Chapter 36
Thirty-Six
Lory
They barely made it back inside the tunnel, dragging Anees and Hadrian along, door shutting behind them and making the world disappear in darkness once more.
Had Lory seen the world clearly despite the absence of light earlier, her fairy senses were now drained, and she had to feel her way along the wall just like the others.
Olive didn’t ask what happened, and they didn’t offer any explanation, but they couldn’t sit and wait for their powers to recover.
They needed to get to Hand Nahrit and to get Olive out of the pyramid, and then they’d think of an excuse as to why they might have missed breakfast. Perhaps, if they made it in time, they could use the secret side entrance to the mess hall and blend into the crowd before anyone noticed they were missing.
After a moment of assessing their wounds as best they could in the darkness—Lory’s fire wouldn’t come to life, no matter how hard she tried—they knew Anees’s wound was the most pressing.
Hadrian was coming around, his groan echoing in the tunnel, but his mind seemed clear, and his blackout temporary.
“How are we getting her to a hideout?” Tabi asked eventually, when no one was reporting any more wounds. Olive started saying that it was all right, that she could stay a few days in the darkness, but Jarek cut her off. “I’ll take you to the rebel camp southeast of here.”
Lory didn’t even want to know how he knew where exactly to go. Lory’s initial idea had been to get her out, hide her nearby, and when she was better, she could make her way south to the mountains and find her way back to the leonthor’s cave… The leonthor.
Lory hadn’t heard him in weeks, and she couldn’t tell if that was a good thing.
“How far is it?” Tabi’s voice was weak but still better than Anees’s, who didn’t get out more than a rasp.
“Half a day’s walk. With the most recent rain, it might be a bit faster since we don’t need to worry as much about the heat.” Jarek sounded convinced—and convincing. “I’ll take her.”
“How will we explain one day of absence?” Lory’s stomach folded in on itself as she realized what the answer would be.
“You won’t,” he said. “I won’t come back.”
Someone gasped in the darkness. On instinct, Lory reached out in Tabi’s direction and clutched her friend’s hand.
“What about Maes?” she asked, hope and worry making her shoulders curve inward. If Jarek left, what would that do to his sister? What message would that send?
Before Jarek could answer, Tabi hissed, “They will hunt you. A rogue magic wielder is unacceptable to Ashthorn and the king.”
A part of Lory wondered if Tabi didn’t agree, because she still believed Ulder was on the right side of things, but the hurt in her tone spoke of suppressed grief for a friend she knew might not survive the next weeks, and if he did—Lory didn’t even want to know what would happen if they faced each other on a battlefield.
“I’ve been here too long, fighting on the wrong side,” Jarek explained in the calm tone of a man who’d been considering this for a while. “It’s time I joined the people out there, fighting for what’s right.”
“And what is that?” Tabi spat, her temper getting the best of her.
Lory didn’t let go of her hand. “What will you fight for, Jarek? A free Brestolya? Freedom of magic wielders? Where will you start? In the mountains where Ulder’s troops will slaughter you?
Where I might be forced to slaughter you?
” Lory could taste the salt of Tabi’s tears in the air. Tears of anger, of fear—of betrayal.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.” A third hand joined Lory’s and Tabi’s, and Lory pulled hers back as Jarek wrapped his fingers around Tabi’s. “And if you choose to kill me because you believe I’m wrong, so be it.”
A sob broke out of Tabi, and Lory’s heart made a painful thud as she understood the silent declaration in his words.
Lory bit the inside of her cheek, giving them this brief moment before the world needed to continue turning and they’d head back into enemy territory.
Because that was what Ashthorn had become.
When they opened the secret door once more, the sky was a light gray, the last of the stars fading and the moon vanishing in a smear of pink above the rain-beaten sand stretching out to the east. With a heavy breath, Lory ignored the pain her various injuries caused her and handed Jarek both Brady Niely’s knife and the city guard’s sword.
“So you can kill them with their own weapons when they come after you.” Because they would.
After what had happened that night, Lory was sure more was going on than any of them yet comprehended.
They hadn’t even scratched the surface. The Criulian rebels, the magic wielders, the Flames.
Three factions, all striving for one outcome: freedom.
But their ideas of freedom might not have been the same.
Then there were the guard’s words Lory couldn’t get out of her head: You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into, fire spitter.
“Take care of Maes,” Jarek said with an incline of his head—a thanks in advance for all the difficulties he was putting his sister through by disappearing.
“I will.” It wasn’t Lory who promised it, even though she’d been about to speak the words. Hadrian stepped forward, clasping Jarek’s hand and clapping him on the shoulder, making Jarek wince.
Tabi shot forward, weak on her legs, but stable enough to grab Jarek’s bicep and let some of her remaining power flow into his tissues.
The wound on his bicep had stopped bleeding, but Tabi’s magic sealed it enough to reduce the risk of infection.
“Take care of yourself,” Tabi said when she was done, but her hand lingered on Jarek’s arm.
Lory discreetly took a step back toward Olive, who had been so patient while they’d made up their minds about how to proceed as she waited for her own freedom.
Behind them, in the mouth of the tunnel, Anees was sitting by the wall, head lolling to the side as she drifted in and out of consciousness.
They didn’t have long to get her to Nahrit.
“And you, too.” A small smile formed on Jarek’s lips. He was about to pull away when Tabi rose on her toes and placed a brief kiss on that smile. For a moment, their eyes locked, and Jarek nodded, a silent promise.
It felt too intimate for Lory to watch, so she knelt beside Anees, wiping her braids from her forehead and checking on her vital signs the way she’d learned in Medica classes. Stable enough—for now.
“I will find a way to contact you,” Jarek said before he held out his hand to Olive and wrapped his arm around the woman’s shoulders, helping her along the drying sand.
For a long while, Lory knelt there, Tabi and Hadrian standing beside her in the tunnel, and together, they watched Jarek and Olive disappear into the sunrise—Jarek still limping.
Only when they’d vanished behind the first dune large enough to conceal them entirely did Lory nod at Hadrian and Tabi, and they pulled the door back into place.
Darkness swallowed them, leaving them to feel their way back to the crematorium, Anees’s arms draped over their shoulders. They needed to take breaks, but they got there. Scratches on her arms and legs didn’t help either, as she helped Hadrian heave Anees into the elevator.
“Breakfast is still going on,” she put into consideration as Tabi reached for the lever. “We don’t know who we’ll encounter up there.”
Hadrian shook his head. “Breakfast is almost done. The morning executions have been put on a break until the new ashlings arrive, so we don’t need to worry about anyone coming into the side corridor for now.”
Lory’s heart pounded, and the thread connecting her with Khayrivven did an uncomfortable twist as if to warn them. But Anees was still a dead weight between them, and they couldn’t lose any more time.
A steadying breath, and she nodded at Tabi to pull the lever.
The elevator set in motion, creaking ever so slightly as it slid up the stone shaft, delivering them to what Lory hoped would be a clear path. She glanced at Hadrian. “Are there any secret passages we can take to the Medica quarters?” she prompted in her mind, not daring to make a sound.
Hadrian’s eyes widened enough to make Tabi shoot him an inquisitive glance, but he casually relaxed his shoulders as best he could under Anees’s weight and dipped his chin.
When the elevator crept high enough to see part of the hallway above, Lory loosed a breath.
No movement visible or audible. The everlasting torches were flickering on the walls, a reminder of who once built those pyramids, who’d lived there long before Ulder’s ancestors turned against magic wielders, and the king made Ashthorn what it was.
They waited for the elevator to stop with its little creak and, with a glance left and right, hurried along the corridor, past the cart used to transport corpses to the cremator. A shudder of disgust at the place she’d ended up in ran along Lory’s spine.
At the corner, Hadrian stopped, listening for footsteps.
The voices in the distance came from the mess hall, accompanied by the clattering of cutlery and dishes as the students and instructors were getting ready to leave.
At least the door at the side of the dais wasn’t open—a small mercy—allowing them to slip away unnoticed.
After the first stairwell, Hadrian’s walk turned into a limp.
Thank the Guardians Tabi was there to take Anees’s arm off his shoulders, and Lory gritted her teeth as they continued down another corridor, this one smaller, so narrow they had to move sideways so they wouldn’t get stuck, but Hadrian waved them on, faster now, despite the limp, and he checked around corners for them, holding up his hand to pause them until it was safe to go.