Chapter 71
I’m wrapping up class the next day when a knock on the door nearly startles half the students from their seats.
“Enter,” I call out calmly. Though even I’m curious as to who’s waiting on the other side. Kaelis is the last person I expect. “Headmaster.” I dip my chin, and the rest of the class follows suit.
His eyes barely flicker to me. They’re focused on Alor. And that’s when I know. I see it in his purposeful strides. The envelope he carries bearing the seal of Clan Tower.
My heart is pounding in my throat so violently I can barely take a breath. I don’t regret what I did…but then why am I cold and hot at the same time? Why do I need to rest my fingertips on the desk to steady myself as I say, “Class is dismissed”?
The students don’t move. They’re all fixed on Alor as Kaelis approaches her. She rises to her feet, her expression hardening. She knows that whatever it is, it can’t be good.
“You all may leave,” I say with authority, hoping that it’s not suspicious that I am so obviously assuming the worst. They all do, too, by now.
The other students reluctantly begin to collect their things. Every one of them staring at her from the corners of their eyes. Kaelis moves with agonizing slowness, but it’s clear to me he’s waiting until most of them clear out.
He presents the letter, and Alor takes it. She breaks the seal as Sorza lets herself out of the room with a wary look between Alor and me.
“I’m sorry.” The words from Kaelis are utterly dispassionate, and he promptly leaves.
The door to the classroom hasn’t even finished closing when Alor lets out a scream that’s part pain, part rage.
She crumples the letter in her fist, spinning in place.
Her eyes land on one of the practice dummies to the side of the room, and several cards fly in quick succession.
The dummy is gouged with ice, lit on fire, pelted with stones pried from the walls, and quartered.
Kaelis is gone, and I am alone. I’d curse him for it if I didn’t know we both have our roles to play, and it’d seem strange if he lingered for either of our benefit. Gathering my courage and cementing my mask, I take a hesitant step forward.
“Alor?”
Her back is to me, shoulders heaving with ragged breaths.
“Alor.” My fingertips touch her shoulder, and she spins in place, batting my hand away.
“The bitch,” she snarls, then laughs, crazed. “No, that’s an insult to dogs everywhere. The fucking little rat that she is. Coward.”
“What happened?” I ask softly, as a teacher who’s worried for their student would.
Alor slams the fist still holding the letter into her desk so hard her knuckles split. She doesn’t even flinch. “My sister is dead, and Clara Graysword killed her.”
“What?” I breathe. The shock is at least somewhat real. It’s one thing for Emilia to vanish and be assumed dead. It’s another to pin it on me. Did someone see? No, it’s more likely blamed on me like everything else currently wrong with Oricalis.
“Emilia was getting close to finding her. She thought she had a lead—wouldn’t tell me, of course.
Wouldn’t tell anyone. Just that she was confident she knew the traitor’s next move.
” Alor can barely get the words out through her clenched jaw.
“She went off, and she must’ve found her because she’s gone.
And Emilia would never desert her post. Which means one thing: My sister is dead. ”
Her voice breaks, and I feel a thousand tethers snap in me at once. I see Arina in her. I see myself in her. Without warning, I grab her, prepared to bring her in for a tight embrace.
“Don’t touch me!” She shoves me back. With movements as precise as her sister’s, she draws a dagger from a hidden sheath tucked in her waistband, striking as quick as a viper. She moves so fast that I can barely dodge in time. Warmth blooms along my jaw where blood now beads.
Her shoulders and chest heave with every breath, nostrils flared as she brandishes the blade that she clutched as a promise and a threat so many nights. She doesn’t even know it finally found its target.
“All right.” I keep my voice steady and measured as I slowly lift my hands. If I want her to calm down, I need to be calm. “This is on your terms, Alor. I’m just here to help.”
“What can you do?” It’s as much a demand as it is a question. “What could some young new professor of wielding possibly do that a trained daughter of Clan Tower and a legion of Stellis couldn’t?”
I say nothing.
“You don’t understand what it’s like—what this feels like.” Alor waves the dagger frantically as she speaks. She points it to her own chest, and I fight not to react. “What am I supposed to do? I’m now the heir to our clan, and I am half the woman she was.”
“Alor, you are incredibly talented and strong.” Even as I say it, there’s a whisper in the back of my mind that I could best her with ease.
“You didn’t even know Emilia.” Alor turns away sharply, shoulders slumping, her whole back curling as though she’s about to fold in on herself. The dagger clatters to the ground. “And you never will…No one ever will again…”
Dark spots appear on the stone floor by her feet as the tears fall. She fights so hard not to let her shoulders quiver. She rolls them, straightens, and tilts her head back as though she could keep the tears contained to her eyes if gravity weren’t working against her.
Finally, she crouches and gathers her dagger, speaking as she does. “Clara Graysword isn’t going to stop with my sister. One by one, she’ll pick us all off in Clan Tower…or at the least me and my parents.”
“Emilia was chasing her; I’m sure—”
“You know nothing.” Alor turns sharply, dagger in a white-knuckled grip. “Clara was after us from the beginning, infiltrating through me, then Emilia.”
“Wasn’t she here all last year?” I say gently, leaning in to my alternate identity. “I heard you roomed with her.” Alor flinches. “She could’ve killed you then if that was her goal.”
“She wanted me to get information,” Alor says softly. “She used me. Played me. She no doubt already knew what she was sending me to find. Probably knew I was the last of my family to know and wanted to make a joke of it.”
Alor drags her fingers through her hair and lets out an almost crazed laugh. She’s not looking at me anymore. Her gaze has gone soft and distant.
“She planned it all,” she begins to ramble, the words frantic and raw.
“My finding out. Probably knew Emilia would go after her. She’s going to kill me next because she wants to watch my parents suffer like her family did.
Mother should have made sure to kill the children, too.
Get rid of the evidence. Not that she knew at the time the full extent of my father’s infidelity. ”
The floor drops out from underneath me. I can’t breathe. All I hear is my heart pounding against my ribs and the blood rushing through my veins.
“Alor, are you saying…” My words are weaker than I would like. But Alor is too far gone to notice just how impacted I am.
“Clara Graysword is a stain upon our family. A living mark of my father’s shame.
Her whore mother no doubt entranced him into her bed.
” She grips her dagger tighter and takes a step toward me.
The sharpness of her stare. The murder in her movements.
I think she’s finally seen through my disguise.
That she’s coming for me. She laughs bitterly, her smile too wide, eyes too joyful.
“I suppose I’m not even the heir of Clan Tower.
I’m still not the oldest. I suppose that’d be her. ”
Lord Ventall.
Lord. Moreus. Ventall.
Is my father.
The townhome with the symbol of Clan Tower. The question that Bristara wouldn’t answer: Am I a Clan Tower bastard?
Yes. But I’m not just some lower-ranking nobody’s illicit child. I’m the daughter of the High Lord?
The room tilts, and I nearly vomit. It takes all my strength and training to keep myself upright. To keep my mask on even when I’m crumbling beneath it.
Alor sighs softly, and between one step and the next, she finds her composure. With a flourish of practiced movements, she places the dagger under my chin, not far from where she caught me the first time.
“Tell anyone any of this and I will kill you.”
I lift my brows. I know she’s lashing out and angry, but this is a surprising escalation, even for her. Alor’s eyes widen a fraction, but then her brow furrows again.
“I don’t care that you’re a professor.” Her voice takes on an ominous hush.
“These are secrets that Clan Tower can’t have exposed, so if you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep quiet.
As far as the world is concerned—no, it won’t matter because I will kill her—I am the heir to Clan Tower now, and I have powers beyond your imagining.
So you and I are going to pretend that you heard nothing today.
This never happened, if you value your life. ”
“I heard nothing,” I barely manage to speak around the uncomfortable lump that I can’t swallow.
“Good.” Alor sheathes her dagger and collects her things.
She starts for the door and pauses just before opening it, looking back at me.
Her shoulders ease some, and I see a glimpse of the woman I knew.
The woman I once considered a friend. “Thank you for listening, Professor.” She gives a slight nod that feels like a thank you and departs.
The moment the door closes, I stagger. I bump into a desk, nearly collapsing onto it. My fingernails dig grooves into the wood as I draw shaky breaths.
Lord Moreus Ventall is my father.
Then Arina’s reading comes to mind. What she saw in the cards. The truth she wouldn’t tell me but knew it’d bring me back to her.
She already knows. She knows, and she’s been alone with this information.
I don’t remember leaving the classroom. My whole body still feels as though it’s about to rattle apart.
Like I have a scream lodged in my throat that I can’t shake free.
My feet carry me through the near-endless corridors and twisting stairways.
All I know is that there isn’t enough air left in this whole place.
That I can’t breathe again until I’m bursting through the door to where the Worldkeepers have made their new home.
Thal and Arina sit on opposite sofas, enjoying a moment together in front of the hearth, where she is practicing inking.
Slowly, she sets down her long-handled brush, calmly turns to Thal, and says, “Would you mind excusing us?”