Chapter 42
Forty-Two
Memories return in sickening flashes. My weapon striking for Rook’s throat. Her eyes rippling with shock. Falcen doubling over as scales claim his face. Ward-glyphs shattering like glass.
I try to sit up and find my wrists bound to a stone slab beneath me.
Not with iron, but with tattoos that pulse and shimmer along my skin—living manacles of soul-magick.
I’ve seen them before, in the catacombs, but they were carved into iron.
Here, they burn directly against my flesh, and I bite back a scream.
“Ember?” I whisper, voice cracking through the damp, windowless air.
No answer. Her presence is curled tight at the base of my neck, but she’s silent. Either hiding or recovering, I can’t tell which.
At my movements, a soul-fire sconce blazes to life on the wall, illuminating my new prison.
While I understand I must’ve been taken somewhere secure, like the catacombs below the academy, this isn’t the same section where I met Callie.
The ceiling arches higher, the stonework older, belonging to the former royal castle and not to the Resonance Academy.
Thankfully, I don’t recognize it as being on the other side of the bone door, another sign of Lux’s mercy.
Unlike the damp cells of my previous imprisonment, this chamber is dry and meticulously maintained. The wall opposite me isn’t solid stone, but a series of crackling, blue bars of soul-energy stretching between them, like a magickal prison cage.
I suck in a breath. I have the sense those bars would flay the skin from my bones if I touched them.
I swallow hard, tasting more blood. Had I bitten my tongue during the incident? Or is this leftover from whatever they did to me while I was unconscious?
“The remnant’s status?” asks a clipped voice from beyond my field of vision.
A Hollow glides into view on the other side of the glowing bars, its vacant eyes passing over me without recognition.
“Subject remains stable,” someone intones in response and out of view. “Corruption readings minimal.”
Corruption? My heart stutters in my chest.
“Thank you, that will be all,” says the first voice, female and authoritative.
A Keeper steps into view, the one who oversaw Rook’s and my sparring.
I never got her name. Her face is angular, with high cheekbones and eyes so dark they seem to absorb the bars of soul-magick rather than reflect it.
But unlike the other Keepers with their impeccable appearance, she appears haggard, with dark circles under her eyes and hair hastily pinned back.
“Initiate Holbrook,” she says, studying me like I’m a particularly interesting specimen pinned to a board. “Can you understand me?”
“Yes,” I rasp. “Why wouldn’t I?”
She makes a note on her scroll. “After what happened in the courtyard, we weren’t certain what cognitive functions might remain intact.”
“I don’t know what—” I close my mouth. Better to learn what they think they know before revealing anything about myself, or lack thereof.
“You exhibited a clear soul tether to Elite Reaves,” she says matter-of-factly. “A phenomenon we’ve only seen in ancient texts. And then, when it severed, your weapon displayed corruption patterns consistent with Void exposure.”
My stomach drops. I actually severed our bond? Does that mean Falcen is worse off, or better without my help?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Her eyes narrow. “The Voidrot spreading through your soul-weapon wasn’t an illusion, Initiate. Nor was Elite Reaves’s reaction.”
I remain silent, struggling to process exactly what is occurring right now. My thoughts feel like they were shaken in a jar and poured out in the wrong order.
“Where is he?” I manage. “Elite Reaves.”
“Contained,” she replies, as if that answers everything. She scribbles on her scroll again. “Opposite your cell.”
I turn my head, and there he is. Past the crackling ward bars and the single corridor that separates us, Falcen sits on a bench bolted to stone in the opposite cell, his head almost between his knees.
His cloak is gone. Gloves, too. The gorget lies on the floor, dented as if pried off by angry hands.
Scales crawl higher across one cheekbone and collar, oil-green in the sconce light.
He trembles with restraint. His soul-glyphs thrash under his exposed skin.
My lungs empty. Falcen must hear it, because he lifts his gaze. Blue ringed in gold, then a tide of black licking at the rim.
“Falcen,” I whisper.
He shakes his head once, minute, a warrior’s command. My name shapes across his mouth without sound. The bars between us thrum like a hive.
The Keeper follows my focus, then marks another line on her scroll.
“No vocal contact,” she says, as if I asked for permission first. “We’re still assessing the severing event.”
“Severing,” I echo, because the word is a knife tossed with a casual hand.
If I cut our tether in the courtyard, then the fragile anchor I gave him last night, our bodies locked in a feverish attempt to hold his humanity intact, might be unraveling now.
I picture his scales multiplying unchecked, his eyes drowning in black without that piece of me to pull him back, and the thought twists like a sword in my gut.
The Keeper taps her quill against the scroll, oblivious to the storm raging in my head. “The bond snapped during your outburst that also destroyed the wards. We’ve contained the fallout, but the Master Keeper will want a full report on how an initiate formed such a link in the first place.”
I force my gaze away from Falcen, though every instinct screams to reach for him, to mend what I broke.
Ember, what’s going on? What have we done?
She tries to answer—I can feel her writhing—but the glowing manacles around my wrists extend to her, as well, muffling Ember to the point I can’t hear her.
“The Master has taken a personal interest.” The Keeper continues, “You formed a soul tether without permission and then severed it in the middle of a combat lesson. You nearly beheaded your partner while your Elite handler answered your summons like a hound. We intend to find out why.”
“But Rook—Initiate Sparrow—is okay,” I bite out. “Right?”
“By a breath.” The Keeper’s eyes don’t soften. “Do you recall the commands we shouted at you before the wards shattered?”
I remember only screaming, then nothing. My mind struggles to piece together what the Keeper’s implying. I think back to last night, the golden thread I wove into Falcen while we were tangled together, my desperate attempt to pause his corruption.
I’m not supposed to be able to do that.
At my silence, she makes another mark on her parchment. “You have a minimal amount of time to tell me the truth before other methods are introduced. I will leave you to sort your thoughts, and when I return, I expect your full compliance, Initiate.”
I turn away from her clinical stare and study my bound wrists, searching for any sign of the Voidrot she mentioned. My skin looks normal, albeit pale and bruised at the edges where Falcen held me down last night and Rook laid into me, but no darkness spiders beneath it.
She walks down the corridor between cells and disappears, but I barely track her departure.
Ember? I try calling again. What’s happening to me?
I press my eyes closed, trying to steady my breath. Ember, I need you. Please.
I reach for her warmth, that familiar flicker at the base of my skull that’s guided me through every trial the academy’s thrown my way. But the moment I brush against her presence, the glyphs around my wrists ignite. Icy pain lances up my arms, stealing my breath.
I cry out before I can stop myself, back arching against the slab.
Falcen jerks his head up at my scream. He surges to his feet only to double over, clutching his head. A silent howl wracks his body.
I thrash against the spelled manacles, trying to break free, to reach him somehow. Tears prick the corners of my eyes. I won’t scream again. I won’t cause him more pain.
The pain intensifies until my vision flashes white, but I suffer in silence. Ember, where are you? Help me!
Her presence flounders under my skin, straining against an invisible cage. I can feel her fury at being contained. She slams against my rib cage hard enough to hurt.
The glyphs flare brighter, the cold intensifying until it feels like my skull is splintering. I bite my lip until I taste blood, the warm trickle down my chin a sickening contrast to the frost in my limbs.
I focus inward, pouring all my concentration into the flickering ember of my soul.
Fight, I urge her. We can’t let them win. Don’t let them take you from me, too.
My body convulses, muscles seizing as the glyphs crackle with icy energy, but she speaks, her voice faded and brittle.
You formed a bond with Falcen that should not exist, because he should not exist. In doing so, you revealed abilities no Soulren should possess.
The damage is already done. I fought to hide you for years, and in one night of foolish passion, you’ve exposed yourself.
Pain whites out my vision, but I cling to consciousness, terrified that if I slip under, I’ll lose my only chance to reach her.
If I’m not corrupted, then why did my weapon have a mind of its own? Why did it feel like something tore out of me before I lost consciousness?
Ember is silent for so long I think the manacles have suppressed her again.
But she’s able to batter against the unseen barriers holding her back, her voice softer, almost sorrowful.
The tether didn’t just connect you to him.
It flowed both ways. When it broke, the backlash contained fragments of his corruption.
I swallow an agonized groan. So I did corrupt myself.
No. Her denial is swift and certain.
At what cost? I ask, fear climbing my throat like bile. Did you burn a piece of Falcen with it?