Chapter 44 #2
“I absolutely am involved and I’m trying to find out ways I can be of more help,” Sorza says to us both.
“I thought I could come and check on her from time to time.” It is a kind offer…
“Or help with something else. Anything else. Let me do something more than just going through the mindless motions of a student waiting for fate to deal whatever hand it has in store for me.”
“I don’t want your help.” Gregor squares up in front of her. Sorza stands a little taller, tilting her head, not intimidated in the slightest. This makes Gregor only more annoyed. “I. Don’t. Know. You.”
Sorza glances my way. “Does he always repeat himself several times?”
“She needs to leave before the World—before they see her.” Gregor speaks to me now. Clearly, he didn’t tell her too much when I asked him to fill her in.
“Who’s the World…?” Sorza misses nothing.
“It’s no one,” Gregor says.
“You’re lying.” Sorza is far too delighted by her innate power.
“You’re annoying.”
“Which is worse? Being annoying or a liar?” The way Sorza needles him gets right under his skin.
I’d probably laugh if I wasn’t so exhausted and disheartened. “Sorza, please go. Can you find your way back on your own?”
“I can. But I want to help.” She shifts away from Gregor to face me, turning the same determination my way. “You gave me your word you would involve me in your plans if I helped you.”
“You what?” Gregor’s jaw drops open.
“I will find a way,” I reiterate my earlier promise. “But for now, please, Sorza.”
She sighs. “Fine.” Sorza glances over her shoulder one final time, but she looks at Gregor instead of me. “You’d better get used to me sooner over later, big guy, because I’m not going anywhere.” Before he can muster a response, she leaves.
“ ‘Big guy’?” Gregor repeats in shock. “Is she always like that?”
“More or less.” I nod.
“Reminds me of how Arina was…” he murmurs to himself.
A knot twists between my ribs. She is a bit like Arina, in a way. I hadn’t seen it before, and it’s not a perfect mirror. But the similarities are undeniable. Probably why a kinship with Sorza has been effortless.
“Is that what made you agree to bring her in?” Gregor asks.
“Not intentionally,” I admit. “She saw through my disguise; I had to give her something. And she has a power that we can use—that’s worth having on our side.”
“How long ago did this happen?”
“First day of classes.”
“So, let me get this straight.” He holds out both of his hands as if framing a difficult-to-picture idea. “You did not want to trust the Worldkeepers—an organization your mother led and guarded—because they weren’t part of the club. But you trusted this random student?”
“She’s not a random student; she was my friend last year.”
“She’s not a member of the Starcrossed Club.
” He folds his arms. “You told me off for bringing the Worldkeepers here, but then tell me not to worry about it when you bring people I would consider strangers? That the people you bring can be trusted at your word, but not the people I bring at my word?”
I curse under my breath and run a hand through my hair before locking eyes with him and saying simply, “You’re right.”
“I’m right?” He repeats in shock, as if he expected more of a fight. “I mean, yes, I am, of course I am.”
“I’m sorry for how I acted at the start of all this.” I can’t remember if I ever outright apologized to Gregor before. But better late than never.
“It’s all right.” Gregor pats my shoulder.
Anyone else and I might not believe it’s that easy.
But between us, I know bygones are bygones.
He’s not one to hold grudges past forgiveness.
“As long as you know you don’t have to do it alone.
The only thing that matters is keeping us safe and getting the World.
Which, speaking of, have you made any progress on the latter? ”
“Somewhat. I’ve been searching the library, professors’ resources, the depths of the academy, even Kaelis’s personal study. I have one potential lead.” I tell him about the powder I gathered from the workshop of the Fool—the same powder from which I’ve been slowly extracting the strange ingredient.
“Hopefully it pans out.” The sentiment is encouraging even if he looks uncomfortable as he speaks. I can’t tell if he’s uncertain about the powder being of use, or at the idea of pilfering the true depths of the academy.
“It will, one way or another.” I try to sound optimistic, but I also don’t move to leave. I know that look. He wants to say something else.
“I…uh…” Gregor rubs the back of his neck and glances away. “I also found something. A lead? Maybe? On something. Well, I stole something worth mentioning.”
“You stole something?” I press gently, letting him take his time.
“So, I’m investigating Ravin, right?” He reaches into his pocket. “I found a lead on where he might have been keeping Silas’s family—of course I pursued it—and I found what seemed like a workshop of some sort. When you mentioned this other workshop, I thought of it.”
“Where was it?”
“In a building in the city under his wife’s name,” he says. “Silas’s family wasn’t there—I think they were at some point, but they aren’t now. But I found this.”
He finally pulls out what he’s been twisting over and over. It’s a single card, torn in half and pockmarked as though someone tried to burn it. But there are no singe marks from fire. Instead, a crystalline ash sparkles on the frayed remnants. As if it were eaten from the inside out.
I already know what he’s handing me before it touches my palm. I’ve seen this once before on the rooftop of this very academy. It’s a reversed card.
The moment it comes in contact with my hand, a shock courses through me. Unseen thorny barbs constrict my right arm and knot in my chest. The marking Kaelis put upon me last year reacts just like the last time I was in the presence of a reversed card, though worse. I nearly drop it.
But I’m distracted from the pain. Instantly, I see why Gregor needed to show it to me. And why he was hesitant to do so. This card is undeniably Kaelis’s inking.
Void-born…
The whispers and warnings everyone has uttered about Kaelis my whole life return. But I banish them from my mind forcefully, even as my arm throbs.
“I thought you’d want to know.” His tone is almost apologetic.
“I…” My eyes drag back to Gregor’s. There’s a twinge of sadness in his. As though he never intended for this to happen. As if maybe part of him was coming to accept Kaelis, despite the odds. I swallow hard. “We don’t know the full story. Many Arcanists have had their cards reversed on them.”
“Does it happen to an Arcanist as skilled as him?” His implication is clear.
He wants me to think Kaelis used this card.
But Kaelis told me explicitly that he cannot wield reversed cards.
Gregor’s hand lands heavy on my shoulder, acting like an anchor that keeps me grounded here and keeps me from spiraling into the hole I was already teetering on the edge of because of Arina.
“I don’t know what it means, and I’m not going to find out. But maybe you will.”
Never trust Oricalis…I hear in Mother’s voice.
“Thank you for sharing this with me.” I close my hand tighter around it and place it in my pocket. Between this and the golden Death card, I have contraband from both princes. “Can you look after Arina? I…I think I need to go.”
“I have her.” He nods. “The others will be here soon. We have her.” “We”…He’s one of them now. He hasn’t taken their oaths, but he will. “Do what you need to do.”
Finally, he releases me, and I drag my feet out the door.
The halls of the academy are more oppressive than they have ever been. They’re too vast and too cramped at the same time. The air is so cold it burns my lungs.
The echoes of my sister’s screams, of her pain, are overwhelming.
The weight of the card in my pocket and its terrifying implications drag me down.
I stagger into a wall and cover my mouth to keep from sobbing.
I can’t…I can’t lose everything again. It has been taken from me over and over and over.
My sister was supposed to be the constant, my guiding star, the person I would sacrifice everything for to give everything to…
but it’s not just her who fills that role anymore.
Damn it, Kaelis.
The card fragment Gregor found burns in my pocket. Doubt tears me in two. Part of me says flee. The other part says that this has become something that’s worth too much to me to let it go. I cannot abandon it, even if staying is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
I break into a run. Lungs burning, chest heaving. I run through halls and secret passages. I run past the font of the World and the statue’s eyes, which regard me warily tonight. I run up the secret narrow stair that connects to his closet, bursting through the door without warning.
He’s not in his room. Instead, I find him behind his desk in his office. The man is on his feet the second I enter. Even Priss rises to sit.
“Clara?” His eyes search my face, reading what’s there and somehow equally studying what isn’t.
“Kaelis.” I nearly choke on his name. I take a step toward him and stumble, as though my legs can’t bear the weight of it all a second longer.
In an instant, he’s there. Arms around me, pulling me to him, clutching me with all his might. He takes the burden of keeping me together even as my tears threaten to rattle me apart.