Chapter 33
Thirty-Three
Lory
Lory didn’t know how she’d gotten into her bed. All she remembered was the pain when Lenya’s magic had been broken and the blood stopped spilling. Tabi and Nahrit had saved her.
Stifling a groan, she rolled to the side, reaching for the bandage on her thigh, and found nothing.
Next to her, a sleeping Tabi sat sprawled in one of the chairs by the desk, her heart-shaped face slack with exhaustion and deep slumber.
A glance at the window told Lory dawn wasn’t far off, and the Tears of the Gods had broken, no more precious water spilling from the skies.
The river Dun must be gushing by now, carrying the excess rain to the ocean, where it would marry with salt and become the home of ships sailing to unknown lands.
Her head no longer felt hazy, and the pain had withdrawn into the thin line where Niely’s blade had cut her. Had Lenya tried to kill her? Nefetari Brunn’s words certainly seemed to have implied that was the case.
You might have proven your loyalty to Ashthorn, but the Master of Whispers still sees you as a threat, Elory. Make sure this wound heals fast. It will be harder to make it look like an accident when he needs to slice your skin himself.
All those months ago, she’d wondered if there was someone among leadership she could trust. The Medica Hand had offered up his own trust by sharing with her about his past with Khayrivven’s father, but apart from that—Lory’s hand shook as she guided it to her head, trying to make sense of Nefetari Brunn’s involvement in all of this.
More than she could see clearly went on at Ashthorn Ward.
The king and the rebels no longer seemed to be the only factions for Ashthorn’s students’ loyalties.
Whatever Lenya was up to, it was something more.
And apparently, Brunn and Nahrit didn’t agree with it, or they wouldn’t have said what they’d said.
Even Khayrivven had mentioned he only trusted Anees and Hadrian, that the rest of Ashthorn was an unknown.
Ashthorn is a lie. Narica Hayley’s last words. The margins in Aiden’s old book. The gaps in Brestolya’s history.
Something much, much bigger was at work here.
Lory might not have a name for it just yet, but she’d find out.
As quietly as she could, she dragged her feet from the bed and set them onto the stone floor.
In the corner at the foot end of her bed, Brady Niely’s knives and jewels lay in a pile.
The clothes were gone, but a small, off-white item lay crumpled among the metal and gemstones that Lory hadn’t noticed before.
Gingerly, she slid toward the end of the bed, leaning down to retrieve it.
The piece of paper was still wet in places, the ink smeared and blotchy, but the words were legible anyway. Three simple words that Lory hadn’t expected to ever see written in that combination.
blood
fae
portal
A surge of adrenaline rushed through Lory as she read and reread the list. The first two words made sense, even when the full-blooded fae of Neredyn and the fairies of Askarea had long faded to legends. But portal?
Anees must have pulled the paper from Niely’s pockets and left it there for Lory to find.
“Khayrivven?” Lory called in her mind, hoping he’d finally hear her, come to her…
“He left a few minutes before you woke up,” Anees said from the shadows of her bed, where Lory hadn’t spotted her curled up between the sheets. “He found the note when he picked up Niely’s things to burn in the crematorium.”
So Anees knew about that, too…
And she’d just responded to her thoughts rather than her words.
“Anees?” Lory cautiously asked in her mind, and the woman sat up, revealing she’d been sleeping in full uniform rather than her nightgown.
“It’s all right, Lory. I know. I’ve heard you before, when you were still unaware of your gift.
It took me a while, though, to figure out if it was my ability or yours.
For a moment there, I got pretty excited when I thought I could read minds.
” A chuckle so low and bitter Lory could barely believe it belonged to Anees drifted on a phantom wind.
“Would have been a truly useful gift for once.”
With her matter manipulation of textiles, Anees had one of the most useful gifts Lory had ever seen, but she understood the feeling of not being enough all too well.
Carefully, she pushed to her feet, tucking the piece of paper into her sleeve as she swayed toward Anees’s bed and sat on the edge of the mattress.
She curled an arm around the half-sitting woman and hugged her close. “Thank you for being here.”
Anees merely nodded into Lory’s shoulder.
“What happened with the three Flames? Did they—?” Lory whispered.
Another nod from Anees, then a small shake of her head. “Olive is the only one who got out. They slayed the other two on the spot.”
“By they, you mean…”
“Ycken came down to check in on the prisoners for more information on Lenya’s behalf soon after you left.
We’d done everything as planned. Hadrian still has the black eye from where I punched him so he could pretend to have been knocked out by one of the prisoners.
We set the cells on fire after we let them out, to make it look like they were able to summon their magic.
We even used the exact same stabbing technique as Khay does when it’s his turn to kill ashlings before breakfast.” Anees’s voice turned somber.
“Ycken came just as we’d injured Olive. Hadrian was about to stab Enya, but Ycken took off her head instead.
And before we could get Hadrick out of the cell, Ycken used his magic to draw the air from the man’s lungs and suffocate him. ”
Lory wanted to sob, to scream, to say something that would make it better, but ultimately, there was nothing she could do.
“The plan was good,” Anees said, not letting go of Lory’s embrace. “ We failed at the execution.”
“You didn’t fail.” Now Anees’s self-deprecation from before made sense. “You saved a life.”
“Olive is healing in the crematorium, just as Khayrivven planned. She has food and water, but her wounds are deep, and we don’t know if she’ll survive the next days.”
There was someone in this very room who could help, but Lory couldn’t make that sort of decision about Khayrivven’s secrets. At least not yet. Maybe the Medica Hand would be willing to provide a tonic that would speed up Olive’s healing…
“She will.” Though Lory wasn’t convinced, she made it sound like she was, and Anees didn’t object.
Hope, she realized, was the strongest power of all. Stronger even than love, because while in her world, love gave meaning to death, hope gave meaning to life.
We might need to sneak some Medica supplies down into the…” She stopped herself, her arm folding Lory in more tightly. “Without some proper healing, Olive might not make it. I’m prepared to steal tonics and elixirs, but Khay told me to keep you out of it.”
Of course he had, not realizing he had an ally in the Medica quarters, who would aid in whichever way he could without drawing the Triad’s attention.
“What’s with all the fuss?” Tabi had woken in her chair, her disheveled braids swinging around her head as she searched the room for Lory, then bouncing into her face as she found her with Anees. “Aren’t you supposed to be in bed? You lost a boatload of blood.”
“About that…” Lory released Anees to drag herself to Tabi’s chair and hug her friend. Despite the whispering, she wasn’t sure how much Tabi had heard of their conversation. “Thanks for helping me.”
Squeezing her tight, Tabi stood with Lory in her arms and sat her down on her own bed, a frown hiding her slight smile. “You’d have done the same for me.”
It was a truth Lory had known since the moment Tabi had shown up in the Amrin Mountains to fight at her side.
A true friend, who’d taken a risk to protect her.
Just like Lory would wreck herself to help Tabi—and Thal, and Jarek, and Anees.
Even Hadrian, who’d crept into a crevice inside her heart with his annoying ability to manipulate emotions—or just by being his charming self, she didn’t care.
But most of all, for Khayrivven, who’d left once more without saying goodbye.
A sudden sadness befalling her, she reached for the bond originating at the center of her heart and tugged on it until it glowed a bright gold. “I love you, Khayrivven.” The thought drifted along the bond, curling into its essence as it slid away.
“Lenya gave you the day off?” Anees asked, her gold-flecked brown eyes wary. She flicked her fingers, and the orbs of light above her head came to life with a soft yellow glow. Lory heaved herself from the bed to open the window behind the desk and inhaled deeply.
Soon, the sun would beat down on the watered land, and Sen Dunai would return to being mostly desert. But for now, the air tasted of rain and life.
With glimmers of hope settling inside her chest, Lory glanced from Anees to Tabi and back, making up a plan of her own. It would need careful planning and even more careful execution, but if all pieces fell into place, maybe they could save at least one Flame.
With a grin, she took Tabi’s hand. “How much rest do you need before your powers are fully restored?”
The hallways were empty when Lory and Anees snuck out of the room, not five minutes later.
Oh, Anees had objected to every little detail of Lory’s plan and mentioned about a hundred times that Khayrivven would kill her if anything happened to Lory, which had put an even wider grin on Lory’s face.
Low torchlight illuminated their path, not a single window lining the hallway, a blessing that allowed them to slip from shadow to shadow like they’d practiced so many times in Veiled training.
Even with the exhaustion from her injury, Lory’s head was clear and her feet light. Whatever the tonic Tabi had poured over her injury, there was no more sign of the cleaving wound.