Chapter 14
Elias
My mood is foul this morning.
I had every intention of sharing my bed with Terra last night, but of course, she picked her pet over me.
“Reign it in. You’ll blight half the school at this rate,” I growl at Edgar. He glares at me and curses under his breath before adjusting his feet again.
Raine has all but mastered blocking the attacks; he hasn’t even broken a sweat yet and we’ve been going at it for hours already.
Edgar has been making progress, but at a much slower rate than Terra. By midmorning he has improved enough to keep his blight from spreading, barely, and I’m able to dismiss him to classes before noon. I’ll have to keep working with him in the mornings, but as long as he isn’t attacking anything, which I tell him specifically not to, he should be okay.
Terra and Raine look tired from their late night, but neither of them complains.
I nod for Terra to take her place for practice while Raine switches out with Arthur. I’m mildly surprised when he comes to stand by me. I glance over at him.
“Why did I need to switch with Arthur?” he asks as he shoves his hands into his jacket pockets, tilting his head back and breathing in deeply. He’s almost my height and carries much of the same heaviness on his broad shoulders. Perhaps our similar emotional damage is what Terra likes so much. I peg her as the type of woman who wants to fix things. It’s the light in her eyes that gives her away. She wants to tend to us, make us less broken.
“Just watch and you’ll see why,” I mutter under my breath, silently sending a prayer to the gods that Arthur doesn’t slip up like yesterday. He was a millisecond from having his head sliced clean off. We may have our differences, but he’s one of my only remaining friends.
Terra takes a long breath before shifting her stance and letting Amser pulse from her as if she was born with it. The line of power that bursts from her hand intends to decapitate; it cuts through the air faster than the eye can trace.
Arthur bends backward in a flash, his cloak flowing over the snow like a fresh white blanket. He straightens just as swiftly, a cocky grin spreading across his lips.
Raine gasps at my side and I glance at him. His eyes are filled with awe at how magnificent our little Nova is. Though it’s early, I trust that she can keep herself from blighting if she tries hard enough. Her resolve is impressive. As is her desire to remain pure and untainted.
“Well, at least I know she’ll be okay when I’m gone,” Raine says low enough for only me to hear. Arthur walks over to Terra to tell her how well she’s doing. They’re completely oblivious to us standing on the sidelines. “I’m really going to die, aren’t I?”
I don’t enjoy Raine’s presence, especially since I let him be my torturer for the entirety of last week. But one thing I admire about him is the loyalty he seems to feel toward Terra. If he’s worth anything, it’s as a shield for my mate.
At least until his dying breath.
“Yes, you’ve been blighted. I’ve yet to meet someone who has survived it.” I watch as the light dims in his eyes. My skin prickles with the strength teeming beneath his. He houses the Destiny Shadow. I met it long ago. Why do I see so much of my old friend in Raine? The thought is too heavy, so I let it sink back into the depths of Velis’s grasp.
I clear my throat. “But, should anyone have the right circumstances to possibly overcome the blight, I think you might have a small, insignificant chance.”
I meant for it only to lift his spirits a little so he wasn’t so gloomy, but he looks at me sharply, his jaw set and eyes brimming with torment. “Really?” he asks.
“It’s not a good way to die, Raine. And even though I utterly despise you, I’d rather see you cut in half instead of dying the way the blight takes you,” I mutter as I watch Terra try a few more attacks on Arthur, mildly aware of Raine’s lingering eyes on me.
“Is that your way of confessing you don’t hate me?”
“No, I very much don’t like you.”
Raine cocks his head back and laughs. Terra’s eyes flash over to us and she grins at the sight of us not skinning one another.
“I do believe there is a way. So don’t give up hope,” I say with an even tone, then subsequently a deep pit sinks inside my chest. Since when do I tell people to have hope? It’s usually the other way around.
“Why are you being kind to me? I fucking tortured you.” Raine seems genuinely curious as to why I care.
Him and me both.
This guy is annoying, Velis growls, the sound ringing through my ears until it slowly subdues.
I was once as ruined as Raine. Did he really think I was unconscious during my torture? No, I was very much awake. Very aware of his tears crashing to the floor as he cut into my skin because deep down he hated what he was doing. Perhaps I see myself in him. Someone doing something heinous and against their morals to keep those they care about safe. By the end of my torture, he was practically begging me just to give him the information about Fernestia so he didn’t have to continue.
I think of the boy I saw cradled in his arms after the Skyfell. The way Raine’s mind broke and he ripped the brains out of anyone who was in his way. Perhaps that’s why… I don’t wish for him to die. He reminds me so much of?—
Stop, Velis hisses. I can’t keep your heart suppressed forever if you tug on the emotions.
That gives me pause and I redirect.
“I just hate seeing Terra worry about you,” I say with impassive eyes. Raine narrows his own at me; I don’t think he buys it, but he doesn’t say anything in return. Instead, a somber smile pulls at his lips. “Try the library, the old books on the third floor up near the back windows.”
That’s where we used to study. I shut my eyes and I can see all of us again. Strange how they still feel so close even though five years have passed.
Raine looks at me like he can’t quite figure me out. “Thank you, Elias.”
I inwardly groan at him thanking me. “Don’t mention it to Terra. Just do your research and keep quiet about it, got it?” If Cein or Empress Raven find out I’m trying to un-blight another student they’ll punish me again.
My knee throbs painfully and I shift my weight to my other leg.
Raine nods and we don’t speak for the remainder of the session.
When Arthur calls it, I nod my silent agreement: Terra is ready to join the rest of the students—her control is outstanding. Edgar, on the other hand, I’m uncertain about. His hold on his Shadow is erratic.
Terra smiles at me as she and Raine take their leave and head back to Alkrose in time for lunch. Arthur and I walk slowly back toward the castle.
“Her muscle memory is brilliant,” Arthur says thoughtfully. He jots down more notes in his journal as we walk. Such a nerd, always carrying that book around.
“Uh-huh,” I say mindlessly as I try to remember what I usually start with for the first-year students in the destruction class. They’ll be learning their riding forms with Arthur today, so I’ll try to make them use that knowledge somehow in tomorrow’s training. “Let me know what Raine’s form is after their class today, will you?” I pull my hood up over my head when I feel eyes on me from the center tower. I always notice Emerai’s heavy gaze.
Arthur pulls his hood up as well. One of Emerai’s most irritable traits is his ability to read lips, even from great distances. He is the perfect war tool for recon.
“Sure, if I even get to see it,” Arthur mumbles and looks at me. His eyes are rimmed with red; sleepless nights, I’m guessing. “I like this group the most. They have so much promise and life still. It reminds me of us, back when we arrived.” He laughs but his smile soon fades into a nostalgic frown.
I lower my eyes to the lake as we descend the final hill. The mist has fallen low in the valley this morning, the sun’s rays warming the top layer of ice to an amber hue.
“They remind me so much of them. Which is why we can’t fuck up again.” I can’t keep the ice out of my tone.
Arthur nudges me. “The past is the past, Elias. No amount of trying to help these students will bring back our friends.”
Something cold pierces the inside of my heart, a pain I thought I’d long forgotten, but there it is, festering inside me still.
“You expect me to believe you aren’t helping them?” I banish all the faces from my past with one sharp breath.
Arthur lets out a low sigh and a short laugh, returning to writing in his journal. “You know I do what I can.” He nods at my knee. “Cein?”
I sweep my cloak over my shoulders so he can’t see my limp. “Yeah, he’s not happy at all about the delay. You try lying to him about why you let some punk skin you alive for a week.”
“Not possible, Cein cannot be lied to,” he says, knowing damn well that I already know this.
“Exactly.”
Arthur levels me a concerned expression. “Why did you let Raine keep you so long?”
“Well, when I woke up down in the bunker, my first thoughts were to kill them all and get to the surface. But then I realized that my Shadow beacon wouldn’t read at that depth in the cement tomb. Terra was looking for her brother and that Solas boy, and I wanted to give her a chance to find them.”
I lift my gaze to Alkrose, sleepy and drab in the cold, gray and black mountain terrain. Clouds huddle low today, clinging to the stone walls and crisping the air with their cold, wet sting.
“And surely you didn’t think that would take a week?” Arthur eggs me on. I don’t look at him though, I keep my gaze on the dreary view.
“After a few days, I came to the conclusion that I didn’t want to go back up. That brat Raine would tell me how much Terra was enjoying the city and how she fawned over him.” I let out a half laugh, running my hand down my face. “And I wanted her to enjoy that for as long as she could, because I knew what would come next. What I didn’t account for was her Nova and mine together in the bunker creating a stronger beacon.”
Arthur tuts. “Ah. That’s how they found you.” He flips his journal open again and jots down more notes.
I nod. My knee throbs and a shudder crawls through my spine at the memory of Cein sawing into my leg with his Shadow, a sharp serrated blade, as he threatened to make Terra the next beacon at Whales of Tauh. I will never allow that to happen.
No one can hold the weight of that much death and guilt except me.