Chapter 34 #2
Malakai is too rapt to notice my evasive maneuvers. His expression is that of a starving man having a feast set before him. It makes me hesitate enough that the Hollow almost snags my soaked tunic’s collar, but I twist away just in time.
Did Malakai look at me like that in the water? Like some kind of private dream come true?
It’s so off-putting that I fold my arms across my stomach, hugging myself.
A full minute passes. The only sound is the soft drip of water from my soaked clothes onto the stone. Malakai’s raptor-like focus shifts to impatience. He takes a step closer to the edge, peering into the dark water as if he can will the violence to begin.
The Hollow finally catches my arm again, his grip cold and insistent.
This time, I don’t resist. But as he pulls me toward the door, a single, large bubble breaks the surface of the tank.
Then another. The water begins to shimmer, not with blood, but with a faint blue light that ripples from the depths.
It is clean, pure Soulren energy. Davrin’s soul-energy.
But it’s growing, expanding, far brighter than any initiate’s magick should.
Ember stirs inside my chest.
In the second it takes to inhale, the glow darkens to black. A low hum vibrates through the floor.
The surface darkens from the center outward, black spreading ink through water. It radiates in perfect circles, each one pushing outward until, in one blink, the tank water turns to pitch.
The same darkness that surrounded Falcen in the eels’ memory. The same wrongness when his soul collapsed inward.
Malakai creeps closer to the tank’s edge, his bicolored gaze locked on the opaque darkness below.
“Bring him up,” Malakai says, his voice thick. “Now.”
Two Hollows grab their hooks, plunging them into the water. They search, dragging the metal through the depths.
Nothing.
Again.
Nothing.
“All of you,” Malakai orders.
My Hollow releases me by the arm and shuffles toward the tank, joining the others.
Four Hollows work together, three hooks disappearing below the surface while one pulls at the chain hooked to Davrin’s iron cuffs. After several attempts, one catches. They haul upward, straining, and Davrin breaks the surface.
Water streams from his body in sheets. Black water. It clings to his skin instead of running off, dripping upward in thin tendrils.
They drag him over the edge, and he collapses onto the stone, gasping. The blindfold hangs loose around his neck.
Davrin blinks against the torchlight, and I see his face clearly for the first time since this morning in the dining hall.
His eyes.
The irises are still the palest of greens, but there’s gold threaded through them now. Not a reflection of the sconces. Not a trick of the water. Gold, like someone took molten metal and poured it around his pupils in thin, perfect rings.
I’ve only seen that on Falcen and the other few Elites I’ve come across.
My hand rises to my mouth without conscious thought.
But I don’t know what it means. I don’t know what it signifies when a student’s eyes change like that. Have mine? Do I have a ring of gold?
Brackish water still clings to Davrin’s bare forearms. He holds his hands up, staring at them as if they belong to someone else.
“What happened to me?”
Malakai doesn’t answer. “On your feet, Initiate Koll.”
Davrin stands, swaying.
“Class is dismissed,” Malakai announces. “Return to your quarters immediately. You will not discuss today’s trials with anyone. Breach this order, and you’ll find yourself in that tank by morning.”
The Hollows move through the remaining initiates, unlocking chains and pulling off blindfolds.
All twelve of them carefully get to their feet, filing toward the exit in silence.
Rook looks back at me, and even though the Hollow meant to escort me has given up and stands near the exit instead, I know I should follow.
But as I move toward the door, I notice Davrin’s docile posture as he allows Keeper Malakai to lead him in the opposite direction.
When he looks over his shoulder and those gold-threaded eyes meet mine, for the first time since I arrived at this academy, I see Davrin Koll stripped of every layer of arrogance and contempt he’s worn like a second skin since the moment I met him.
Then he follows Malakai through the doorway. The same door from the eels’ memory. The corridor where they dragged Falcen, black veins spreading beneath his skin, his body convulsing as whatever they did to him took hold.
The door closes behind them just before they descend with a sound like stone grinding against stone.
“Verily.”
Rook’s voice cuts through the fog in my mind. Her hand presses against my shoulder, urging me forward. “You did it. You survived.”
The tank water has settled back to a clear ocean blue. No trace of the darkness that spread through it remains. There’s also no sign of the eels below.
Are they dead?
But I know what I saw. The same change that happened to Falcen in that memory—his eyes, the black water, his soul breaking apart and reforming wrong—just happened to Davrin.
And Malakai took Davrin to the same place they took Falcen.
They promised us wings, the eels bemoan through my memory. They promised flight.