Chapter 30 #2
Her tone makes me pause with my hands on my pants’ front laces. Even when she was at her weakest, Callie had shown flashes of defiance, of dark humor that suggested a kinship between us.
Not now. Now, she watches me with shining amber eyes that reveal nothing.
Ember stirs again. I’m surprised Callie can’t see her undulating underneath my skin.
“What does that mean?” I ask, sitting along the edge so my legs slide into the water up to my knees.
The heat is immediate bliss against my aching muscles, but I remain perched, hesitant to fully join her.
She submerges deeper, until the top of her head disappears and when she rises, her hair is slicked back and shimmering against her head, her hair-tie spiraling down to the bottom of the pool like a drowning insect.
I side-eye its descent and swallow.
“The Master Keeper has expectations if I’m to stay out of the catacombs,” Callie answers. “I’m meeting them.”
“That’s ... good,” I say, trying to find solid footing in this shifting conversation. “You deserve a second chance after everything you’ve been through.”
“Second chances at the academy come with strings attached. You’ll learn that soon enough.”
I finish untying my undergarments, wincing as my sore muscles protest. The humid air hits my breasts, raising goose bumps across my arms before I slip into the steaming water.
The heat envelops me like a lover’s embrace—like Falcen’s weight and heat—and I can’t suppress a desolate moan when I sink down, unwilling to release the stone edge until my feet touch the warm bottom with my head still above water, thank Lux.
Don’t think about Falcen right now, I chide myself. Or how he saved me from the last body of water I waded in.
Do think about him, Verily. He’s important.
Ember’s voice makes me frown.
I’m not enjoying how you pick and choose when to speak.
I can’t control it. Your actions are what force me respond.
My frown deepens. What is that supposed to mean?
I wish I could tell you, but you haven’t forced me to speak upon it yet. Only when necessary am I allowed to give you information.
Allowed? Like, someone is controlling you?
They are no longer someone.
A frustrated exhale ripples against my lips. What in Nox’s hell am I to do with that?
No response. Ember’s finished with our cryptic conversation.
I lean against the stone on a sigh, strands of my hair floating around me like silky tentacles. The relief is immediate, my muscles loosening in the mineral-rich water.
Callie watches me, tracking the way I’ve glued myself to the pool’s wall.
“You’re not swimming,” she observes, her head tilting. “Falcen’s training must really have you feeling stiff. Tell me, what’s he teaching you, anyway? Beyond the obvious weapon summoning.”
I lower my shoulders, as if to prove to her that I’m not afraid of the pool, even though I absolutely fucking am. Her question feels loaded, though I can’t pinpoint why.
Ember shifts restlessly in my chest, a warning flutter that makes me more cautious.
“He’s teaching me the usual, I assume. Control, discipline, how not to die horribly.” I keep my voice light, but I’m watching her carefully now. “Why do you ask?”
Callie’s smile widens, but it’s wrong. Too bright and perfect. “Just curious. It’s been so long since I’ve seen him work with a student. He was always intense about his methods.”
“Intense is one word for it.” I press harder into the stone, putting more distance between us and wishing there were some sort of underwater bench I could sit on. “He’s been particularly moody lately. His tattoos have been acting strange.”
Callie’s expression sharpens with interest. “How so?”
The question comes too quickly, too eagerly, and my pulse quickens. The old Callie would have made a sarcastic comment about Falcen’s perpetual grumpiness. This version is fishing for information with the subtlety of a harpoon.
“They’re spreading,” I say carefully, watching her reaction. “Moving beyond his forearms.”
Callie’s eyes gleam in the colored light filtering through the stained glass. “Spreading how far?”
“Up his neck. Maybe higher.” I let myself sink lower in the water, up to my chin but no further, using the movement to mask my growing unease. “Do you know what that means?”
She’s quiet for a long moment, gazing somewhere far-off. When she speaks again, her voice carries a strange note. “He was one of the youngest ever promoted to Elite. Have you ever wondered what happens to those who reach that level?”
I answer cautiously. ““They’re assigned them to the front lines of the Void rifts in our realm.”
Callie braces herself on the pool’s edge and pulls herself into a sit. Water drips steadily from her naked body, ticking against the tile. “Well, that’s the brochure version. They don’t just send you to the Void rifts. They push you into them. Again and again. Until it gets under your skin.”
“And that’s meant to make them stronger,” I surmise. “To withstand the Void.”
“Sure. My brother was especially good at it, which meant they sent him more. And when he wasn’t there, he was in isolation here at the academy.
Resting, the Keepers said. But he looked thinner every time I saw him.
Eyes too dark. Skin too pale. I asked what they were feeding him. No one would answer.”
The water surrounding me grows warmer. I glance down, wondering if it’s Ember’s doing.
“I think the Void fed him,” Callie says softly.
My head jerks up.
“I didn’t know what it was that made him appear so different at first,” she continues.
“But you start noticing things. The way Falcen avoided light. The way he’d stare too long at others’ soul-weapons.
He stopped bleeding normally. His scars faded faster.
He even started hearing and seeing Void creatures before anyone else did. ”
My lips part as I try to absorb everything Callie’s saying and searching inward, recalling those memories with him when we traveled to the academy and his absolute refusal to absorb souls, dark or light, unless necessary to save our lives.
And, oh Lux, especially mine. He was desperate to stay so far away from mine.
But the Falcen Callie’s describing sounds ravenous.
The water grows hotter.
“Gods,” I whisper. “They made him addicted to siphoning souls, didn’t they? Is that why he escaped the academy?”
Callie doesn’t answer. She doesn’t have to.
“He stopped coming to our chambers. And one day, he vanished completely. No explanation. No goodbye. The Keepers said he was gone, but offered me no reason other than that he was a coward before dragging me into the catacombs. I thought he was dead.” She gives a tight smile, no teeth.
“But hey, it turns out he was alive. He just felt it was necessary to leave me behind when he escaped.”
“I’m sure there’s more to it than that,” I defend lamely. Falcen’s motivations remain a mystery to me, too.
“I was halfway to being Hollowed by the time he returned with you. You were the bargaining chip to let me live, apparently. As much as you and I fought and stayed strong down there, even after you killed the rogue, you didn’t get me out.
He did. And he did it by giving them you.
Don’t ever mistake him for a noble man.”
I shake my head. “I’ve never believed him to be noble.”
Have I? Ever since Noxie died, I’ve had such difficulty separating good from evil, bad from necessity. Is there even such a line to be drawn?
“Do you know what it does to someone, being left behind by the only person who ever gave a damn?” Callie asks.
Sadly, I do. My father walked away, though I never knew him. My mother faded into Lux’s arms before my very eyes.
“Not like that,” Callie says, reading my expression. “Not because they didn’t have a choice. My brother damned well had the choice to take me with him when he escaped, and he did not.”
Ember pulls tight inside my chest, then goes still again.
Callie lifts her legs out of the pool and stands. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him. Not really. But if his tattoos are spreading, you should be careful. There are things Elites don’t survive. Not because they die. Because they change.”
The water is so hot, I can barely stand it, but I refuse to move as I dare to ask, “Change into what?”
Callie smiles again before wrapping herself into a robe and turning out of the bathhouse. “If I knew that, Verily, I wouldn’t be alive to tell you.”
She smiles long enough before disappearing for me to notice that this version of a smile is less perfect and more unsettling on her flawless face.
More inhuman.