Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
LYRA
After the ceremony is finished, Casimir offers me a wordless parting, and Neilina finds me to escort me back to my chambers.
As we walk in stride, the people part for us like a receding sea, and they bow their heads in deference as we pass. It makes my chest ache. I am not what these people believe me to be. I am not a Savior. I am not a person who has done acts worthy of such respect.
No.
I have blood on my hands. Have flashes of dreams where I cocoon myself in a swirl of insatiable power, devouring skin and bone mercilessly.
And while I do now understand that what happened with my mother, with Delroy, the kind stablemaster, isn’t my fault—I was the product of circumstance; the desperate action taken in a divided world; the result of King Alastair’s own blackened heart and choices—there is no justifying the power I unleashed that day.
I know I cannot blame myself and hold the weight of another’s sins, but I cannot rationalize nor minimize the destruction I caused.
All the lives I took.
It is a guilt I will be forced to forever bear. One I deserve to carry.
Near the end of the line, there is an older man with long white hair and bushy white eyebrows who bends a knee and drapes his left arm across his chest, bowing his head. For a moment, shock rattles through me like a jolt of lightning because I think I’ve just seen a ghost.
He looks just like Delroy.
I stop in front of him and lower myself to my knees. I reach for his hand and drop my head, attempting to catch his gaze. “Please, do not kneel for me.”
He slowly lifts his eyes from the ground. They are a rich brown and warm. “You are Sithraki,” he says with an accent I’ve never quite heard before. “We owe you our lives.”
“You owe me nothing,” I murmur, confusion and more squeezing in my chest.
As I focus on the man, I notice more details about him.
The way his eyes are ringed by a thin gray circle.
The way his wielder’s mark rests at his neck, an inverted wave cascading downward instead of up.
I notice the subtle gray tint resting beneath his skin, running through his veins, and the scars resembling scratch marks scattered across his wrists.
It hits me then, and I marvel at how I could have missed it.
He’s an Abdite.
He seems so…normal. So sane. His speech patterns are regular, thoughts coherent. He is nothing like the Abdites I’ve encountered.
As if sensing my thoughts, the old man smiles. “There is always more to the story.”
And there’s something about the way he says it—a quiet knowingness. My lips part to ask him to elaborate, but before I get the chance, Neilina is pulling me up by my arm and dragging me forward.
“Come on,” she says in a hurried whisper. “It’s time we go.”
As if coming out of some daze, I finally become aware of my surroundings.
Of the hundreds of people who have circled around us, watching.
Being so close to them, I now see all the markings painted down their bodies.
Some with clay, others with charcoal and kohl.
Some marks I recognize to be associated with mourning, others I don’t recognize at all.
I glance back at the man a final time. He remains kneeling, his arm still draped across his chest. “Sithraki,” he chants. “Sithraki.”
In a low hum, the word travels to the lips of hundreds. They continue parting for Neilina and me as we pass, but they observe us as we go, chanting lowly.
“Sithraki. Sithraki. Sithraki.”
The word swirls through the wind like a promise of hope; they cling to it like a prayer.
“Sithraki. Sithraki. Sithraki.”
The word follows me all the way back to my bedchamber.
I pace in front of my canopy bed, restless.
I was expecting Casimir to find me shortly after the ceremony ended, finally allowing me to ask my questions and receive answers, but he has not.
My guess is he figures if he waits long enough, I’ll simply fall asleep.
Then again, he knows I was a night attendant and am used to being up all hours of the night.
So maybe he’s done no figuring at all. Maybe he just doesn’t give a shit about the bargain we made.
Maybe he never even planned on actually answering my questions.
Like hell I’m going to let that happen.
I storm toward the door and throw it open.
To be truthful, I half-expected to find Neilina standing guard outside the door, watching me like some dangerous prisoner in need of monitoring.
Yet to my pleasant surprise, it seems Casimir didn’t instruct her to keep watch over me through the night.
No one stands outside my door, and, as far as I can see, there is no one standing watch in the brazier-lit corridors, stretching east to west.
I make the executive decision to go left, realizing after only a few stomps I haven’t the slightest idea where I’m going or how to find Casimir.
I’ve never been to his personal chambers, and I certainly haven’t had the motivation to walk around this place and explore.
The only areas I can navigate with full confidence are the gardens, the greenhouse which now acts as my own personal workspace, and then back to my chambers from either of those two locations.
I halt in the corridor, pinch the bridge of my nose, and heave a sigh. What is the best way to find someone when I haven’t the slightest clue where I’m going? When I don’t even know a general location for where the person might be?
On the verge of resigning to the bitter fact I may have to go back and wait in my chambers, the thought dawns on me.
Lakt? can sense other lakt?. At least, that’s what Draven told me time and time again. And Casimir just funneled magic into my veins mere hours ago. Which means…
I close my eyes and draw on everything I’ve learned about sensing magic. Truthfully, it makes me grateful for the first test in Bathara’s entrance exam, where Gray and Marcella—the ever dynamic pair—sat in a circle with me, explaining how detecting one’s magic works.
I open myself up, looking for that tugging thread. Casimir and I share the same magic type, and with the touch of his lakt? fresh in my veins, I imagine sensing his lakt? must feel similar to how sensing my essence flower in the Whispering Grove felt.
I’m right.
A tug pulls at me like some magnetic draw, and I follow the guiding feeling.
It leads me down a series of winding corridors, up a flight of stairs, and to a large, decadent door approximately three times the size of the one leading into my chamber.
An odd sensation happens once I’m standing at the threshold.
The feeling that’s guided me here intensifies then disappears.
As if to declare Casimir is, in fact, behind this door, and I no longer need a tour guide to show me the way.
For a moment, I simply stand in front of the stained wood, my fist frozen in midair as I wonder whether or not I should knock. But then I remember he kidnapped me, and frankly, I don’t think kidnappers deserve to have privacy when their victim quite literally arrives at their doorstep.
I creak the door open and step inside unannounced.
The room is lavish, but not quite as decadent as I thought it would be based on the colossal door guarding it.
A large canopy bed with black, silky sheets is pressed against a wall on the north side of the room—an artistically crafted stone hearth roaring with a fire directly across from the bed—and three floor-to-ceiling windows compose the adjacent wall beside it.
In front of the windows, an oak writing desk sits with papers scattered across the top of it, ink stains pressed into the wood like scars.
A large, feather-tipped quill rests at an angle in the inkwell, as if Casimir was scribbling something on parchment and stopped suddenly.
The smell of said ink mingles with bergamot and burning wood.
I creep forward, losing a bit of my nerve.
I’m in his personal chambers, and something about it feels intimate.
My plan was to track him down and demand answers, and while a person being in their bedchamber in the middle of the night is completely logical, it is a thought that evaded me entirely in my heated moment.
I don’t know where I thought he would be, but… it wasn’t here.
I turn on my heels to leave. A voice stops me. “Going so soon?”
I freeze, my eyes finding the ceiling. I blow out a sigh.
Well, since I’ve been spotted, I might as well do what I came here to do.
When I turn back around, my expression is hardened, and I find Casimir now standing in the middle of the room, a glass filled with deep amber liquid in his hand.
His hair is unbound and falling into his face, and though he still has on the same clothes from earlier, they look ruffled—messy.
It’s the first time I’ve seen him look even the slightest bit disheveled.
I don’t bother mincing words. “You never came to my chamber tonight. You broke your end of the bargain.”
“No,” he says calmly. “I did not.”
“You promised me answers if I did something for you; you didn’t give me answers after I completed what was asked of me. That’s called breaking a bargain.”
Casimir spins the liquid in his glass before taking a sip from it. After, he walks over to the hearth and sets the glass down on the mantle, his eyes lingering on the crackling flames. “I did not say I would give those answers tonight.”
My blood boils. “Yes, you did. You—”
“—No,” Casimir counters with an admirable level of calmness. “You said tonight, but I did not agree to give any answers to you at such a time. Think back on what I said.”
With frustration burning through me, I do.
You have my word. Join me tonight with an open mind and an open heart—observe my people, give them a chance—and as a result, I will give you all the answers I am able to at the first moment I can.