Chapter 17 Kasira
KASIRA
KASIRA WOKE IN FLASHES OF MEMORY. A WARM HAND ON HER FOREHEAD.
A voice she didn’t remember yelling at her to run.
The smell of smoke and burning flesh and the feeling of walls closing in, in, in.
She peeled open dry eyelids to faint afternoon light, dimly aware of another presence. Her sore throat cracked out a sound.
May’s worried face appeared above her. “Bless the Fates, you’re awake. Warrin wasn’t sure he’d gotten you the antidote in time to stop the spread to your heart.”
There was something Kasira knew she ought to say to that.
Something that slithered dark and ruinous in the back of her mind, but her thoughts were as dry as her throat.
She made another wordless noise, and May lifted a ceramic cup to her lips.
She could have wept in relief at the first drops of water and drained the cup in one go.
Wetting her chapped lips, she asked, “Is there more?”
May let her drink her fill from a nearby pitcher, then helped prop her up against the back of her bed amongst a pile of feathery pillows that hadn’t been there before. Her body felt like it had been wrung out and beaten against a rock.
“How long was I out?” she asked, surprised to find herself in her room and not the infirmary.
“Two days.”
Kasira started—she was a day past Vera’s deadline. But if the Ambassador had exposed her, she wouldn’t be lying in her room right now. The news of her condition had surely reached the spy, who must have reported to Vera.
Then the sight of May’s appearance fully settled. Two days, and it looked as though she had barely slept. It was the first time Kasira had seen her look anything less than pristine as a freshly honed blade. A small stab of guilt hit her, but she quickly sequestered it away.
May fluffed up the pillow behind Kasira’s head. “I can’t believe Allaster took you out on a mission without granting you magic. You would have resisted that venom much better. As it was, he almost didn’t get you back here in time for the antidote to work.”
Oh, May, Kasira thought, but she kept her reservations quiet. Yet May was looking at her with something of a question in her dark eyes, and only then did Kasira realize she was in fresh clothes. Her uniform had been replaced by a soft tunic and pants, which meant—
Shit, she thought, turning her face away as if in shame.
It was not her modesty she was concerned about, something she had long ago relinquished, but the knowledge that May had surely seen the scars across her back.
She had prepared more than one explanation for their presence on the long journey to the Library, but only one fit in the context of the other stories she had spun for Allaster.
“I wasn’t always as wary of beasts,” she began and told May the same story of the Talowell she had shared with Allaster.
“When my reputation grew, so did my father’s shame.
Not long before I came to the Library, I embarrassed him so greatly that he asked the priests for advice, who suggested he have the sin beaten out of me. ”
May listened to the story with a growing stillness, her hands tight knots where they rested in her lap. “I know something of fathers such as that,” she said quietly. “My own was a small man, ruled by his insecurities. He treated my mother and me with contempt, though she took the worst of it.”
It was a story Kasira could too easily picture, one she had seen play out a hundred times on the streets, in the orphanage, within Thane’s crew.
She was only surprised that she hadn’t placed it sooner.
The way May kept her composure and how easily she deflected others’ tempers with humor and kindness, guiding them all into diplomacy.
It was a skill, learning to walk on splintered glass.
“He never raised a hand to us, but his foul moods were threat enough,” May continued.
“Eventually my mother saved enough money for us to flee to the small town of Lusine, where my mother’s childhood friend took us in.
With her help, my mother established a bakery, building it from the ground up into a place visited by people from all over Riviair …
” She trailed off, before adding quietly, “The cloudtrapper mushrooms are for her. Her mind has been fading in recent days.”
It needled at Kasira, how close to her own truth May’s words struck.
Had she not spent her entire life learning to read people?
To deflect and manipulate them to not only get what she wanted, but to survive?
Except there had been no one to whisk her away from it all, no family or friend to be found, until Loraya.
Even then, they had simply left one viper’s den for another.
She half expected to find herself bitter at the thought, but what she felt was only a quiet sort of sadness.
That in the face of such a truth, she had nothing to give in return but more falsehoods.
“I suppose we are both of us free of them now,” she murmured.
“Though I am sorry to hear of your mother. I’ll look for more of the mushrooms as soon as I’m able. ”
“Thank you,” May replied, though there was something more in her expression Kasira could not parse. A wistfulness she wondered at. Then she pulled a golden package from her pocket and snapped off a piece of something dark, offering it to her. “Here, eat this. It always makes me feel better.”
“Spiced chocolate?” Kasira asked in surprise as she accepted it. A treat usually reserved for Alderotch, it was one of the few desserts in Kalthos that wasn’t blander than stale bread.
“It’s a favorite of mine,” May replied as Kasira tried some, the bits of crystalized spices exploding on her tongue. She ate the second piece in one bite, May chuckling at her eagerness, and they finished the rest of the batch together.
“Thank you,” Kasira said, savoring her final bite. “I feel better already.” Then, bracing herself, she took a deep breath and shifted her legs over the edge of the bed.
Instantly, May’s expression solidified into a stone wall. “I’m certain you aren’t trying to get out of bed right now.”
Kasira weakly patted her shoulder. “I’m fine, and Allaster and I need to talk.”
“Then I shall bring him here.”
May strode from the room before Kasira could protest that Allaster didn’t seem the type to be ordered about.
She slid back into her bed, spotting a tray of scones across the way that sent her stomach rumbling.
She had just resolved to fight her way toward them when the air shimmered, and Allaster appeared in the middle of her room looking somewhere between chastised and extremely put out.
“May said you needed something.” He edged toward the door even as he spoke.
“You tried to kill me.”
Allaster stopped mid-step, the tension descending along his body like a rivulet of water confirmation enough. “Technically,” he said slowly, “I merely delayed in saving your life.”
“In the hopes I would die.” Zeras venom moved fast, but not that fast. For it to have come this close to killing her, he must have waited a good few minutes before bringing her back to the Library for the antidote.
“Yes, well, seeing as I had thought you tried to kill me first—”
“What?”
“You expected me to believe you had nothing to do with that poorly disguised ambush?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He huffed a laugh. “The trail of Alkatir blood into the town? The open gate? The signal the town head claimed ‘inadvertently’ indicated the wrong beast class? Everything about that mission was designed to see me killed and make it look like an accident, and should it fail, you were there to finish the job.”
“Is that why I let you use me as bait?” She swung her legs over the bed and stood to face him despite her body’s protest. “Or why I nearly got myself killed neutralizing that damn thing’s tail?”
He averted his gaze. “You’re not dead, are you?”
She nearly shrieked, no thanks to you! before she realized what he meant. She wasn’t dead because, in the end, Allaster had reached the same conclusion.
“Why aren’t I?” she asked roughly, wanting him to say it.
He didn’t respond right away, and for an instant, sitting in that silence, she saw not the ageless sorcerer, but a man who wore his exhaustion like a second skin.
“Because,” he said at last. “You saved the cub.” He turned his pale eyes upon her, and for once, they weren’t cold and cutting, but soft and searching. “You risked your life to save a wounded beast you were scared of, and I don’t understand why.”
For one dangerous moment, Kasira found herself wishing she had a real answer to that. Something more profound than the truth coiled in her heart.
In the end, she only asked, “Did it survive?”
“It’s recovering in the Eyrie. Would you like to see it?”
She nodded, and to her surprise, he offered her a hand. When she took it, his touch impossibly gentle, he snapped his fingers. This time the sensation of traveling wasn’t like being ripped away, but rather like gliding through smooth water.
They reappeared in an unimaginably large cavern.
Soft sand shifted beneath her bare toes, and before her stretched a glistening blue lake.
Elropes bent their elegant horned heads to drink from the lapping waters where emerald-feathered Lywins floated in flocks, synthesizing a gentle chorus.
Beyond the lake rolled hills of the deepest green, full of roaming beasts.
The lake ended at a small wood of trees she didn’t recognize, and beyond that, whitecapped peaks unlike anything she had ever seen before.
“This is impossible,” she breathed, and she told herself it was weakness and not wonder that had her leaning so heavily into Allaster’s arm. “What is this place?”