Chapter 21
Twenty-One
Stavros
Ivy is stealthy, but I haven’t lost any of the hearing I honed in sparring rings and on battlefields. At the ever-so-faint click of the door to my quarters closing, my head snaps up.
I learned my lesson from last time. So my mind would stay alert, I sat myself in my bedroom’s armchair rather than on the bed and forced myself to track the periodic patrols of guards and the few students arriving late to the dorms.
I shouldn’t have fallen asleep before regardless. The tension coiled in my gut gives off constant pangs of uneasy adrenaline.
The problem is that tension I’m carrying hasn’t subsided since the moment I found out what our thief really is. For the past two weeks, I’ve only been sleeping in brief fragments, made even less restful by the nightmares I haven’t managed to shake.
The problem is I’m fucking exhausted.
But I’ve survived on stints of little sleep plenty of times in the midst of an ongoing skirmish or siege. I can hold myself and my blasted temper together.
I have to, because the chaotic and unnerving conflict I’ve found myself in the middle of is the closest thing to a war I’ll ever fight again. If I can’t defend my country from even that…
Rather than following the uncomfortable thought to its conclusion, I push myself from my chair and stalk over to the outer room.
Ivy is standing by the sofa, peeling off her cloak. Her hair falls loose across her shoulders, many of the strands clinging damply to her skin.
Did she stop at the bathing rooms on her way back?
Gods smite the flare of heat that idea sends to my groin.
She startles just slightly at my entrance. Something about the tensing of her stance, more nervous than boldly defensive, has me striding closer with a tick of my gaze to refocus it.
As I round the sofa and get a full look at her dress, my feet stall beneath me. I stare, with another twitch of my head and a lurch of my stomach.
Dark streaks stain the pewter gray silk of her gown all down the skirt. The bottom hem is tattered as if she ran it through a thresher. And a few of the stains, including a couple higher up on the bodice, have a ruddy hue I can make out even in the hazy light that creeps through the window.
I’m striding straight to her in the instant before I catch myself. I halt just a couple of paces away, my right hand clenching at my side.
My voice comes out harsher than I like. The idea that she might be injured torments me more than I like. “Did they make you cut yourself again?”
Ivy lets out a laugh, ragged enough to pierce my heart. “No. Not me. Just a poor little bunny. Sorry I’m a mess. I kept my cloak over my gown on the way back and washed up as well as I could.”
Hearing her apologize sets me even more off-balance. How shaken is she that she’d act as though she needs to justify herself rather than brush me off with her usual banter?
“They asked you to kill a rabbit?”
She glances down. “With my bare hands. After I raced around the forest on all fours like a wild creature. These scourge sorcerers have very strange ideas about what the All-Giver would want.”
Her voice has lightened, but it doesn’t reassure me. She still sounds unnervingly detached.
I know that tone. Soldiers often get it after their first intense battle—when they’ve had to kill in ways they never imagined, when they’ve seen too many comrades slain in front of them.
Two chilling thoughts cut through me in quick succession.
The scourge sorcerers’ tactics are rattling Ivy more than anything I’ve ever seen.
How is she going to control her riven magic if they keep breaking her down?
“You shouldn’t go back,” I say before I’ve thought the comment through.
Ivy blinks at me, and a little of her usual keenness comes back into her gaze. It’d reassure me more if her next words weren’t, “Of course I should. I’m gaining their trust. I’ve got a better idea of how they think than I did before, and they’ll keep revealing more.”
“That only works if they leave you in one piece,” I retort.
She makes a scoffing sound that also sounds more like her usual self and swipes her hair back from her face. “I’m all right. It was just very weird. They’ve already told me I’m supposed to come back tomorrow night—we might get something concrete on their plans then.”
She’s putting herself in their grasp again that soon?
My pulse stutters. “Ivy—”
She holds up her hand. “We made our plan, and I’m following it as well as I can. Have I screwed anything up so far?”
I scowl at her. “No, but—”
“Then let me do what I came here for. At some point you’ve got to believe I’m on your side and not the villains’.” She brushes her hands over her dress. “Now I’m going to get out of this ruined thing and get some sleep.”
She marches past me to the latrine to change. I hesitate in the middle of the room, but she’s obviously recovered from her initial shock.
What am I going to do, stand sentinel over her all night to confirm her magic doesn’t slip out of her in her sleep?
Some part of me wants to. Gods help me, some part of me longs to gather her slight but strong frame in my arms and let my own strength shield her from the horrors she’s experiencing.
But what happens tomorrow when the insane conspirators might put her through even worse? How long will it take before their madness starts rubbing off on her?
I retreat to my bedroom, but I can’t walk away from the qualms that are nibbling at the edges of my mind even more insistently than before.
How far can I really let her mission go?
If I judge the situation wrong, if I extend more trust than I should, the resulting disaster could be even worse than if the scourge sorcerers go unchecked. One of the riven unleashing her magic right outside the palace gates? Right in the same building as the royal family during our meetings?
I can’t count on our companions to notice the warning signs. Even with my faulty sight, I’ve seen the way Aleksi and Casimir look at her.
It isn’t as if I don’t understand the attraction. The sly humor that can shine in her stunning eyes, the confident might in every movement of her lithe body—
But I’m keeping those compulsions reined in. The two of them appear to have welcomed her back into their trust—and who knows what else—whole-heartedly.
The security of the entire kingdom rests on my shoulders.
I slump onto the bed and close my eyes to try to get some rest, but it takes ages before I drift off. And then the images of Michas sear up from my unconscious.
Flashes of real memory: the riven sorcerer’s snarl, Michas’s face blanching in panic, the way the unharnessed magic wrenched through his body, tearing it limb from limb…
And in the dreams, Ivy stands here too. She echoes the snarl of the man from my memory.
She waves her hand, and another slash rips through Michas with a gush of blood.
I wake up in a sweat with my heart racing. Pressing my arm to my forehead, I tip my head back against my pillow.
I can’t go on like this. I’m fraying at least as much as Ivy is.
An idea wavers up through my fatigue like a lantern in the fog.
Maybe there’s a way I can be sure of my choice. A way to test the control she claims will never falter.
If she’s going to unleash her magic, it’ll be better if it’s when I’m prepared for it than off in the woods in the middle of the night.
The test won’t even take that much.
The hardest part is deciding which of my students will shoulder the responsibility—far more responsibility than they even know.
In true fairness, I should take the risk… but if Ivy lashes out at me, I won’t be around to put her down. That would undermine all the reasons I’m carrying out the test at all.
I have to be alive to protect everyone else from her magic.
If it’s not me, it has to be a student. I can’t turn to my fellow staff or the guards of the Crown’s Watch. They’d ask too many questions—they’d talk with their colleagues.
The students know Ivy. They’re used to seeing me as a teacher, to participating in combat scenarios I set up purely so they can learn.
I stew on the question for most of the morning, the guilt that I have to ask it at all digging deeper into my gut with every passing hour.
Finally, at the end of my senior strategy class, I motion for Ivy to take her leave and gather a cluster of my most dedicated students. The ones I expect to recommend for positions as higher officers at the end of the school year.
“I may have a mission I need to send a few people on,” I tell them.
“It’ll be dangerous—I can’t promise you’d come out of it safely or even alive—but it’d be for the protection of the country.
I won’t order anyone to take it up while you’re still in the middle of your studies.
But if any of you feel prepared to tackle that kind of task, I can accept potential volunteers. ”
Bartos, the second son of one of the counts who rules not far from Florian, speaks up without hesitation. “I’ll go, if you need me. That’s what all this studying has been for.”
The others add their own voices in agreement. I’ve obviously judged their devotion to their country well.
Bartos wasn’t just the fastest to leap at the chance, he’s also the strongest physically. For my actual mission, I need someone who’ll pose an obvious threat.
As the others leave, I keep him back for a minute longer. “I appreciate your enthusiasm. There’s a smaller task I could use some help with right here at the school today, if you don’t mind lending a hand there as well.”
Bartos simply smiles. “I’d be honored to assist.”
“Good. Go get yourself some lunch and meet me by the storage rooms right after.”
I can’t tell him that the smaller task and the dangerous mission are one and the same. At least I’ve gotten my confirmation that he’s willing to put his life on the line for a cause like this.