This Monster of Mine

Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO

Rain pounded the cobblestones, sliding off her broken body at the base of Sidran Tower. Pain had long since become a part of her. It ebbed and burned, every drop of rain igniting another cataclysm on shredded skin.

She didn’t know why she was here. Tugging on the weak threads of her memory had only made them snap, faces and voices leeching like blood from her skull. All she knew was that the half of her that had met the ground was pulp, and the rest of her wasn’t much different.

A man loomed over with a horrified curse. “What have you done?” Revulsion filled his voice. “Her face is gone.”

Another pair of boots joined him. “Get her another.” The newcomer had the most beautiful voice she’d ever heard. Smooth, mellifluous, unforgettable. A sliver of sound escaped her lips, a plea. The two men didn’t seem to notice.

“You surely don’t think she can be rebuilt after this! Anyone who sees her—”

“Can be bought,” the beautiful voice noted.

“This is the last time I’ll cover for you,” the other man roared. “Never again!”

A dry chuckle. The scrape of boots against stone. “If only that were true.”

Sarai started awake with a scream, clutching handfuls of Caelum’s mane. The mare halted its pace with a disgruntled snort. Having experienced more than one such outburst over the past twenty-five days, it waited patiently as she dragged air in through her cupped hands.

Terror bled from her along with the echoes of her only memory after the Fall. Forcing her assailant’s voice from her head, she slumped over the horse until her pulse eased. Lord Fortune, please tell me we’ve stayed on course .

The mountain road from Arsamea’s gates had led down into the port of Sal Flumen, where she’d sent a letter to Cisuré to say that she was coming and purchased a waterskin.

“Another one succumbing to the south,” the vendor had groused when she’d made the mistake of mentioning where she was going. “What’s wrong with a quiet life?”

“Nothing,” she’d answered honestly, which earned her a glower and mutterings about girls with fanciful ideas who didn’t know what they were getting into.

“You’ll find out soon enough.” The vendor had relented somewhat after Sarai had purchased her sturdiest—and most expensive—waterskin. “Southerners, they only care about themselves. The Guilds send less goods up every year. We can starve as far as they’re concerned.” The woman’s eyes were bitter. “Don’t tell them you’re a northern girl. You might still be able to get a job that way.”

Sarai had thanked her for the advice and set off. After a week, snow gave way to chalky soil. The stretches of northern villages, with their smoking forges and grim populace, red-cheeked with cold, petered out. Dust-coated towns became infrequent splotches on the horizon, all of them bustling with activity, because the south had the bulk of Ur Dinyé’s sunshine and dry but arable soil, and made the most of it. Upon hitting desert country and its notorious stormfall, she’d sheltered in towns at night, where the best rates were often found at xanns, inns run by brothel madams where female travelers were often guaranteed better safety than they’d find in reputable lodgings. She’d followed the sinuous Chaboras River for hundreds of miles, with everyone she’d asked for directions telling her that she’d know the capital when she saw it.

Rising from her prone position on Caelum, Sarai stilled at the mass on the inky horizon. They’d been right.

Massive sculptures of ancient Qases and Qasses protruded from the russet marble of Edessa’s city walls—a homage to Ur Dinyé’s monarchical past. Its present and future lay in the motto etched above the gates in all three languages: the ancient tongue of nobles, the common tongue, and Urdish, Ur Dinyé’s native language and that of its runes.

Tetrarchia nos protegit . The Tetrarchy Protects Us. Cahar srayidan zhar .

Magnificent. She released an awed breath. It was all magnificent.

And entirely unfamiliar.

Hav?d. She’d hoped for a spark of recognition or some sign that her missing memories would return with the right stimulus. Sighing, she steered Caelum toward the obsidian-and-gold city gates and peered at the battlements higher still where magi patrolled the capital’s perimeter. Four years ago, she must have taken all this in with utter elation. She reached for those memories and found only a blood-soaked hole between jumping off the fruit seller’s wagon and waking to the nightmare that had haunted her since. The three days she’d spent in Edessa were gone.

Tamping down her bitterness, she halted at the gates. A group of robed figures lounged there, short swords marking them as vigiles, soldiers who served one of the four Tetrarchs.

One raised a hand, torchlight glinting off the gold accents in his black robes. “Name and business.”

She slipped off Caelum, the illusion hiding her scars in place. “Sarai of Arsamea. The new Candidate.” Telmar had promised to send word ahead, but in case wine had obliterated his memory that night, she withdrew his letter.

The guard’s tan features had gone slack at her name. Breaking the seal, he skimmed the letter, other vigiles clustering around him. One by one, their heads swiveled from her patched-up tunic to her worn saddle. She chafed under the scrutiny until the first vigile nodded. Two men drew open the city gates in a rumble of metal.

“You came.” The first vigile still looked rattled, but his subtext rang loud and clear: What manner of hav?d fool willingly stepped into this job?

He indicated the entrance to Edessa. “First time here?”

No. Her polite smile didn’t falter. “Yes.”

“Then welcome to Tetrarch Kadra’s Quarter. I’m Gaius, head of his vigiles.” He bowed. “All Candidates stay at the Academiae. It’s the citadel at the center of the Quarters, about an hour away.” Gaius nodded to two men who jumped to attention. “They’ll make sure you don’t get lost.”

Two minders . “I’ll be fine,” she insisted, but he shook his head.

“We wouldn’t want you getting lost.” His voice was firm.

She wanted to point out that she wouldn’t have bothered coming all this way just to run away now, but the tension in his shoulders halted her. For some reason, Gaius really was worried.

Frowning, she mounted Caelum, her guides behind her. The other vigiles’ gazes never left her, pity on each face as she passed through the parted gates. She fought a shudder. How many dead Petitors have they seen to think I’m already doomed?

The city hummed with life despite the late hour. Guildspeople clustered around braziers, their blazeleaf pipes wreathing them in smoke. Grim-faced vigiles in black and gold robes dined outside taverns, their skewers of meat dripping fat onto colorful tablecloths. Her stomach growled, but she refused to part with the single gold aureus left of her savings.

Insulae dotted Edessa, each home stacked on top of the other like salt blocks. Night markets bustled with merchants still luring buyers to their wares. She glanced at a few armilla sellers, trying to recall where she had purchased hers. Her memory remained blank.

The most striking thing, however, was the rune-covered metal rods marking the corners of every dwelling. Fulgur scuta , lightning shields, invented by Head Tetrarch Aelius. Several assessors had spoken of them .

If Arsamea and its neighboring mountain towns were notorious for snow and sludge, Ur Dinyé’s lower south was beset by stormfall. Every city would have been flattened by lightning had Magus Supreme Priscus of some eight centuries back not come up with a system for rotating groups of magi to patrol the city’s battlements and redirect lightning strikes into the surrounding terracotta desert—if a few travelers perished as a result, they could only blame the gods.

Yet, diverting lightning took great power, forcing magi to make devastating decisions when multiple bolts approached the city at once. Every stormfall had seen casualties until Tetrarch Aelius had found a solution four years ago: a steel rod carved with runes repelling lightning to be placed outside every structure. A miracle for the south for which Aelius’s name was rightfully revered. Even a few of the wagons passing her sported the four-foot rods.

The citadel that housed the Academiae stood on a plateau, overlooking the city. Her guides followed her up one of the well-traversed roads snaking up the incline before taking their leave. And she was finally there.

Reining Caelum to a halt, she dismounted before the Academiae’s gates. Ur Dinyé’s most prestigious school rose from the heart of Edessa, a spider at the center of a web, waiting to bleed its next unwary victim dry. As it had her.

Icy bands tightened around Sarai’s chest. The palatial complex of orange-red limestone sneered down at her like a haughty lord, its moonlit towers, assorted spires, and domes bristling that she had dared return. Asking if she hadn’t learned her lesson.

“I’m back,” she whispered. “You won’t get rid of me so easily this time.”

Sconces bracketed the metal doors before her, casting a flickering glow on the letters engraved at the top. Lisran Tower Gate. According to a map Cisuré had drawn in an old letter, this was the Academiae’s northwestern tower.

And Sidran Tower rose to the north.

Her jaw clenched. Eight towers at cardinal directions around the Academiae. Eight Tower Gates beside each, guarded by magi. Sneaking in was impossible, but somehow, at fourteen, she’d done it and fallen into Death’s arms. And she couldn’t remember why .

“Speak your business,” came a stentorian roar.

Her eyes flew up to the sentry in the Tower Gate’s watchtower. She lowered her hood. “I’m Sarai, the new Candidate. I was told to come here.”

The man raised an eyebrow, before the latch locks crowning the doors snapped down. The Gate creaked open with a screech of hinges, revealing a violet-robed magus who gave her a scathing perusal.

“The mountain girl arrives at last.” Taking Caelum’s reins, he rapped on the ladder leading up to the watchtower. “Hand over that aureus. Told you she’d come. No sense in these northerners. Petitors dying on the job, and they’re walking in.”

Asshole. She tamped down her irritation as the sentry tossed down a gold coin with a resentful grunt. Patting Caelum farewell, she made to enter the Academiae when the magus blocked her path.

“Not so fast.” He smirked. “Confirm your identity first, or we’ll have every northern barmaid racing here and calling themselves a Candidate.”

Sarai pricked her finger, smearing blood across zosta before forcing a smile. “Yes?”

A nasty gleam lit his eyes. “I think you’re a looker. Truth or lie?”

Her nails bit into her palms when the syllables reverberated in jarring echoes. “That’s a lie.” While he guffawed, she wiped her blood over zosta again, turning the rune dark. “Can I enter now?”

“Wait over there. Someone’ll come for you.”

Another guard . “I really didn’t come all this way just to flee before the Robing.”

“Like I care.” He rolled his eyes. “Wait in the courtyard, mountain girl.”

Biting her tongue, she took her first steps into the Academiae in four years. Snatches of conversation reached her as the magus called up to the sentry.

“Can’t believe she came. Ten aurei says she’ll be the first to kill herself … ”

A muscle twitched in her jaw. He wouldn’t be the only one with that opinion. Pacing the courtyard, she waited for her newest minder. Gods, they’re being ridiculous. She could understand their vigilance if she’d been dragged here kicking and screaming, but she’d walked in. An unsettling suspicion pricked at her. Unless this isn’t about me . From Gaius to the magi here, no one had acted like she was the problem but like they’d been shielding her from one. But that doesn’t make sense.

Stowing the puzzle away for later examination, she took in the view. Eight towers encircled the Academiae, tens of miles apart. A maze of walkways, colonnades, and ramparts bridged instructional buildings scattered across the grounds, magi of various disciplines still training in courtyards despite the late hour.

Magic was like coin. Some Urds had more than others, and you could only blame the gods if you weren’t born with much. Every country had an element that most of its people could manipulate, Ur Dinyé’s being lightning. Its formation, redirection, and use in combat was the land’s most common magic—albeit one she didn’t possess—followed by agriculture, healing, and the odd Petitor and illusionist. Some people had a strong talent in only one branch. Those, like her, with ability in multiple branches had limits. In addition to a Petitor’s abilities, she could only use one illusion rune, nihumb . Her only attempt at a more powerful illusion—hair color—had failed, drained her of magic, and left her feeling like she’d been beaten to a pulp.

Talent aside, the biggest hurdle for many was training. Schools offered tutelage at hefty prices, resulting in people going into debt for the prospect of a better future. Others sought work as fabri , tradesmen in the north, or apprenticeship in the southern Guilds, which didn’t require coin for entry but assigned exploitative, backbreaking hours. Entering the Academiae, Ur Dinyé’s best school, was a dream for most. As it had been for her.

Sarai stared at the sconce-lined courtyard. What did you think? she asked her fourteen-year-old self. What did you see here ?

Rain , whispered the hole in her mind. Splinters of ribs shoving through lungs with each breath. One eye ruptured upon impact —Sarai slammed a hand into the wall, cutting off the memory.

Breathing hard, she focused on the banners draping the courtyard’s walls until their letters swam into view. All citizens capable of Probing, meet with an assessor now! one demanded . Join with a Tetrarch and earn four thousand aurei every year!

Join with a Tetrarch. Sarai snorted. Now there’s a turn of phrase. But gods, that salary! Clutching the gold coin left in her pouch, she imagined four thousand of them. She could eat three meals a day, feed Arsamea’s poor for years. Could toss Marus into the tunnels and kick his face until—

A bright bolt danced jagged across the sky. Her head whipped up to the black-edged horizon just as thunder rent the air. Shit. If the lightning bristling under those clouds was any indication, Edessa was about to get one of its infamous storms. And she was outside.

Sarai didn’t pause to think. The rules for surviving stormfall were the same as for an Arsamean snowgale: get indoors and stay indoors. She raced under an arch and out of the courtyard, searching for shelter. Similar frantic footsteps came from the surrounding courtyards, but given how quickly they faded, everyone else knew where to go.

Light flashed in the distance, the thick air starting to pick up speed. Storm clouds churned above, blotting out both moons. With mounting panic, she spun in a circle in search of refuge when a hand locked around her wrist.

What in hav?d? She fought the hold before the hand’s owner pointed at an enclosed garden folly barely visible some yards away.

Thank the Elsar . The world narrowed to the air scraping the back of her throat and the blood rushing in her ears as they ran. By some miracle, she and her rescuer managed to drag the garden folly’s door open and squeeze in right as the storm hit. She peered through the windows in horrified awe as the sky cracked open as though one of the hells had opened above Edessa. Rain pounded down in heavy sheets, granules of cobblestone flying at the impact. The Academiae’s sconces sputtered out. She could barely see her hands.

“Thank you.” She turned to the man who’d just saved her from death by deluge. “I owe you, Magus …?”

“Drenevan.” The stranger’s baritone was a caress. Butter smooth, every word richly, impeccably enunciated.

Her jaw dropped. Gods alive. She stared at the patch of darkness where he sat as unease slid down her spine. Inhaling sharply, she quelled the memories of the Fall. Just because the man had a stunning voice didn’t mean he was him.

“I’m Sarai.” Realizing that she hadn’t properly thanked him, she reached for her coin pouch. “I’m sorry. I only have an aureus. If you’d like it.”

Part of her hoped he didn’t. It was her last coin.

A long pause. “You don’t owe me.”

“You had my life in your hands. It’s hard to believe that you don’t want something for it.”

Gods, please don’t let it be sex. Her fingers slid to her armilla, seeking out beshaz ’s ridges. The rune allowed rudimentary access to a body’s organs to those with any healing ability and was equally useful as a weapon. Despite her ruined hands, she could still mangle a tendon or two.

More silence. Then, “Have you always seen life as transactional?”

“It is , even if those in gilded places like this think otherwise. Coin trumps common sense, decency, law. We’re all borrowers or lenders, chasing it—” She bit her tongue, realizing that she was inches from a tirade and had indirectly insulted him to boot.

“Is that so?” He sounded amused. A flash of lightning seared his silhouette into her eyes. He was taller than she’d first glimpsed. “Which one are you? Borrower or lender?”

Odd. She normally didn’t do well with strange men and confined spaces. “You first.”

The magus didn’t move, and she had the strange sensation of being assessed through the dark. “I’m a debt collector. ”

“So, law enforcement?”

“Yes.” Again, that sense of him staring at her. “Your turn.” His voice slipped down her spine, sliding to a part of her that she’d long ignored.

She swallowed, grateful for the dark enclosing them. I bet his bed’s never empty. The storm made the world fall away, took her to a realm where she wasn’t a woman whose face had once made a child cry, but a Candidate talking to a man with a voice like the smoothest icewine. And it was all so foolishly peaceful, a cocoon of quiet outside time itself, that she gave him the truth.

“I just want to give,” she said quietly, watching rain punch the ground. “Taking is inevitable in life. But I’d like to give more than I receive.”

He was quiet again. Outside, the Academiae blanched as a bolt of lightning arced above, halting its downward progress to ricochet in the sky instead. The magi on the battlements must be hard at work.

Hold on . “Aren’t you supposed to be aiding with the storm?”

“I always do.” A wry note entered his velvet note.

“Until you had to stop me from being roasted alive.” She winced. Not showing up for duty would get him severely reprimanded, if not worse. “Gods, I’m sorry. I’ll vouch for you if you get in trouble. You were still saving lives—well, a life. Is it too late for you to get to a Tower Gate or up on the ramparts? How can I help?”

A pause. “What if that means entering the storm?”

She glanced at the madness outside the window and sighed. “I owe you. I’d prefer not to.” Debt seemed more dangerous than stormfall in this city. “What do you need?”

This silence was the longest yet. She’d begun to wonder if he regretted helping her when he finally spoke.

“Stay here.” A rustle of clothing indicated that he’d stood. “I can get there.”

“Oh,” she faltered. Then why did you stay with me in the first place?

Booted footsteps crossed the distance to the door and paused. Lightning streaked above just as he inclined his head .

Knife-sharp eyes cut into hers. “A pleasure to meet you, Sarai of Arsamea.” The door swung open, clattering in the howling wind. She’d barely started to her feet when it slammed shut.

She’d never told him where she was from.

Perhaps all the Academiae’s magi had been told to watch for her arrival . That was the most logical explanation, because if not, then … he was waiting for me .

A chill ran through her. Don’t be paranoid. There was no reason for a magus to do that.

Outside, the storm raged, streaks of lightning painting the sky for what felt like hours before dwindling to a few stray flashes. Rain pattered to a stop. A wave of humidity slammed into her the second she opened the door. The ground not covered by cobblestones was sodden, little more than mud.

So this is what stormfall leaves in its wake. She couldn’t imagine life before Aelius’s fulgur scuta. At least they protected the populace from lightning strikes, even if not the deluge.

Avoiding the muck, she tried to figure out how to get back to the Lisran Tower Gate when a yell sounded behind her.

“Sarai!” A blurry figure raced toward her. She barely had time to take in the girl’s familiar features before she found herself enfolded in a hug. “It’s so good to see you!”

A rusty grin stretched Sarai’s cheeks as she hugged her oldest friend back just as tightly. Time blurred and for a moment, she was fourteen, unscarred.

“I was on my way to get you, but the storm—” Cisuré pulled back, grasping her shoulders. “How are you? I was so worried that you didn’t make it inside.”

“A magus helped.” Sarai grinned, taking her in. There was a new maturity to Cisuré’s eyes, a tautening of her impish features, but the pale-haired girl still radiated the same sunniness. Four years. It felt like a lifetime. “He already knew I was from Arsamea, though. ”

“That’ll be Telmar’s fault. He’s been regaling everyone about how you went from pouring wine to Probing him like a seasoned Petitor. At this rate, we’ll have assessors scouring taverns for Candidates.”

“They can search the outhouses if they’d like. Deaths aside, tuition is the issue. I thought I’d be fifty before I saved up enough.”

“That’s the price of prestige.” Linking their arms, Cisuré steered her past an obscenely ornate fountain. “If everyone can come here, then no one will want to come.”

“It’s an education, not passage to the Bright Realms,” Sarai said wryly, sighing when the other girl wrinkled her nose and shrugged. Cisuré had wanted for much in life, but not wealth. Sometimes, it showed. “So, you’re my minder!”

Cisuré winked. “The magi know I won’t run, so they let me show you around. You look great by the way. Your skin …” she trailed off with a flinch. “It must have been a relief, getting the scars removed.”

Sarai’s brow furrowed. “I didn’t.”

There had never been any hope of that. The healers who’d knit her back together had warned afterward that the scars would never fade. No magic could do more for her than what had been done, short of Summoning a god and begging for mercy. Perhaps Cisuré had forgotten.

The other girl faltered. Something dimmed in her eyes as she traced the invisible ridges of the scars over Sarai’s hands. “Was this the illusion rune you were talking about after …”

Sarai nodded. She’d gone more than a little mad in the months after the Fall, drawing rune after rune in blood, praying that one of them would light up, that she had something left now that healing had been stolen from her. Only nihumb and the Trio had shown promise.

“It’ll last about a day, even through sleep, so I should be safe.”

Releasing her hand, Cisuré bit her lip. “Well, that’s … good.”

Hav?d . Perhaps starting their reunion with her most glaring remnants of the Fall hadn’t been the best idea. Glancing around, Sarai tapped one of the banners .

“Any reason why these make the job sound like we’re being paid to sleep with a Tetrarch?”

“Right?” Cisuré’s good humor returned. “Still, it’s a marriage of careers, and a bargain. A husband wouldn’t pay half as well.”

Sarai winced in agreement . Marriage in Arsamea had meant rearing children, and slaving over cooking fires while men like Marus slept their way through the surrounding villages. Neither she nor Cisuré had thought highly of that future. And after the Fall, she’d barely thought of men at all.

“I still can’t believe it.” Cisuré squeezed her arm like she thought Sarai would vanish. “You, here . Just like—” She looked uncomfortable again.

“Like we’d initially planned,” Sarai finished tightly.

A protracted silence fell. Cisuré’s grip loosened. “That day we returned to Arsamea … I thought that was the end.”

So did I . “Never! We wrote to each other every month.”

“But it wasn’t the same.”

No. The hollow in her chest where that particular pain lived reopened, echoes pouring out of the day a few vigiles had unceremoniously tossed her on a wagon out of Edessa. Of Cisuré’s pale face wreathed in tears as the wagon hit every ditch on the road up into Arsamea. Of the devastating words she’d uttered: “You need to stay here from now on. Recover.”

Sarai had argued that Arsamea was the last place she should be when her face—when she —was no longer the same. When everyone would hold it over her. There had only been a pause and the painful loosening of the other girl’s hands from hers.

That day, Cisuré and the wagon had left after depositing her in Arsamea. They never came back. And something had altered between them in the four empty years since. At times, Sarai thought she could see everything they were avoiding in the gaps in their carefully worded letters, in their every hesitant “it’s been so long.” Some days, she thought the parchment would bleed if she dared set it all down.

“Did you blame me back then for leaving you there?” Cisuré’s voice shook .

There it is. The question they’d avoided for four years. A rush of icy wind parted them as though some vestige of Arsamea had followed her all the way here.

“No.” The lie plowed past years of loneliness. “You were trying to help.”

Cisuré gave her a pinched smile, but the tension didn’t leave her shoulders. They passed a series of columns framing another courtyard when she took a deep breath. “Why did you come? You must have heard about the deaths.”

“Who’d turn down being a Tetrarch’s right hand? Or four thousand aurei?”

“Nearly all my classmates did, or the Tetrarchy wouldn’t be desperate enough to axe training. But you still volunteered to walk into danger. Again.”

“To be fair, I don’t think I knew that the first time around—”

“Sarai!” Cisuré rounded on her.

Sarai stiffened at her taut features. “I—”

“You nearly died last time! Do you know what it was like for me to see you in pieces?”

No. “Cisuré—”

“Your face was shredded! Every limb snapped—”

“Stop!” Sarai shouted. Jerking her arm from Cisuré’s grip, she hunched over, drawing deep lungfuls of too-humid air. Don’t think about it . Do. Not. Think. About. It. A lifetime of shoving away her emotions reared to the surface, reflexively obeying.

“I’m so sorry,” came Cisuré’s anguished voice above her. “I didn’t mean to …”

“I know.” Straightening, Sarai squeezed her hand. “I know.”

Her gaze drifted to the east, to the spire just barely visible behind Lisran Tower. Northwest. Disquiet slithered up her spine. North.

Cisuré followed her gaze and swallowed. “Do you still dream of it?”

Every night. “No. ”

The other girl’s lips pressed together. Taking Sarai’s hand, she dragged her out of the courtyard and down a hallway until she halted in front of an alcove and pressed them in.

“I need you to promise me something.” Her trepidation sent an answering ripple through Sarai. “Stay away from Sidran Tower.”

The name hung in their cramped quarters for a few awful seconds. “Why?”

“No one knows you survived,” Cisuré whispered. “The vigiles kept it quiet. So your fall became Edessa’s most infamous mystery. Sarai, they call you the Sidran Tower Girl! Conspiracy mongers still pop up every year claiming that you were an assassin or a spy!”

“If you’re telling me to be careful—”

“I’m telling you that I’m scared. This isn’t Arsamea. Edessa will have you for a mouthful and spit your bones outside the gates. The Sidran Tower Girl is dead . She needs to stay that way.”

“I know—”

“And I know you. You were always so angry about the injustice of practically everything. I can’t imagine that’s changed. You still look back and wonder, instead of letting the past rest .”

Her throat constricted. How? How was she to move forward when the past wrapped around her body in a thousand scars? When she didn’t have so much as a face or a name to curse?

“You will find no friends here,” Cisuré said grimly. “You’re an unknown who waltzed in from the north. People won’t be kind.”

“Then Arsamea’s prepared me well. I’m here for the job.”

“Which demands impartiality and delivering the law’s verdict at any cost, neither of which you’re good at! You’re going in blind! Sidran Tower’s a distraction you don’t need, so just swear to me that you’ll leave the past where it belongs.” Cisuré held out an unblemished hand, delicate joints and fingers enclosed in supple skin. Everything a hand should look like. “ Please . ”

Damn it. If she refused, Cisuré would know that Sarai intended to dig into the Fall, go into paroxysms of panic over her safety, and almost definitely try to stop her.

Sighing, Sarai dropped her illusion, pretending not to notice Cisuré’s wince at the return of her real appearance. Matching her palm to the other girl’s, she hid a flinch when Cisuré gazed at it in horror, taking in the crooked joints, the parchment-thin scars feathering her skin, the perpetual, incurable trembling of her fingers.

“Your hands.” Cisuré interlocked their fingers, gripping them tight as though she could halt the shaking. “When you said you couldn’t be a healer anymore, I didn’t realize … I’m so sorry. It was all you ever wanted—”

“It’s fine,” Sarai broke in tonelessly. A skill honed for years, lost in a night. “I can still heal cuts and the like. Just … nothing further.”

Tears pooled in Cisuré’s eyes. She bowed over their hands. Their subsequent silence was weighted with the memories of years of healing both their wounds from Marus. Sarai wanted to mourn too. But she’d spent too long burying the hurt. She didn’t know where to start digging.

“The gods give and take away.” Cisuré wiped her face. “If you hadn’t lost healing, you wouldn’t have thought to look for nihumb or gotten proficient with the Trio. You’re here ,” she said fiercely. “Don’t lose what you have by looking back.” Their clasped hands shook. “Promise me. On the Elsar.”

Sarai closed her eyes. I can’t , she told the gods. “I swear,” she lied. I’m sorry.

Cisuré released her hand after a long moment and watched her reestablish the illusion. “Let’s get you settled in.”

Leaving the alcove, they entered the shadow of Lisran Tower. An enormous statue of Lady Wisdom, patron goddess of Petitors, hugged the base of the red limestone building, brandishing a pen in one hand, a hammer in the other, and a sword at her hip. Poet, artisan, and warrior . From the buildup of candle wax at its base, the tower’s jewel-and-marble protector had seen at least a century of fervent prayer .

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Cisuré said with awe.

Try ostentatious. Even the smallest of the rubies set into the pommel of the goddess’s sword could have fed Sarai for a couple years.

“Beautiful,” she echoed a smidgen too late, and Cisuré’s eyes narrowed.

“Try to sound genuine, will you? You’re too blunt.”

She had heard the same in Arsamea. Cisuré was expressivity itself. But the words used for Sarai had been different. Too quiet, bitter . They weren’t wrong. Slaving for coin had taught her that emotion was best concealed, opinions were a liability, and that dreams were for the wealthy.

She smiled wryly. “I’ve mostly said ‘ certo ’ and ‘thank you’ for the last few years.”

“ Tibi gratias ago ,” Cisuré corrected. “Tetrarchs and their Petitors use the ancient tongue whenever possible. Commoner speech isn’t becoming of our stations.”

Sarai blinked. “But we serve those commoners.”

“Doesn’t mean that we should emulate them.” Cisuré’s face brightened. “And you’re going to meet the Tetrarchy so soon! You’ll love the Robing.”

Sarai winced. The Robing wasn’t just a Petitor receiving their Tetrarch’s robes. Held in the Amphitheatrum Aequitas, the highest court in the land, it was an opportunity for citizens and gossip rags alike to sketch a first impression of each new Petitor.

“Guess I’ll be practicing the hav?d ancient tong—” She yelped when Cisuré smacked her.

“Watch your language! You’ll be a Petitor soon. Act like it.” Her hair lit up like a halo under a nearby sconce, and Sarai couldn’t help laughing. Always the saintly sun to Sarai’s dour moon.

“Surely even the Tetrarchs curse. What’s life without a sporadic ‘shit’ or ‘fu—’ Ow!” She rubbed at where Cisuré had dug her elbow into her side.

“Perhaps Kadra curses, but the rest keep their words lily-white and so shall we.” Cisuré pursed her lips, daring her to argue.

“Yes, my lady,” Sarai groused. “Is there a Tetrarch you’ve got your eye on? ”

“Oh, we don’t get a choice.” Her laugh held a nervous edge. “Let’s get your uniform from the Night Office. I’ll show you around Edessa if we get a moment after the Robing.”

Sarai nudged her. “I thought you said I’d find no friends here.”

“You’ll always have me.” Cisuré grinned. “Here we are. Lisran Tower.”

Northwest. Sarai’s steps slowed. North.

Slowly, her gaze slid to the right, to the spire-topped column miles away glowering down in recognition. For a moment, she was fourteen again, lying in her own blood, rain pounding from above. Her eyes lifted to the balcony at the top. A hundred-and eighty-seven-foot drop. She shouldn’t have survived. She shouldn’t remember any of it.

But she remembered enough. Agony as healers knit her back together. Despair when the vigiles had ended their investigation after three days, sealed her case records, and tossed her out of Edessa.

Resolve burned in her chest. Four years ago, someone in this city had wanted her dead.

And by all the gods, she was going to make him pay.