Chapter 8 #2
“You will.” Lory wasn’t as quick as Jarek to respond, but she agreed completely. Eira was one of the best students when it came to Knowledge, surpassed only by Brycon, the know-it-all knowledgist.
“You’ve studied hard. I’m sure you’ll pass,” Brycon added, once more involving himself in the conversation when he so clearly despised Lory and usually didn’t want anything to do with them. “Besides, it’s only a limited number of books we needed to read. It’s easy.”
“Easy for someone who can absorb information by touching a book,” Eira quipped, rolling her eyes as she picked up her tray, too, following Thal to the counter.
Tabi and Lory waited for Jarek to get to his feet before making their way through the thinning crowd to drop off their dishes, leaving Brycon behind with some other blues.
She’d made it halfway to them when someone barked her name across the mess hall, nearly making her lose her grip on her tray.
“Vednis!”
Her stomach dropped into her boot, and she slowly turned, hands itching to reach for the butter knife on her empty plate.
This time, Lory identified the caller as General Ycken, who was standing at the front of the platform, gesturing for her to move her ass up to him.
As she set down her tray and headed over, she didn’t dare a glance at Khayrivven, who was still sitting at the table, leaning toward Nefetari Brunn.
The woman with the long, gray braid and mild lines on her tan face seemed to be murmuring something to him, her expression stern.
Whether he was being scolded or given an order, Lory couldn’t tell, but she was ready to ask him the moment she caught him alone.
“Master of Steel.” Lory stood at attention, tilting back her head so she could look the man in the eye while pretending not to be terrified of the next words that would be coming out of his mouth.
“You’re not going back to the student quarters just yet, Vednis,” he announced, running his hand over his close-cropped brown beard as he studied her with disapproving black eyes.
Lory was halfway to opening her mouth and inquiring as to why when Ycken continued.
“You are to train for a mission that cannot wait.”
“A mission—” Lory caught herself mid-sentence, forcing her tongue to still at the forbidding glare the Master of Steel gave her.
“You will proceed immediately to the blue room, where you will meet with your instructors.”
Instructors. As in more than one. Lory swallowed heavily. “Yes, sir.”
Ycken didn’t give any more context before he turned and left the platform, disappearing through the door on the side, from where Khayrivven marched the ashlings for slaughter onto the platform every morning.
A shudder ran down Lory’s spine at the memory of the girl bleeding out at the feet of leadership’s tables this morning.
She hadn’t even known her name, didn’t know how many siblings would mourn the girl, if her family would ever see her body, or if Ashthorn let her rot somewhere the way Lenya had indicated they did with the students who died in the Amrin Mountains.
When Lory kept staring into blank space, a shadow appeared above her on the dais, and she almost choked on her breath when she found Khayrivven staring down at her from where Ycken had been standing a minute ago.
“Do you have cacti in your ears, Vednis? Move your ass.”
If anyone had suspected there might have been something between them, all those suspicions must have been destroyed by the fury living in Khayrivven’s eyes, a thunderstorm brewing, ready to be unleashed upon the next person who got in his way.
Jerking around, Lory started walking, catching up with Thal and Tabi, who were waiting by the door, concerned expressions on their faces. “What did he want?”
“Ycken?” Lory pretended not to still be shaking from Khayrivven’s performance. If she hadn’t seen his vulnerable side before, she would have believed he could simply switch off all emotions—all but that anger he seemed to harbor. “I was summoned back to training. No early bedtime for me.”
It was an exercise in self-control, keeping her voice nonchalant as if she wasn’t internally panicking about what mission Ycken might have had planned for her this time.
After she’d been sent to Lu’Shen’s, the brothel where Lory used to find her marks to rob so she could fund her next meal mere months ago, Lory wasn’t sure she wanted to know at all.
At least the madame of the establishment, Lu’Shen herself, had been kind.
She’d called Khayrivven a friend, and that alone made Lory feel better.
And then her cheeks heated at the memory of how the mission at Lu’Shen’s had ended with Khayrivven all over Lory’s body.
With his breath on her skin and his moans in her ear, with his massive cock buried deep inside her, driving her to ecstasy—
“Any chance we can help with the mission?” Thal prompted, saving Lory from reliving those moments and turning into a boneless puddle right there in the hallway.
Thank the Guardians, Tabi was there to respond to Thal’s idea. “You don’t really believe they would let us help. We’re ashlings. Lory is a thornling. She is getting to go on real missions now. Always accompanied by an instructor, but still, real missions.”
That took the memories of Lu’Shen’s right out of Lory, filling her chest with a tightness. “I wish I could stay here at the Ward instead,” she admitted quietly enough so the other students walking toward the stairs wouldn’t hear. “Field experience is overrated.”
“After the Amrin Mountains, I can see why you’d think that,” Tabi commented, eyes on the group of yellows ahead.
Everyone seemed more agitated than normal with the ashling exams coming up; within a week, some of those ashlings would no longer be among them, and Lory didn’t even want to know who it would be. Maybe the girl with the black, frizzy curls, or the boy with the brown war braids.
With a deep inhale, Lory considered Tabi, memorizing her heart-shaped, deep umber face, the gold flecks in her eyes, the small braids framing it.
The full mouth and broad, pointed nose. Such a pretty face, her friend had.
And such a fierce fighter she was. A good, loyal friend and a powerful magic wielder.
If anyone should pass all the ashling exams, it should be Tabi.
Lory gave the woman a smile. “The Amrin Mountains taught me that I’m not alone.”
Truth. And not just because of the friends who’d sided with her, fought alongside her, defended her, but because of the cave, where she’d met more Flame-born.
No matter what the leonthor had said about them being the last of her kind, she was convinced there were more out there.
If magic indeed ran in the blood, her mother or her father had to have been gifted, and at least one of her grandparents before, and their parents before them.
There had to be more Flames out there. There simply had to.
They arrived at the corner where Lory needed to take a left turn to the blue room, while Tabi and Thal continued to the dormitories.
“See you later.” Lory waved at them.
“In one piece, Vednis,” Thal said with a grin, but the seriousness in his eyes gave away how worried he was.
“I’ll be fine, Thal.” Stopping by the corner, Lory gave him a one-armed hug. “I’ll be back before you know it, and then I’ll annoy Eroth’s Veil out of you until you wish you’d let me die in the mountains.”
Thal playfully slapped her biceps. “Not funny.” When he touched her arm this time, it was a soft squeeze. “Be safe, Lory. I’m serious.”
Lory’s throat tightened at the wealth of emotions plain on Thal’s face, and the tightness in her chest threatened to take her breath. “Always.”
Lifting onto her toes, she placed a kiss on Thal’s cheek. Then she hugged Tabi before disappearing into the corridor toward the blue room.