Chapter 42 #2
Ember retreats so suddenly, the spelled manacles lose all brightness. Sagging against the stone, I can’t help but feel relief at her departure, even if she didn’t answer my question. Had we conversed any longer, I might’ve lost consciousness again, and who knows for how long.
Panting, I glance across at Falcen, taking in the full extent of his deterioration.
He looks worse. So much worse than before the courtyard’s wards shattered.
The scales have spread further since I first woke. His breathing comes fast and shallow, each inhale looking like it causes him pain.
As if feeling my heartbreak, his eyes meet mine again, and I catch a flash of something close to despair before he lowers his gaze.
His scales ripple with each labored breath, and I can’t help but think, I did this. My desperate need to save him might have damned us both. Even from here, I can see he’s fighting, but the poison keeps climbing. How much of him is even left?
I can’t comprehend what Ember’s done. What I’ve done.
I want to scream, to pound my fists against the stone slab beneath me, but the manacles flare warning at my frustration. Instead, I lie still, breathing through the pain and rage.
Is this how it will be? Half-truths and riddles while I sit in a cell?
Ember’s heat flickers with what might be regret.
Who? I demand. Who are you sworn to? Who’s put you inside me?
Ember refuses to fight the bindings again, which only confirms my suspicion that something fundamental about me defies the academy's teaching.
This cryptic bullshit is what’s ripping my sanity to shreds, I snap. Not these manacles.
Initiates who show aberrant abilities don’t last long here. They either become halflings or they disappear to the catacombs like Callie.
I remember the halflings’ mutilated bodies chained in the darkness, caught between human and monster. Is that what awaits me? Is that why they’ve put me opposite Falcen, so I can be fully aware of what awaits my fate?
My eyes burn with unshed tears. I’m scared, Ember.
Her heat oscillates gently, almost apologetic.
Across the gap, Falcen shudders, his body jerking.
The ward bars between us spit and hiss, living lightning that makes the air taste like metal and ash.
His eyes find mine again—too blue, too black, with that rim of gold—and my heart spirals up my throat.
I’ve never felt more helpless, bound to this slab while he suffers.
We’re like two corpses laid out for a wake, except we’re still breathing, still watching each other die in real time.
“Falcen,” I whisper.
The ward bars flare as if I’d shouted his name. Blue-white light surges between them, crackling so violently that I flinch against my restraints. The spelled manacles around my wrists tighten in response, biting into flesh.
Across the divide, Falcen tenses. He shakes his head again, more firmly this time, and mouths something I can’t decipher.
“I can’t hear you,” I say, quieter still.
The dungeon is light enough that I can see the sheen of sweat on his face, the way his pupils contract against the gold fighting for dominance in his irises.
“They’re listening,” he says quietly, exaggerating each word.
“How are you?” I intone back, feeling stupid and needy all at once.
A bitter smile twists his lips.
“Dying,” he mouths silently.
My throat tightens. I have to swallow twice before I can form words. “I’m sorry. For what I did.”
He shakes his head, fierce and immediate. “Don’t be.”
Falcen’s scales ripple as he shifts, and I notice they’re almost to his hairline now. The edges gleam like broken glass. When he moves, they catch the sconces’ fire in a way that’s almost beautiful, if you could forget what they signify.
I mouth, each word precise. “I hurt you.”
His expression darkens. “Keep her locked down.”
“I don’t understand,” I say in a normal voice, forgetting myself.
The wards shriek, and Falcen’s shoulders tense as if bracing for impact. He waits until they settle before continuing.
“Your ember,” he mouths, touching his chest. “Not safe.”
I study him, confusion swirling. “Do you know what I am?”
His eyes shutter, like blinds closing against too bright light.
“Special,” his lips shape, and I want to scream.
“That’s not a good enough explanation,” I mouth back, anger spreading hot in my chest.
He looks at me with an expression that holds too much knowledge and too little hope.
“I’ve been rotting since before I met you,” he says instead.
I wish, with everything in me, that I could take away the resignation in his eyes. “Why you? Why did they choose you?”
Falcen shifts, and I catch the sharpening of one earlobe. “Some rot faster. Some slower.” His eyes slide over the slim hallway separating us, checking for observers before continuing. “Master Keeper ... searches for the perfect balance.”
“Balance between what?”
“Soulren and Void.”
My heart crashes against my ribs. The pieces start clicking together.
They must be using the blood of Void creatures and injecting it into the Elites somehow, turning some into the halflings chained in the dark, killing others, waiting for that perfect balance …
of what? Exactly what kind of creature are they aiming for?
Some rot faster. Some slower.
And some not at all, like Davrin.
Footsteps pull me from my foreboding thoughts, drumming from the corridor. The magickal prison bars answer with a low hum that hurts my teeth. I tense without meaning to, my new tattoos biting in warning.
A procession slides into the corridor between Falcen and me. Keepers in layered navy. Hollows with their placid faces. Malakai is among them, elegant as a dagger in a velvet sleeve.
And at his shoulder, Davrin Koll.
No shackles or binding tattoos. No collar with punishing runes etched into it. Davrin walks with that stillness I saw at the feast, as if his limbs learned a new rhythm while the rest of us slept.
My vision slits with suspicion.
He looks carved, not starved half to death, those green eyes clear as iced-over creek water.
He wears fitted leathers I have never seen on an initiate, lines clean, embroidery on his gloves that isn’t standard, and the academy’s sigil on his right bicep.
The three Keepers accompanying him, including Malakai, seem to make space for him without meaning to.
Davrin’s gaze snags on Falcen, not me, and brightens in a way that makes me wince. A wrinkle goes through Falcen like a drawn bowstring before he goes unnaturally still.
Malakai doesn’t look at me, either. He studies Falcen, satisfaction never quite reaching his mouth, but I spot it in the sharpening of his eyes.
He half turns, murmuring to the female Keeper who questioned me earlier, then steps aside to allow Davrin to move to the warded bars, hands clasped behind him.
“Elite Reaves,” Malakai says, voice smooth. “Let us take stock.”
Falcen doesn’t respond to Malakai. His gaze stays on Davrin with a flatness that reads as a thousand unsaid threats. The faded soul-glyphs under his newly scaled skin ripple in an angry sequence.
Falcen’s head tilts, slow, a predator scenting meat it recognizes. His eyes go bright, then are swallowed by black. The scales along his throat lift and settle like breathing armor.
“Observe,” Malakai murmurs to the haggard female Keeper. “His scales spread on emotional stimulus more than physical stress. Mark the cadence.”
My wrists hurt. I push against the cold glyphs anyway.
“Say your name,” Davrin murmurs to Falcen.
Falcen bares his teeth. The sound that answers isn’t a name. It’s a layered snarl, like gravel rolled in a wet mouth. The air reverberates with it. Cold stings my eyes. Frost laces the floor beneath his bare feet in a delicate bloom.
“Name,” Davrin repeats, then drawls, “I will wait until you remember it.”
A hollow, humorless laugh vibrates out of Falcen.
It’s not meant for Davrin. He’s laughing at the whole charade, at the futility of cages that can barely hold him.
I see the glint of it in his eyes, the refusal to be reduced to a specimen, or an object, or a beast to be broken for the Masters’ pleasure.
“Don’t answer him,” I whisper to Falcen, then say it louder, because I no longer care about their rules. “Falcen. Look at me.”
The ward bars spit blue sparks that leap like insects. Currents sizzle up my arms, luminous and excruciating. Ember snarls for silence inside me. She knows what these soul-glyph manacles will do if I rebel. Both of us do.
Falcen drags his gaze to mine. I feel the force of that attention land like a hand on my sternum. He doesn’t look away again. Not for Malakai, and not for Davrin.
“Breathe,” I whisper, because it is the only order I can give that will not get him gutted.
Davrin steps closer to Falcen’s cage until the ward bars spit at his boots.
“Answer me, Reaves,” he says.
“He won’t give you what you want,” I say, and this time my voice sounds alien and cold, as if I’ve been filled with ice instead of organs.
Davrin glances over his shoulder at me as if I’ve finally joined the conversation.
“You persist in misunderstanding the exercise,” he says to me, so gently I almost miss the contempt. “This isn’t about what he wants.”
He turns back to Falcen. “Stand, Reaves.”
“Stop talking to him like he’s a dog,” I grind out.
“If he were a dog, he would be trained,” Davrin replies, then slides his attention back to Falcen. “Rise.”
Falcen stays rooted, his body trembling with the effort. The soul-glyphs under his shifting scales strobe in and out, as though fighting for dominance with the dark that is eating him alive.
“On your feet, you gods-damned Voidspawn!” Davrin shouts.
A hiss peels between Falcen’s lips. He doesn’t break. Not for a long, tense moment. The glyphs under his human skin strike bright, then go dark, then strike again. While keeping his eyes on me, he unfolds to his full height with a slow, purposeful grace, as if every muscle fights and wins.
He gets to his feet as if to make a mockery of obedience, straight-backed and staring at me the entire time. The scales catch the soul-fire and shimmer, a living mosaic of black and blue and gold. I can barely breathe for how beautiful and terrible he looks.
Davrin’s lips curve into a half smile, and the hollow inside me deepens.
I know what this is.
It’s a demonstration not for Falcen’s benefit, but for the Keepers and Malakai and me. A reminder that even the strongest of us will bow, eventually, to the will of those who are in control.
“Do you ever think,” I ask their backs, “that maybe the monster you’re making won’t stay in its cage for you?”
There’s a scratch of quill on parchment, the female Keeper taking one final note, before she leaves, her footsteps receding into the black.
Falcen’s taloned fingers clench and unclench. But he still doesn’t look at Malakai or Davrin. He has eyes only for me, that gorgeous stare of his frantic, defiant, and accepting all at once.
“Falcen,” I say, willing my voice to reach him through the wards. “You’re not alone.”
He lifts his head, just barely, and the look he gives me is all the answer I need. His lips move, slow enough for me to read them.
Forget me.
My throat closes. I thrash against the spelled manacles until they burn my wrists raw.
“No!” I shout.
The glyphs on my wrists roar in answer, making me keel over and drowning out everything else.
When my vision clears, he’s gone. Malakai and Davrin have left, too. The thrum of the angry soul-wards is the only proof he was ever there.
Until a sound filters down through the floors above me, muffled at first, then unmistakable.
The stamp of hundreds of feet.
The low roar of voices gathering.