center of an empty space. It’s a room, but also … not. It’s boundless, eternal. My eyelids scrape against my eyes like stinging nettles. The white candle drips black wax onto a simple wooden table. It’s the only furniture in the room.
“Strider!” The voice is commanding now, demanding something from me.
What do you want from me? I try to shout, but I can’t get the words out.
Then the candle goes out, and the darkness swallows me whole.
It’s too quiet in the infirmary.
My mother always talked while she healed us.
For every scrape she bandaged, every bone she set, every illness she treated …
she was never quiet. She sang aching songs in the old tongue, read stories from pages that were crumbling with age, and mumbled to herself as she mixed tonics and herbs.
When fevers raged, she would watch over us, guarding us with her calloused hands and her sad songs.
The loss of her slices through me, but I push it from my mind.
This is not a time to grieve the dead—not if I want to remain among the living.
Because even here, in the quiet of the infirmary, I’m not safe.
Two others are in this room, including Tyrston.
He hasn’t been awake since I was brought in last night, but he’ll wake up eventually.
So will the other man, who’s been asleep in the cot to my right since I arrived.
At least Tyrston and the stranger won’t be armed—there are no weapons in this little room.
Well, no official weapons. I slide my good hand over the fork I hid underneath my pillow when a servant brought breakfast this morning.
Its sharp tines are a small comfort, though the separation from my scythe and my shears is a persistent physical ache.
As the morning stretches, I pick at my darkened fingertips, trying to peel the dead skin off.
“That won’t do anything.”
I whip my head up to stare at the man to my right.
He’s young, too, and he’s one of the few men I’ve seen here with short hair.
It’s dark and curly. There’s a couple days’ worth of scruff on his face, and he rubs his hand over it like he’s not used to it being there.
He has the most expressive brown eyes framed by the longest, darkest eyelashes I’ve ever seen.
He’s shockingly … pretty, though I don’t think he’d appreciate it very much if I told him that.
“Excuse me?”
He nods toward my fingers. “Peeling the skin won’t help. The hollowing goes all the way to the marrow.” He gifts me a sweet, shy smile. “Trust me, I tried, too.” He holds his left arm, and there’s that swirling blackness, but in the vague shape of a handprint.
“I’m Leif,” he says. “Ward of the Ra’veth Cast, of the Stormriven Vanguard.”
“I’m—”
“You’re not to talk to her, Leif!”
Leif and I both turn to Tyrston, who’s opened his eyes to fix us both with a sharp glare. The gash on Tyrston’s face from Einarr’s attack has healed remarkably fast. Back at our village, a wound like that would’ve meant death. Though his skin is an angry red, it’s already knitting back together.
“No one said that, Tyrston. Don’t get your drawers in a twist.”
I wince at that, but I’m too focused on Tyrston swinging his legs over the side of the bed like he’s going to get up to say anything about it. My fingers inch under the thin infirmary pillow until they wrap around the cool metal of the fork. I grip it tightly.
“Master Maxim said no talking to her.”
Leif rolls his eyes. “Maxim’s not my master. He’s yours.”
Leif turns back to me, gives a conspiratorial wink, and mouths “thank the gods.”
I slap a hand over my mouth to hide a little smile. Tyrston flushes, which makes the injury on his face look even more livid. He stands, his presence threatening despite the lack of weapons in the room.
“Laugh at me again, bitch.”
That moment of humor felt good, almost normal, but that feeling is gone, replaced with a sinking certainty that I’m outmatched.
Not in wits or kindness or anything else that should matter in this world, but in pure brute strength.
It’s a feeling I know well—the soldiers have long ruled by might alone.
Tyrston is brimming with fury, not even bothering to shield his emotions.
The blast of it is a furnace against my flesh, hot and searing and uncomfortable.
It’s as if I’m back home, smothered by the emotions of my family.
It’s shocking after spending so much time with Ryot, who kept his emotions firmly to himself.
I don’t cower. I won’t. I throw the tangled sheets away from my legs, and stand, pressing my bare feet onto the cold stone floor. I’ve curled the fork into my good hand, and hold it tucked behind my back.
Even standing, I have to look up at Tyrston.
I hate that, but I don’t stand alone. Leif comes to his feet, too, his shoulders taut with tension, though his ribs are wrapped in a way that tells me they were broken recently, and he’s got a nasty gash on the side of his head.
It surprises me—I barely know him. But even after this short amount of time, he reminds me of Seb—sweet, but not soft.
The kind of person who steps into fights even when they probably shouldn’t.
“Don’t be an asshole, Tyrston,” Leif says.
“She’s an abomination! You wouldn’t know. You weren’t back from the Carrisfal attack when she landed. You don’t know what she is.”
Leif slashes a hand through the air. “I don’t need to. All I need to know is she’s here, she’s afraid, and she’s not the one threatening people in a damn sickbed.”
Tyrston’s lip curls. “You’re a blind fool. All of you in Stormriven are fools, like the idiot Ryot who brought her.”
“And you’re a coward,” Leif fires back. “You lash out like a cornered dog. Maybe that’s why Atherclad loses so many of its own. You fight with panic and pride.”
Tyrston’s hands clench into fists, his whole body vibrating with rage. I brace myself, but before he can lunge, the infirmary door swings open.
All three of us snap our attention toward it.
Three men walk through the door. Two of them I recognize from the tower.
Maxim’s eyes immediately land on me and his sneer is everything I remembered it to be—unsettling and ugly. Archon Lyathin takes in all of us before his eyes fall on me, too, like I’m the problem. He scrunches his nose .
The third man, I don’t recognize. Besides Lyathin, who must be in his 60s, he’s the oldest man in the room.
He still has the look of brawn and health of relative youth, but his black hair is silver at the temples, and his green eyes are heavy with horrors that can’t be unseen.
His eyes run between Leif, Tyrston, and me—and he takes in the fork I’m palming with a raised brow—before he turns to Leif with an exaggerated sigh.
“I can’t even leave you alone in the infirmary without finding you in the middle of something.” He says it with a dry voice, but there’s a hint of teasing under the reprimand.
Leif immediately relaxes, the tension in his shoulders easing. An easy grin spreads across his face. “Middle?” Leif answers, rocking back on his heels “Master Thalric, I assure you, we’re only at the beginning.”
Archon Lyathin cuts a frustrated hand through the air. “This is no time for common banter,” he says, turning to Thalric and Maxim. “Your wards have sufficiently healed. Remove them.”
Maxim smiles, like he knows something I don’t and he’s going to enjoy it immensely.
I exchange a quick glance with Leif, whose grin has faded.
He tips his chin at me. “Silent skies upon you,” he says, before he follows Thalric out of the small room.
The Faraengardian benediction for “good luck” takes on new meaning after yesterday.
“And to you,” I murmur.
Thalric hesitates at the door, but Archon Lyathin closes it firmly with a soft click behind them, so that we’re alone in the chamber.
“Girl.” His tone is neutral, but there’s a weight behind it that I don’t like.
I stand a little taller. “Leina. My name is Leina Haverlyn.”
“Leina Haverlyn,” he acknowledges. “Of Selencia?”
“Yes. Of the village Swyre.”
He waves his hand, like that bit is irrelevant. The deep sleeves of the robe-like tunic he wears billow with each movement, pooling around his elbows when he clasps his hands together. “I’m Archon Lyathin of the Fellsworn Vanguard,” he says. “Do you know what that means?”
I jerk my head. I’m coming to understand that Selencian serfs—what these men call grounded—know nothing about the Altor, the Kher’zenn, or anything about the world outside of our small villages.
“There are four archons here at the Synod. We are the highest-ranking men of each vanguard. As such, we sit on the Synod Council,” he explains. “The other member of the Synod Council is the Elder, the highest authority here. You met the Elder yesterday.”
I’m not sure “met” is quite the word I’d use, but that’s not what I question him about.
“What is a vanguard?”
“The soldiers would call it a unit,” he answers, “Though here, it’s more like an extended family.” He gestures me to the door. “If you are sufficiently healed, Leina Haverlyn, the council has summoned you.”
I flex my broken hand, curling and uncurling the aching fingers. The bones are mending remarkably fast.
“And if I refuse?” I ask.
His lips twitch in annoyance, a fleeting crack in his otherwise controlled demeanor. “Unfortunately for you, Leina Haverlyn, I was being polite. You lost control of your little life when you manifested your powers.”
At least he’s honest, but he’s operating under a glaring misconception. My mind flashes to soldiers dragging my brother away in chains and then to the day we found out Levvi and Alden had died in the mines. To the bodies of my parents in that field and to my brothers still on the run.
“Archon Lyathin, that assumes I ever had any control to begin with.”
He doesn’t answer, just gives me his back as he opens the wide, tall door.
“Leave the fork, Leina Haverlyn,” he says without looking back. “You’ll soon learn that false comforts have no place in the Synod.”