Chapter 38
Allie
“Vylkor’s still grumbling about how he could’ve protected the city just fine without you,” Dax said instead of a good morning as he barged into my room less than two minutes after I’d arrived.
I rolled my eyes. Even a smidgeon of power could go to someone’s head.
“I have better things to do than worry about his pride.” I opened the balcony windows and shook off the stubborn snowflakes still clinging to my coat.
“Morning stroll?” Dax asked as he sat down.
“If by morning stroll you mean freezing my bits off on the fortress’ roof, sure.”
Every morning since I’d returned, without fail.
“The lookouts are doing their job remarkably well,” Dax said. “I checked.”
“They change guard in the morning."
Which meant shifting about and less attention on the horizon.
I wasn’t taking any chances.
I’d stood there for an hour and saw no glimmer or flaming arrow in the curiously clear sky. It seemed the crater had finally quieted now that the warriors were gone and I was back in the city.
“And all of them are still too green.” I sighed as I plopped down in the seat next to him.
“They’re only a few years younger than us,” he protested.
“Experience and mistakes don’t care about age.” I nodded at the pile of parchments. “Ready?”
Dax took out his quill, looking as enthused as if he was walking into an open flame. “If not me, then who?”
I understood, all too well.
Dax’s presence helped the tedious task, but I still would have rather been anywhere else than reading more endless numbers tied to people I’d cared about and watched die.
I should have been marching toward the battlefield right now.
Or doing something.
Thousands of people were risking their lives in the war, while I couldn’t so much as launch a single arrow against the Serpents.
I tried to fight the dark thoughts, but sitting here, in my warm room, with my belly full, I felt like the coward Silas tried to make me out to be.
Yes, I would watch over this crater that kept me trapped, but the city and its civilians very much did not need my help.
I told myself I should be glad I didn’t have to intervene. But after a lifetime of always being the one people came to for help, it was destabilising to live in a world where nobody bothered to.
Solkar’s Reach, even with half its population gone, ran as efficient as ever. Everyone went about their precise day and the only true difference was more eyes on the sky, in case the rim scouts sounded the alarm and more twigs and ribbons placed in windows to ward off evil.
It should’ve been a blessing that nothing had truly changed, but a part of me–another one I kept hidden, and would never let loose–couldn’t understand how everyone just went on.
Ryker’s absence had sucked the life out of the crater.
Everything felt hollow and grey.
The place his presence occupied was now filled by that awful pressure pulsing against my temples.
I couldn’t have been the only one who’d noticed the shift.
And these parchments did not help the ache in my skull. At all.
“There she is again. Right between the summer feast candles and the extra water for the harvest.” I licked my teeth and tapped my finger on the name next to another exorbitant purchase, enough to fill an entire menagerie with pure-bred horses. “Bia Marino.”
Dax sighed. “She must’ve learned this from those heinous parents of hers. But she hated them. She used to spend most of her leave at the Academy just to avoid them.”
“Some threads are weaved so deep, we can’t cut them when we realize what they’ve stitched into us.”
“I still can’t believe it. She was Clara’s best friend. Or is. We don’t even know if she survived the arrows.”
“If family can turn on each other, friends can, too.”
“Does your best friend know that?”
“Who?” I asked distractedly.
“Your best friend. You must have one.”
That made me stop and lean back from the parchment.
I hadn’t had the time to think about that. Since I’d been named heir, I’d mostly mingled with adults and my family.
“I like all of my cousins,” I said, uncertain. Almost embarrassed, as if I was a youngling on my first day with a new tutor. “I have a soft spot for Evie, but it’s more like a big sister than a friend. And the one I get along with best–” My eyes widened. “Is you.”
“Me?” Dax huffed in surprise. “I am your best friend?”
“Apparently,” I said, just as surprised.
“You need better taste in the people you associate yourself with, feared Huntress,” Dax joked, but he seemed really pleased.
“Who’s yours?” I nodded at him. “And Uncle Maksim does not count.”
“I have friends in almost every Clan and beyond. I got the wings from one of them, remember?”
“No. Best friend.”
“Hmm. Well, I guess it would have to be…” He pursed his lips for the longest time, lost in thought. Then cursed under his breath. “You.”
“Ha!” I snorted a most undignified laugh. It helped ease the pain in my temples and quiet the thoughts of Ryker and war. “You like me, too.”
“How did this happen?” he asked, visibly irked. “Gods, we’re pathetic.”
“Hey!”
“No, I just meant…” He licked his lips. “We’ve been so focused on Clan duties and the Vegheara name and the perfect First Family that always came first that we just…couldn’t see anything else. And that is sad, no matter what you say.”
Honestly? Seen from the lens of draining duty and what we’d sacrificed for it, even the things we didn’t realize, it truly was sad.
“I guess.” I shrugged. “But as far as best friends go, I’m glad I’m yours.”
“Right back at you,” Dax said in a tone I could’ve sworn I’d never heard from him; almost sounded shy. Then he cleared his throat, and went on, much more confident, “It’s a good thing, since we’re stuck together for gods-know how long.”
“It’s really good,” I said softly.
Dax pointed a finger at me, not taking his eyes off the parchment. “Stop it, you’re going to make me blush, and I hate that.”
It was getting too emotional and vulnerable for me as well.
So I smiled into the parchment and let Dax focus on his. The day dragged on. By the time the sky began to shimmer with the violet hue of night, my back hurt from sitting and shifting so much.
I was used to being on my feet, marching from place to place, not hunched over a table.
This little retreat into numbers and archives did nothing for my soul.
“Got it!” Dax announced suddenly, making me flinch. His quill glided faster. “I knew I remembered seeing Uncle Maksim’s name here.”
“It would’ve been ridiculous not to. The man doesn’t survive on air and sun–and he loves his sweets.”
“Just in time, too.” His tone reached an enthusiasm level I’d yet to hear since he’d come here. Had he doubted his own memory that much? “The truth serum reserves are low. And with no pyrrot coming in, we would’ve been in quite a bind.”
“We still haven’t found whatever my father wanted us to discover.”
Me.
What he’d wanted and asked me to find.
I wondered if everyone could smell the disappointment that clung to me or if it was just my imagination.
Don’t doubt yourself, Ryker’s voice whispered in my ear, making me squirm in my seat.
Damn even the figment of him for knowing the right thing to say and making me wish he was still here, like a naive girl who couldn’t stand to be parted from her first crush.
But there was an edge to each of my thoughts that floated toward him, like the idea of him had burrowed deeper than normal in my mind. Deeper than should have been possible.
“There you go.” Dax handed me the parchment with the pride of someone who loved being right. I couldn’t fault him; I was sure I was equally as obnoxious when I was proven right.
I whistled as my eyes raced on the page. “We spent this much on missions?”
“These entries are from two years ago. Uncle Maksim pared it back recently since…you know.”
My brows rose. “Know what?”
Dax shrugged. “You didn’t get as many death threats from the Borderline Bands.”
“You’re right.” The top of the parchment flopped over in my loosened grip. “I haven’t even gotten so much as a poisoned-laced letter lately.”
My chest tightened. That was no coincidence.
“Why did they suddenly stop?” I asked.
It was a relief not to be reading about my impaled head every other month, but it had been a long tradition.
One that hadn’t scared me–the Borderline Bands refused to join any Clan, were devoid of any power, scraped by with mercenary raids, and seldom left their secret compound in the Defector Lands.
Every Clan heir got threats from them periodically. It was almost a rite of passage.
I wondered if Ryker had been on their morbid roster. He must have.
But I couldn’t ask because he wasn’t here. My heart gave another foolish, lonely echo.
“I have it on good authority they left the Morgana Clan alone, too.” Dax shrugged. “We heard some whispers the Bands had a power struggle in their ranks around that time, but nobody in their right mind would have entered the Defector Lands to check.”
“It would’ve been good to know why they fought,” I mumbled, eyes still glued to the page.
“Since nobody bothered with wanting you dead, we relaxed the protective measures for Clara when she was off to the Academy and for Dara whenever she went to learn runes from some other eunuch,” Dax went on. “Which they were both very happy about.”
“Two years…” I muttered and snatched the other papers from today. “Are you remembering all these entries in order?”
“Yes. I went through the ledgers one by one, they’re coming out the–”
A bang vibrated through my windows.
I’d already jumped to my feet, ready for a fight, when I noticed Sylvester pecking at the glass.
He screeched outside my window, wings flapping up a storm.
I rushed to the balcony, but he shot up as I approached, squawking at me and pointing his beak at the roof.
A message.
My lungs tightened as I ran out of the room, Dax yelling after me.
I didn’t stop until the cold air once again threatened to topple me from the roof. Sylvester dashed like an arrow toward the eastern side of the crater, beckoning me forward.
I crept along the ridge, holding onto the tower for dear life. As I reached the edge, he kept flipping in the sky, frantic.
My eyes tracked his pattern, looking at the exact point of the rim he circled. It was dark. Too dark for my human eyes. The dregs of the sun selfishly pulling the light in the opposite direction didn’t help.
“What is it?” I called out. “What do you see?”
Sylvester squawked louder. Panicked. Frightened.
I narrowed my eyes into slivers.
I couldn’t see anything other than the menacing jagged edges of the crater, blurred by the evening mist.
But something was wrong. I could smell it in the air.
Jaw tight, I braved the crater’s wrath once more.
“Focus!” I shouted.
My power blazed through my skin, racing toward my skull. It poured out of my eyes, its glow spreading over the roof and the tops of the trees.
I must’ve looked like a wild, otherworldly thing. Sylvester flew away from me.
My power sizzled the air and turned the invisible drops of water into nothing but vapour. Unimpeded, my vision stretched farther.
My eyes burned under the strain, as if someone had shoved needles in them and I couldn’t blink them away.
All I could do was watch.
See.
Flickers behind the shards guarding the crater.
An arrow barely stretched toward the sky, but was snatched from the air.
Worst of all, thick ropes dangling from the wall of the crater.
Someone had breached Solkar’s Reach.