Chapter 23
Twenty-Three
The gallery to the Master Keeper’s quarters stretches long enough that Falcen’s footsteps echo twice before they fade as he carries me, but it’s his sharp warning that has my pulse leaping.
“Don’t mention the cat.”
I lift my head from his shoulder. “The … my cat? Noxie?”
Falcen snorts. “Of course you’d name your pet after our most punishing and unforgiving god.”
“I gentled it by putting an ‘eee’ sound at the end.”
Falcen doubles down on the scoff.
Confusion furrows my brow as he sets me down in the vast hallway, somehow sensing that I’ve recovered enough strength to stand on my own two feet after killing an innocent girl and eating her soul.
Gods, I’m truly going to be sick.
“Easy,” Falcen warns. “Don’t you dare vomit on my uniform.”
His hands linger at my waist just a second too long before he pulls away, and the absence of his touch sends a traitorous and uninvited ache in my stomach.
I swallow hard, tasting bile and a faint, metallic tang.
“She didn’t even fight me.” My voice cracks, and I hate it, but not enough to stop talking. “She just let me do it. Like she’d given up. I killed someone who wasn’t even trying to win.”
“Hey.” Falcen tugs my chin up. His thumb presses a crescent under my lower lip.
Reluctantly, I meet his eyes, the color of a summer sky glimpsed through fire.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen,” I whisper. “She was just … she was so scared. I didn’t want—”
“Stop.” He shakes his head. “That’s not what they want to hear. You walk in there and say you hesitated, you cared, you lost control, and you’re dead by sundown. Worse, you’re bait for the next batch of initiates.”
My lips twist. “So what do I say? That I enjoy torturing innocents? That her soul was tastier for it?”
Falcen shows me his profile as he resumes walking. “Say nothing. I’ll handle it.”
The halls of Resonance Academy are cold and cavernous, built from the rocks of the Kian Mountains and worn smooth by centuries of passage.
Narrow windows high on the walls let in faint streams of daylight that cast long, glowing arcs across the floor.
Above, the vaulted ceilings stretch high into shadow.
It’s all very gloomy and opposite to the small, two-room cottage I shared with my mother and grandmother. We were never wealthy, had never set foot in a castle this vast and intimidating, yet I prefer our tiny living room with a single chair and the fire crackling.
“What is so wrong about Noxie that I can’t mention him?” I ask Falcen.
He’s forced to slow down when I stop and press my palm to the closest column, steadying myself from another wave of dizziness.
Twin rows of them line either side of the former gallery, fluted pillars that once held up a royal court.
The many portraits between them are gone, but their outlines remain, pale rectangles branded into the flamed granite that no amount of Hollows’ scrubbing can erase.
“Just heed my instructions for once and don’t say a word. You’ve given them enough to discuss.”
Falcen crosses his arms, posture rigid as he waits for me to recover. I hate how his presence makes the air feel thinner, as if my lungs have to negotiate with him for every breath.
I should step out of his shadow and put space between us, but I don’t. Maybe it’s exhaustion, or idiocy, but I stay rooted to the spot, aware of every inch separating us.
And how easily he could close the gap.
“You’re sulking,” Falcen says, his tone cutting through my thoughts. “Cut it out. What you did back there is what they expect you to do.”
His logic doesn’t soften the ache in my chest. “Expect or not, siphoning just for show feels…”
“Efficient,” he finishes for me. “And necessary. And if you want to get to the top of your class, you’d better get used to it.”
“But I don’t want to climb to the top!” The denial comes out much louder than intended, and I work to lower my voice. “I want to leave. I never wanted to be here—”
Falcen’s hands ram into the column on either side of my head, pinning me against it. Crushed stone falls to the ground under his splayed palms.
“You need to stop thinking you’re at some fucking educational institution your parents sent you to, and now that you’re homesick, you’re whining to be taken home.
Those initiates back there are not your classmates.
They’re killers in training. A ranking system is in place.
Low-ranking initiates become Hollowed. Tell me you understand.
” At my frozen silence, he repeats through a hot, deadly seethe, “Tell me you understand, Verily.”
“Why do you care?” I hiss. “You only seem to instruct me when it’s convenient. You only touch me when you’re forced to, and by all accounts, you despise my presence!”
He punches the pillar on either side of my head, more stone cascading down. “You really think I don’t care?”
Falcen’s eyes drill into mine, a tempest of blue and gold swirling with anger, exasperation, and a ferocity so strong that it makes my mouth snap shut.
I can’t move, can’t breathe, trapped by the solid wall of him.
“Falcen,” I whisper, not sure if it’s a plea for him to let me go.
His eyes flick down to my lips, lingering there for a moment before dragging back up to meet mine.
“What do you want from me?” My question is barely audible over the roaring of blood in my ears. “Every time I think I understand you, you change the rules.”
His hands curl into fists, more loosened pebbles skittering down the pillar’s length.
“What I want,” Falcen says, “is for you to survive. To become strong enough that no one in this forsaken place can hurt you.”
“For your benefit, or mine?” I ask.
Falcen leans in closer, our noses almost touching. “Everything I’ve done since finding you, every choice I’ve made, is for your benefit.” His tone is quiet, but rough, like gravel captured by velvet. “But never doubt that I have my own reasons, too.”
Falcen doesn’t wait for me to respond, pushing off the gouged-out column and striding ahead toward the looming door of the Master Keeper’s chamber. The ember hums faintly in the back of my mind, a low, insidious vibration.
He’s not wrong. But he’s not right either, it sings.
Falcen pauses before the double doors, imposing slabs of igneous rock with veins of gold running through their depths. The handles are shaped into warring serpents, their heads twined in a kiss that looks more like they’re trying to kill each other.
Falcen glances back at me. “Remember what I said.”
I nod, the hard look on his face disturbing me enough to comply without argument. He raps his knuckles against the door.
“Enter.”
The voice that emanates from within is a quiet rasp, but unmistakably commanding.
Falcen pushes open the door and strides in, his back straight with his arms folded behind him. I mirror his posture and follow.
The chamber opens onto a crystal chandelier, unlit, hanging above a ceiling painted with pastoral scenes of Vehloria: shepherds, orchards, and a golden-haired queen accepting flowers from her subjects.
Beneath that ceiling, however, every trace of softness has been gutted.
The walls are lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves crammed with tomes and specimen jars I refuse to identify. A desk sits where a bed or a throne once did, its surface bare except for a single burning candle. And behind it sits a man...
...in a skull mask?
“Initiate Holbrook,” the man greets us. “And Resonant Falcen Reaves, returned to us at last.”
Two black holes for eyes regard me through a real human skull that has been polished into an off-putting, pristine white, the bottom and top row of its teeth glued together to showcase a lip-less, macabre grin.
A pure ivory cloak falls across his shoulders, the hood pulled up to frame the garish mask and providing no indication of hair color, skin color, or hells, even gender.
In the dim light of the catacombs, Callie had quizzed me relentlessly on the academy’s hierarchy, determined that I memorize every detail.
The Master Keeper, she had said, is a mystery.
No one knows his true name or his origins.
He’s simply Vehloria’s new ruler. Others claim he is a direct descendant of the First Soulren, blessed with unimaginable, immortal power.
Some whisper that he isn’t fully human or Soulren anymore, that he had purged himself of all personal identity and desire in order to become the perfect, monstrous enforcer of the academy’s will.
But all agree on one thing: He is not to be trifled with.
Standing before him now, I can believe it.
The Master Keeper has held his position for far longer than anyone should be able to, fueling rumors that he has discovered a way to siphon soul-energy from others to extend his life.
Very few have seen his face uncovered. Whether this is to protect himself from backlash, hide scars from his time on the frontlines three decades ago, or simply to intimidate, no one knows.
But it’s not the Master Keeper who unsettles me most in this room.
Falcen’s fingers flex at his lower back, but he keeps his expression carefully blank.
“Tell me, Resonant Reaves,” the Master Keeper continues, his voice deceptively mild. “You left the academy in disgrace. Now you return, bringing with you an anomaly. Why?”
Falcen doesn’t react. “You put Calliope in the catacombs. I had no choice but to return. But you knew that.”
My stare bores holes into the flooring, and I don’t dare look up so Falcen can catch the consternation in my expression. I knew there was more to Callie and Falcen’s story and how they knew each other, but this? Her imprisonment drawing him back to the place he abandoned?
My gut sways, like it’s not too sure how to react to that realization.
The Master Keeper gives a noncommittal hum. “And what of the past, Falcen? Have you made peace with it?”
Falcen works his jaw. “I don’t dwell on what’s done.”