Chapter 17 Kasira #3
“How does this pool relate to me learning magic?” She crouched to inspect the basin. The water had a faint silver gleam to it that she couldn’t tell if it was from the balestone or emitting from the water itself.
“You drink from the pool. If the Library accepts you, it will grant you magic.”
“And if it doesn’t accept me?” She peered up at him, and he stared back with a crooked twist of his lips.
“It kills you.”
Kasira nearly slipped into the basin. The silver water suddenly looked twice as menacing as any beast-infested swamp as she scrambled to her feet. “What happened to not killing me?”
Allaster folded his arms. “I don’t make the rules, Corynth. The water will test you. If it finds you wanting, it will destroy you to protect the Library’s secret. No one must know about the pool save the Librarian and their Assistant.”
She regarded him plainly. “So you’ve accepted me as your Assistant?”
His jaw shifted. “I have.”
“Or,” she countered, “you realized this solves your problem. Either I’m a Kalish spy here to befoul the Library, or I’m worthy of being your Assistant. One way, the magic kills me, the other, you can finally stop watching your back. Both ways, you win.”
Allaster’s face betrayed none of his thoughts. He merely stepped back from the pool and swept a hand toward it. “Drink or don’t; it’s your decision.”
Kasira regarded the silver liquid with no small amount of apprehension.
This was what she had come for, but she hadn’t anticipated risking her life for it.
She was no friend of the Library, and it would know that.
It would test her and find her wanting, like everyone always did.
It was hard to be enough when you always had one foot out the door and never looked back.
But if she refused to drink, she would never truly become the Assistant Librarian, and Vera would see her back in Belvar by the week’s end.
She could run, but it meant a life of never stopping, of always looking over her shoulder.
It meant giving up on her dream of the cottage, of breaking her promise irrevocably, just another endless rhythm like the Malikinar.
Her gaze flitted to Allaster, who stared stonily back at her.
If Amorlin sought to kill her, would he step in?
Could he, or would the Library overpower him to protect itself?
There was still so much she didn’t know.
So much left to discover. And beneath her fear and apprehension, beneath the guise she wore, there was a part of her that wanted to know.
Dropping to her knees, she scooted to the edge of the pool and peered down.
Even with the balelight, the water held no reflection.
As she dipped her cupped hand beneath the surface, she felt nothing.
No resistance, no wetness. It was like grasping silk, or the way she imagined clouds would feel. She lifted it to her lips and drank.
It started as a gentle warmth in her gut, almost pleasant, and she went to stand.
Then it changed. A vicious heat surged through her, and she cried out, her knees striking the hard stone, but she barely noticed the pain for the roaring fire in her veins.
It filled her from head to toe, worse than any fever, worse than any flame, and some distant, intact part of her brain thought: This was a mistake.
Then the visions started.
She saw a flash of a pearl-white face, a woman screaming, flames dancing in the background, but it was like peering through distorted glass.
It shifted, and she saw her seven-year-old self roaming the streets of the Kalish capital with the other urchins, begging.
Always begging. Until the priests took her in, and she met Loraya, who taught her to take instead.
She saw her street mate: thin limbed and bright-eyed, a perpetual smile on her rosebud lips.
She had died wearing that smile.
Outside her mind, Kasira fought to draw breath, to pull herself out before she was consumed, but her lungs were ragged, useless things, and she could not fight the Library’s hold.
Everything spun by, her cons from when she was in Thane’s crew flashing like streaks of lightning: a young noblewoman, a merchant’s daughter, a gambling den server.
A hundred more. A hundred lives she had lived, none of them her own.
What makes a life? She couldn’t tell if the thought belonged to her or someone else. Something else.
Who’s there? she called.
Is it the beat of your heart in your chest? The memories cycled: Filling her belly at Thane’s banquet table. The first time she saw the bruises darkening Loraya’s skin. The slide of a sword through her best friend’s ribs.
Or is it the choices that you make? The vision twisted, melding into that night in the forest when she had killed the Alkatir cub’s mother. She watched the body roll as if in slow motion, forever revealing the terrified cub beneath it.
Or the people you abandon along the way? Revna’s face materialized, bruised and bloodied, her red hair a tangled mess.
I didn’t abandon her, she thought back. She was never mine to keep. No one ever was. Her family, whose faces she could barely remember. Loraya, who had taught her to survive. Thane and his crew, who had given her a home, however broken. They were borrowed people. A borrowed life.
I didn’t belong there, she thought. I don’t belong anywhere.
The vision turned, and suddenly she stood before the Library, or what remained of it. It smoldered beneath layers of flame, the beasts that had not been slaughtered running rampant. The bodies of mages littered the ground like broken glass, and the Kalish flag unfurled down the castle’s face.
Kasira pushed through the carnage, running, running—and then suddenly, she was in a familiar cavern. The Eyrie, but wrong. The colors were off. It was too quiet, and the cub—a figure stood before it, a knife gleaming in his hand.
Somewhere in her mind, she knew it was impossible, but she would know that form anywhere, the set of his shoulders, the swagger to his stance.
“Thane!” Her voice made no sound.
She lunged—and went straight through him as if she were nothing but air.
She stumbled into the pen, the squelch of wet earth sickeningly loud.
An edge of silver drew her eye, down, down, down to the lake of blood beneath her.
To the motionless cub at her feet. She felt the blade clasped in her own fingers.
No. The knife tumbled out of her hand. I wouldn’t do this.
You already have, whispered the voice. Darkness encroached on the edges of her vision, the Eyrie closing in around her until it was no bigger than that cell she had come to know better than her own mind.
Four by four. Sixteen stones for the floor.
Sixteen for the walls. The second from the left on the northern face had someone else’s initials gouged into it—AZ.
This isn’t real. The words were a half prayer. None of this is real.
Thane stalked toward her, the blade back in his hand. His mouth spoke in a cruel mockery of his voice. You ran, like you always run, and you let us fall.
And she believed it, because she would run. She always did. Was that not her plan as soon as she had her freedom? To leave the Library to whatever sinister plot Vera had devised?
You must take, or be taken from, said Loraya’s voice. And so Kasira had. Then she had run, and she had never stopped.
Never go back. Never look back.
Come back. A new voice. Somewhere at the fringes of the vision. Come back.
Thane was before her now, blade raised. His eyes were black pits, his mouth a jagged cut. She couldn’t look away. Couldn’t move.
What makes a life? He plunged the knife down.
Kasira watched the blade fall in excruciating slowness.
She could still hear the other voice calling faintly, back, back, back.
It pulled at something in her chest. Something that looked at the falling knife and saw the lie.
Her fingers twitched, and then her hand, and with a great, wrenching pull, she tore free—and looked back.
Allaster stood behind her.
Everything about him was perfectly normal, his copper hair curling down over his brow, his impossible eyes centered only on her.
Seeing her. Behind him, she saw the trail of people she had left.
May was there, and behind her, Iylis, then Fen and Carlia, Revna, Dessen, Thane, Loraya—the memories that made her, that she tried so hard to pretend didn’t exist. Everywhere she went, she closed a door behind her and locked it tight, but she was a fool if she thought that erased what waited behind.
She felt the press of Thane’s blade in her back as she said, “I remember.”
The vision sloughed away like the skin of a snake. The incessant burning faded into a prickling heat, and she heard another voice, a real voice, say, “Corynth? Corynth, come back! Fight it!”
A blurred face materialized before her. She flinched, trying to scramble away, but something held her.
Someone. Allaster. The real Allaster, clasping her wrists to keep her from thrashing.
His touch was secure but gentle, and for a moment, it was all she could focus on: his long, ring-laden fingers curled about her scarred arms, the brush of his callouses against her skin.
Then everything came painstakingly into focus.
She was free of the visions, free of the suffocating heat.
Her body ached worse than it ever had after the Zeras venom, and she was pretty sure she had hit every bone in her body against the unforgiving stone, not to mention bitten her tongue hard enough to bleed.
Something seized her from the inside.
She sucked in a sharp, shallow breath as the zing of magic skipped along her body.
It settled across her, cool and soft and welcoming.
The aches and pains receded. Her tongue stopped bleeding.
And there was something else. A feeling she couldn’t describe, like a new sense.
She felt Allaster move beside her—not the way you felt someone touch you, but the way you knew someone was behind you without looking.
Something inexplicably like relief broke across the Librarian’s face, gone as quickly as it had come. He released her and offered her a hand up. “Congratulations, Corynth,” he said. “You’re the new Assistant Librarian of Amorlin.”