Chapter 70
I go back to the new hiding place of the Worldkeepers deep in the academy that afternoon, once more dressed in clothes from the stash in what was once my room in Kaelis’s apartments.
He’s updated the wardrobe to fit my current station better, so it’s unnecessary for me to swing back to the professors’ wing first.
Xora talks with Ferier. It looks like Ordin is asleep in the room to the right, what was once Gregor’s. It makes sense they’d use it, but the idea of someone else occupying that space like he never existed so soon after his passing rubs me wrong. I hear Thal and Arina from the room to the left.
“You didn’t die.” Xora is on her feet the second she sees me.
“Your confidence in me is astounding,” I say dryly.
“We heard there was a Stellis attack at the crater.” Ferier turns my way.
“In Oricalis, the only thing faster than a card casting is gossip,” I murmur.
“More like, a mysterious case of missing Stellis—their leader included—since they didn’t even find the bodies,” Xora says.
They don’t know what happened to them. No one could know.
I hardly knew what was happening, and I saw it.
But the way Ferier looks at me has me panicking that somehow he, too, now possesses irrefutable proof of Kaelis’s ability to wield reversed cards.
And I’m holding a container of yet even more evidence.
“What happened doesn’t matter. I have what I need to ink another vessel,” I proclaim, patting my satchel, where the small jar of reversed card dust sits. “Now I’m going to check on my sister.” I stride away before they can ask anything else.
I exhale and pause at the cracked door of the room where Arina and Thal are, never sure what I might find. There are good days and bad days. I never dare get my hopes too high. But out of everything I expected, laughter wasn’t on the list.
Not only are Arina and Thal talking, but she’s laughing. It’s wispy and thin, more like a wheeze. But genuine.
I pause and draw a shuddering breath, forbidding myself to cry as I push open the door the rest of the way.
Arina is propped up against pillows. Not only does she sound better, but she looks better.
Her color is returning. Cheeks fuller. And her hair is nearly to her earlobes.
Even though there’s a faint tremor in her fingers and she uses both hands to bring a mug of steaming broth to her lips, she seems tenfold stronger than I’ve seen her in months.
At her side on the edge of the bed is Thal. They lean away the moment I enter, beaming. “Clara, it’s good to see you!”
“I…” My voice fades, words lost. Arina and I lock eyes, and I’ve a thousand things I want to say.
“Oh, since you’re here, I’ve a few things to sort myself.” Thal stands and quickly crosses over. They pass the mug they were holding to me. Judging by how the broth nearly sloshes over, it’s untouched. “Talk to her. She’s been asking for you the past two days,” they whisper hastily, then leave.
Arina and I continue to stare at each other.
She regards me carefully, but there’s no resentment there.
No unease. It seems as if Thal has helped her make progress by leaps and bounds in just a few days.
As if Arina had turned a corner right before I left and is now sprinting toward something resembling healing.
“It’s good to see you.” There’s so much wrapped in her words.
“It’s good to see you,” I echo, still in a daze.
Another stretch of silence. I think we’re both remembering our conversation right before I left. Mourning Gregor together. Arina sucks in a slow breath and then puts on the bravest smile I’ve ever seen.
“You look thinner,” she says finally. I blurt laughter. Brief and rough. She grins slightly.
“You’re one to talk.” I cross and pull a chair to her bedside.
“I like them,” she says fondly toward the door that Thal just left through.
“They’re a good one.” I nod.
“They are,” she agrees softly. “Very gentle and kind.” She takes a sip from her mug. “They say you two met here, in Arcana Academy.”
“We did.”
“I thought you swore to Mother you’d never go here.”
It’s so surreal to finally speak to her like this. “I thought you did, too.”
Another little snort of laughter. A weak, tiny smile. We both take a drink to stall and find whatever it is we want to say next.
“Change your whole face but you still look to the left when you’re trying to avoid saying something,” she says.
“Excuse me?” I blink, settling my mug in my lap.
“It’s like you’re looking for the right words to say and can’t find them in your head, so you start searching around the room.”
“I do not do that.” If it was something I did, Kaelis would’ve certainly teased me about it by now.
“You just did.” Her lips curl slightly in amusement.
I catch myself looking left again and curse under my breath. Yet another soft laugh, and the tightness in my chest loosens further. But I finally find the words I want to—need to say in the corner of the room.
“I didn’t think you’d make it. I thought I’d lost you forever,” I admit softly, tracing a crack in the rim of my clay mug. We both know I’m not talking only about her surviving physically.
“You almost did.” The way she uses a matter-of-fact tone almost hides the shadow that crosses her eyes. Then she ducks her chin and stares at the reflection in her mug. “But you didn’t…Thank you for all you did to bring me back.”
I set my mug aside and lean forward to cover her hands with my own, tilting my head to catch her eyes. “In this world. In the next. For a thousand times and a thousand iterations, I would find you, I would hunt for you, I will always come for you, Arina, and I will always help you.”
“You don’t have to constantly protect me.” The words are near instinctive, and I can’t fight a grin. She mirrors it, realizing the same. “How many times did I tell you that?”
“A lot.”
She sighs and puts her mug next to mine on the bedside table, then locks her fingers with mine in a viselike grip. “This time, though…I’m glad you did,” she admits softly. “I might tell you that you don’t have to, but thank you for doing so.”
“That is something you’ll never need to thank me for.”
“I want to repay the favor.” Determination is alight in her eyes. “Let me read for you.”
“Arina—”
“I can feel the weight you’re carrying. I see the sag in your shoulders—it was always there, but it’s so much worse.
” She tightens her grip as I attempt to pull back.
Her hands quiver from the effort. “I’ve been told so little of what’s really been going on.
And I know…I know I’m weak.” She hangs her head.
“Arina…” Her name is softer now. Less of an objection.
“But I’m already stronger than anyone gives me credit for. I can help you. After what happened at the Stone Citadel, I want to feel strong again. You need me.”
“I do. But I think it’s too much on you right now. Maybe next time.”
“Clara.” My name is firm. “Ravin wanted one thing from me, one: my magic. He demanded I read for him, ink for him, demanded I tell him how I did this or that—things I knew and things I didn’t.
He demanded I ink…the Star.” It’s still clearly strange for her to say, but Thal must’ve been telling her the broad strokes of the Majors because it’s far more familiar than I’d otherwise expect.
“He was ready to do anything…” Her voice wavers, but in a display of strength greater than I’ve seen from anyone in a long time, she continues. “…anything to get what he wanted. He thought that if he broke me, I’d give in. Time and again, he tried. Violently, gently. Ravin was…creative.”
Even though I heard some of this when she was under the influence of the Sun, I let her speak. I can see just how healing it is to tell her story on her own terms and time.
Her hands tremble from their grip on mine. But the rest of her is still. Those haunted eyes nearly glow golden in the daylight. There are the ghosts of his hands on her. She sees him, still, I can tell. But there’s something else in her gaze now.
Defiance.
I would admit it to no one, but in a small way, I am secretly grateful for Ravin destroying the Stone Citadel. It bought Arina time to continue healing. Allowing anyone to push her to ink her major would’ve been a grave mistake.
“My power will never be taken or forced from me; it is mine to give. Let me give it to you. I want to—to know I can, that I still control it,” she says with a note of finality.
Unshed tears burn my eyes. How is it that I feel like I’m about to fall apart when she’s the one who suffered horrors beyond imagining?
“All right.” I release her hands and reach for the holster on my thigh, opening the flap and retrieving my deck. I just refilled it from my room in Kaelis’s apartments. I pass it to her, trying to hide my hesitation and worry as I do so.
She holds the deck in her lap and just stares. There’s a hitch in her breath as she smooths her fingers over the pristine edges of the cards. She exhales, and her shoulders relax as though she’s greeting an old friend.
Slowly, she shuffles the cards. Without warning, she stops, satisfied.
I know that intense stare. Power overtakes her before even the first card is drawn—a magic I’ve not understood for as long as I’ve known her.
I can feel it flood the room like spring water, pooling up from that endless well within her.
She begins.
Arina has never read from any sort of strict spread.
Instead, she pulls cards on instinct, laying them before her.
The Eight of Coins comes up first—I don’t need her to say anything; we both know that card represents the academy, as the Eight of Coins symbolizes apprenticeship and learning through repetition.
Diagonal over it is the Page of Swords, another card about a hunger for knowledge.
Then there’s the Prince of Swords, laid atop the Page.
Kaelis on top of me flashes before my eyes, and a flush rises from my chest to my cheeks. It wasn’t until just now that I realized I’d begun inking my Knights as Princes—an interchangeable title for the card between Page and Queen. Yet it feels like doing so carries so much significance.
Her eyes flick to mine, and her stare knots my stomach as she draws another card. The Four of Wands—the card of romantic union and celebration—has never been more damning.
“You love him.” It’s not a question.
“I…” What can I say when she can already see the truth?
Arina returns her attention to the cards with a weary smile; she drags her fingers over top of them. Her eyes narrow slightly. She tilts her head. “Did you marry him in secret?”
I wonder if she can see the future he gave up to the Chalice somehow ghosting upon this world like ink bleeding through parchment. “No, I didn’t.”
“Not yet,” she clarifies.
“I will marry no one without you there,” I vow. But as soon as I do, I realize what I’ve said—implied. I will marry the man whose brother did this to you. I look away in shame. Left. I look left. Damn it.
Arina touches my hands as lightly as the cards, drawing my attention back to her. “You don’t have to be ashamed.”
“I’m not ashamed.”
She raises her brows in response.
“I…I love him.” Saying it to someone else makes it so much more real and so much more terrifying. “It’s just that he…he’s Ravin’s brother.”
“And you fell in love with him anyway.” She clearly considers this. “Which tells me that he’s not our enemy as we once thought.” She’s so quickly confident in this; her implicit trust in my judgment is staggering.
“He hates Ravin as much as we do.” As soon as I say it and she gives me a blank stare, I quickly remedy: “He hates Ravin almost as much as we do.”
With a satisfied huff, she turns back to the cards, reading them as they’re drawn…
The Two of Wands. “A difficult decision is before you.” Seven of Cups. “And you’ve deluded yourself about some of the options and circumstances. It’s not like you to give in to such indecision and wishful thinking.”
I squirm in my seat. Rarely has she given me a reading about me. It’s usually for a job, or a task, or a circumstance. Not me.
Just because you can know fate’s design doesn’t mean you always want to.
Ace of Swords. She pauses, blinking at the card, as if something new has just come into focus. Her fingers move faster now, turning cards without speaking between them.
Five of Swords. Three of Swords. Five of Cups. Ten of Swords.
Every card drawn feels like a tiny dagger gliding over my flesh. Her breathing shallows as if she’s struggling to keep herself composed. She draws faster and faster, to the point that I can’t even see what cards she’s flipping before another is on top.
“No.” Her chest rises and falls with shaky breaths. “No. No.”
“Arina. Stop.” I grab her wrist.
She doesn’t. She flips another card. Seven of Swords. I can’t make sense of them all. But I can read the horror on her face.
“Stop.” I pull her hand from the deck.
She finally stills, eyes swinging to mine. The color I saw when I first entered has now drained from her face. Her eyes are painfully wide.
“What did you see?”
Arina swallows thickly. She opens and closes her mouth. She shakes her head and dips her chin.
I release her and slowly, calmly, collect my cards. “It’s all right,” I say softly, trying to reassure her. “Whatever it is, I can handle it.”
She doesn’t move as I return the deck to the holster on my thigh. I replace the cards with her now-cooled mug and rest my hand on her shoulder.
“You did great,” I try to encourage. But she still doesn’t lift her head.
Guilt strikes me through the heart, and I struggle to keep a brave face.
I knew better. I knew it was too much. Why did I let her read?
“I’ll come back soon.” I kiss her forehead and start for the door, readying my apology for Thal for the damage I did that has set back their hard work.
“Sooner than you think,” she murmurs, barely audible.
I flinch, freezing for just a second. But then I continue as if I hadn’t heard.