CHAPTER FORTY-THREE ISI
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
ISI
The storage room smelled like leather and medicinal herbs, and the shelves were lined with supplies most people forgot existed until they needed them. I took a pack from Trew and began loading it with waterskins, dried meat, and trail bread that would keep for days without spoiling.
Derren hefted a sword, testing its weight. “We should bring extra weapons.”
“We won’t have room for an armory,” Lexie said, though she was examining a set of throwing knives. “Dragons can only carry so much.”
“Then we bring what counts.” Derren set down the sword and picked up two smaller blades, tucking them into his pack along with a whetstone.
“I’ll bring some books I picked up recently.” Kerralyn had claimed a corner near the medical supplies, and was carefully selecting and placing bandages and little jars of ointment into her bag.
“What books?” I asked.
“Some from the…” Her gaze shot to Trew. “Ones I recently acquired.”
Trew paused in his own packing, his eyebrows lifting. “From the library?”
“I borrowed them.” Kerralyn didn’t look up, her hands moving faster.
“When the library was open or closed?”
She finally met his gaze, her chin lifting. “Closed.”
Lexie pressed her hand over her mouth, but a smile tugged at her lips. Even Derren’s mouth twitched.
“You broke into my library,” Trew said slowly, as if tasting the words.
“Technically, I had a key.”
“Why do you have a key?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Perhaps you should give the key to the Mistress Helwin, the head librarian,” he said, shaking his head, his eyes full of humor.
“I’d rather not interact with her if you don’t mind.”
He held out his hand.
“Aw.” Her shoulders slumped before she dug into her tunic pocket and pulled out the key, handing it over. “You don’t know how much I’m going to miss this.”
“Go to the library when it’s open,” he said sternly, fisting the key.
“I’d rather not do that either if you don’t mind. The head librarian and I…” Color rose into her face.
“You and Mistress Helwin what?”
“It’s complicated.”
His lips twitched. “So you’ve said already.”
“She and I were close. Now we’re not.”
He blinked a moment before his face cleared. “She’s at least thirty years older than you.”
“Age has nothing to do with anything.”
“I agree, which is why…” He held out the key in her direction. “Keep it. Just…” His sigh rang out. “I’d ask you not to steal books from the library, but I assume you return them in the same condition as when you borrowed them.”
“Always.” She stuffed the key back into her pocket. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He turned back to selecting items off the shelf, speaking over his shoulder. “Does any of this have anything to do with your argument with Nia?”
“How do you know about that?” Kerralyn’s gaze shot to Gavelle perched on one of the shelves. “Oh.”
“Yes, oh.” Trew didn’t turn her way.
Kerralyn sighed. “Nia would rather I didn’t go to the library at any time.”
“To keep you away from Mistress Helwin?”
“Exactly.” Kerralyn looked down at her pack. “She’ll get over it.”
I returned to my own packing, adding a thin coil of rope and cloths and soap for bathing if we stopped near a stream.
The practical task helped settle the adrenaline still throbbing through my veins from the chase.
My hands shook with it, the memory of the woman’s body burning to ash making my stomach turn.
Someone had sent her. They may know we were going to search for my mother’s property.
“We won’t stop in villages,” Trew said. “We’ll camp in isolated areas where no one will see us.
We have to assume we’ll be watched. Which means no one outside this room is to know that we’ve left or where we’re going.
Send word to your instructors that you’re sick.
Let them believe all of you caught the same thing.
” He added blankets to his pack. “That woman may have heard some or all of our conversation, and she may have had time to report to whoever she’s working with before we caught her. ”
Kerralyn hefted her pack, testing the weight. “I didn’t have time to share the last bit of information I found in the library.”
Trew paused and leaned against the shelving, looking her way. “What kind of information?”
“The kind best shared behind wards.” She glanced meaningfully toward the door.
“At this point, I don’t know how good my wards are, though I’ll add more.
” His hands wove patterns in the air. Magic flared around the room, thick enough that I felt it press against my skin.
The wards settled into place with an audible click, sealing us in.
They looked good to me, though I’d bet anything that, given time, I could find a way to break them.
“Speak fast and low,” I said. “I’m new to ward breaking, but it takes time.”
Pherin peeped in agreement.
Kerralyn quickly pulled out her journal, flipping to a marked page. We huddled around her, leaning close.
“I found a reference to double bonds,” she whispered. “Just one passage, buried in a text about ancient bonding practices.”
My pulse quickened. Pherin shifted on my shoulder, her attention sharpening.
“Twin flames bond twice.” Kerralyn read from her notes. “And then this phrase: ‘When companions choose as hearts have chosen, the weave strengthens.’”
“Pherin and Gavelle,” I said softly.
Mate, Pherin said.
“They chose each other before they chose us,” Trew said, his gaze meeting mine.
Lexie cleared her throat. “So the double bond isn’t just about you two. It’s about your companions reflecting the same choice.”
“When companions choose as hearts have chosen,” I said, testing the phrase. “We chose each other. They chose each other.”
“And the weave strengthens.” Kerralyn looked up from her journal, excitement warring with uncertainty on her face. “There were three historical pairs listed as examples. The text said they accomplished great things, though it didn’t specify what.”
Derren’s smile lifted. “At least this mystery sounds promising instead of terrifying.”
Trew laid his arm across my shoulders and tugged me against his side.
“Twin flames,” he said quietly, his golden eyes holding mine. “Seems fitting.”
Kerralyn closed her journal with a soft thud. “That’s everything I found about the bonds.”
Trew’s arm was still around my shoulders. I felt him breathe.
Twin flames. We’d found each other without knowing what we were.
Our companions had chosen each other the same way.
And somehow, among the war and the torture and the conspiracy reaching back generations, we’d ended up here, in a storage room that smelled like leather and dried food, surrounded by people willing to fly into the wasteland with us.
It didn’t feel like destiny. It felt like something better than that.
“Isi,” Kerralyn said softly. “The journal?”
“Yes. New information appeared. A symbol.”
Trew’s attention sharpened. “What kind of symbol?”
“A circular design with intersecting lines. It wasn’t there before, but when I checked this morning…” I trailed off, remembering the shock of seeing the page filled with fresh ink when I knew it had been blank.
“I want to see it before we leave,” Trew said.
“The journal is in my room,” I said.
“Anything else?” Derren asked quickly, glancing toward the door.
We all shook our heads.
Lexie hoisted her pack, testing the weight.
“We still don’t know what this bond between us and Pherin and Gavelle means,” I whispered to Trew. “What we’re supposed to accomplish with it, if anything at all.”
“Does it matter? I’d choose you a thousand times over, with or without anyone telling me it’s significant.”
There it was again, the kind of declaration that made my heart stutter and my knees weak.
“You can’t just say things like that,” I said.
“Why not? It’s true.” He kissed my forehead. “Though I suppose I could add more flourishes. Compose poetry about your eyes. Compare you to celestial bodies.”
“Please don’t.”
Pure mischief filled his grin. “The moon pales in comparison to your beauty, my radiant—”
I pressed my hand over his mouth, fighting laughter. “Stop.”
He kissed my palm, his eyes dancing with amusement.
Lexie snorted, shaking her head at our antics.
I pulled my hand back, my face burning. “We should focus on packing.”
“Of course.” But Trew’s smile lingered as he returned to his bag, adding the last of his supplies.
I forced myself to concentrate on my own pack, though my thoughts kept circling back to those words. Twin flames bond twice. The weave strengthens.
What did it mean for us and the magic we carried?
“I’m set,” Lexie said. “We’ll go raid the kitchen and wait by the back door for you.”
“Trying not to look conspicuous,” Derren said.
“Us?” She snorted as she left.
Kerralyn followed her and Derren out into the corridor.
I grabbed my pack, and we left as well. We didn’t speak as we hurried toward my room.
At my door, I pushed inside and went straight to where I’d left the journal on the small desk by the window. While Trew warded the room, I opened the book to the marked section.
Trew came over to stand beside me.
The symbol took up only a small part of the page. Circular, it had lines that intersected in a pattern that seemed almost deliberate in its complexity. Notes surrounded it in the margins, but they were written in a language I didn’t recognize.
Trew went absolutely still.
“What?” I looked up at him, catching the way his jaw had clenched.
“I’ve seen this before, in my father’s papers.”
My heart kicked against my ribs. “You’re certain?”
“Yes.” He reached toward the page, then hesitated. “May I?”
I nodded, watching as his fingers traced the symbol’s outline.
The moment his skin made contact with the ink, the design flared with light, golden and bright enough to make my eyes water.
Trew jerked his hand back, but the glow didn’t fade. “It got hot.”
“Fates,” I breathed, not quite daring touch it myself.
The margins began to fill with new text. Not in the strange language this time, but a clear script I could read. Words appearing as if an invisible hand was writing them just for us.
The mark of those who pierce the veil. The symbol of corruption’s end.
More lines appeared beneath the first.
Two bloodlines converge. Two flames unite. What was torn asunder shall be made whole.
My hands trembled as I gripped the edge of the desk. “Trew—”
“I see it.” His voice had gone tight.
The writing continued, spooling out faster now.
The weave screams its warning.
As abruptly as it had started, the light faded. The journal went still, the new text settling onto the page like ink drying.
I looked up at Trew and found him staring at the words with an expression I couldn’t quite read. Shock, yes. But beneath it, recognition.
“Your father knew about the symbol and veil-sight,” I said.
“Perhaps. He kept extensive notes about all sorts of things.” He slid his hand across my lower back, tugging me near. “I found them after he died, but I was young. Grieving. I didn’t understand most of what he’d written.”
“We need to look at those notes.”
“Yes.” His gaze met mine. “I’ve kept everything in a cabinet inside my office.”
If his father had documented information about the Skathes, this symbol, and about whatever connection existed between the wasteland and our parents’ deaths, it could make a huge difference in figuring this out.
“The new entries are a warning,” I said.
“We have a traitor.” His jaw clenched. “Someone close to us.”
“Someone we trust.” The thought made my stomach turn. “We need to find out who it is and end this.”
Before they ended us.