31
Myria leaned back against the wall, arms crossed, doing her utmost to look as though she could’ve stood if she’d wanted to.
Her body was numb and ringing in the aftermath of the healing.
The dagger wound had vanished, but the force of that golden arcana .
. . even now, it echoed in her bones. She felt bruised, inside and out.
The din wasn’t helping. Lysander had put a silencing spell on the room, and it was earning its keep.
“—double-crossed the lot of us, you stupid bastard!” Cassia shouted. “You damned near got Myria killed!”
“And now, the devil of the grayside’s coming after us!” Leo strode an angry circle around Felix, amber gashes scything from his fingers.
“Where’s the box?” Cassia forged on. “You gave it to the centurion, didn’t you? And what do you think the nutter’s going to do with it?”
Myria closed her eyes. The shouting was a battering ram against her throbbing head.
Still, they had to vent out steam. Hadria had always let them.
Stopper it up, and Leo would simmer into mutiny, while Cassia would just explode.
Felix seemed to know the same; he took it like a statue, offering neither defense nor attack.
“Well?” Cassia demanded, snatching him by the collar. “Don’t just stand there, you—”
Myria saw her friend’s fist clench, and adrenaline snapped through her.
“Cassia,” she interrupted, sharp and loud. “Let him go.”
Cass turned in disbelief, her grip still tight on Felix’s uniform.
“Damn that. He’s shown his hand! Turn around and run. Get rid of him.”
“Cassia,” she said, forcing her voice low and level, dotting out her words like pinpricks. “Let him go.”
Cassia looked at her in revolted disbelief. Felix’s eyes flicked between them. Then, Leo gave an angry laugh.
“Oh, for mercy’s sake, stop pretending you’re Hadria,” he said. “You got it wrong. You thought you could handle Vixius, and you couldn’t. It’s plain luck you’re not dead.”
Not ready.
Anger, she’d expected, but the naked contempt in his voice turned her cold. It drove a barb deep into that years-old doubt and pulled. Hairline fractures spidered through her calm facade.
“Not luck,” Myria said quietly. “You. All of you. Leo, you pulled me out of the silver lining. Felix and Lysander healed me.”
“Oh, for the—” He broke off, turning hard on his heel, momentarily speechless with anger. Then he snapped back to face her, sparks spilling freely from his hands. “He sold us out! Thanks to him, we’re never going to see our powers ag—”
“Leo, I made a promise,” she interrupted. “Stay with me, and you’ll have back what he took. Harm Aurelias, and you’ve no further part in it.”
“You’d save him over us?” Cassia uttered, looking nearly sick with rage.
“I’d save him to save us,” she said, lowering her voice again. Hadria had always done it; the louder the chaos, the slower and quieter she spoke.
But Hadria knew what she was doing.
Cassia’s eyes flared like stoked coals. Her hand tightened on Felix’s collar.
“Myria, it’s us or him. Choose. Now.”
Not ready. Dread seized her gut. She could feel her heartbeat in her head, drowning out thought. She wanted to scream, to slam her friend against the wall, to curl up and hide.
Still, she knew one thing. Something Vixius, Hadria and Gloriana had all known. She was in command. That meant they could either overthrow her or obey her—and she wagered they weren’t prepared for mutiny just yet.
“No,” she said, coming upright and hiding the lurch of sickening pain it provoked. “No ultimatums, Cassia, and no murder. Now, I’m going to take the air. When you’re calmer, find me, and I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. Aurelias, come.”
With that, she strode away, leaving her friends in the bloodstained room behind her.
Myria sat on the roof peak of the empty tenement, pain still pulsing in her body. The air was bitter with alchemical waste. The smog curled in a soft, dark ocean, concealing all the world beneath. Felix sat a careful distance from her, elbows rested on his knees, head bowed with tiredness.
You utter fool, she thought, barely keeping the word between her teeth. She hardly knew which of them it was aimed at. She smarted with the blame, the shame. She’d made the same mistake again.
Vanity, something uttered in her head. Sheer vanity. Somewhere in all the chaos of her heart, she’d thought she was that special soul—the only one he wouldn’t sacrifice to power. She’d known that Vixius had killed and killed again, and still assumed he wouldn’t do the same to her.
Hadria was right. You weren’t a match for him. She’d thought she had him in her palm, and he’d run her through without hesitation.
And now, she needed an answer. She’d said she had a plan, but she didn’t. Oh, there were threads, little strands she didn’t have the strength to tie together, but no plans. Those had all been dashed the moment the knife went in her back.
The black thoughts circled in on her like predators, until she could bear it no more. She slammed her hands down on the slates and thrust everything from her mind.
Breathe. Just breathe. There was little more she could do.
The pollution rolled in, dark and soft. Soot-sprites hissed down the lanes. They’d shoot about like drunken fireflies, scorching walls and breaking windows, until they dissipated in the cool of dawn. There was something comforting in that ephemera. Gone by sunrise. No tomorrow.
One of the sprites hissed toward Felix, and he caught it in one hand. With a soft exhalation, he stood and walked the roofline to her side. He sat down like a worn-out schoolboy, then opened his palm and let the living ember free.
“I know you’d like to shove me off,” he said, “but if you want to talk, it’s sometimes easier when you don’t give a damn what someone thinks of you.”
“I might, if I could trust you as far as I could throw you,” she muttered.
“Well, to be fair . . .” He nodded to the thirty-foot drop beneath them. “It’s not a bad distance, from here.”
Myria glared at him. Then, against her will, she rolled her eyes in amusement. He managed a small smile, but it faded as quickly as it had come.
“You don’t have a plan, do you?” he asked softly.
“Of course I do,” she said by angry instinct; but even as she spoke, fear closed thin fingers around her stomach. Dash it all, why not just tell him? For all the harm it could do now . . .
Felix gave her a look of shrewd compassion.
“I know. A good commander doesn’t frighten the troops,” he said. “Still, that doesn’t mean you have to make the battle plans alone.”
“Felix Aurelias,” she said sharply, “are you offering to help me? Because if you are, you can’t be a servant of two masters.”
“I don’t believe I offered to be your servant.”
“You know very well what I mean.”
“And you have a wit. Use it. I’m here. You’re alive. What do you deduce from that?”
Her temper lashed back at the challenge. Then, a hook caught in her mind, and she pulled up short. In the maelstrom of events, she’d not given it the first thought.
He’s defied the centurion, she realized. She could’ve been rid of you without breaking her vow, and he . . . damn. He’d have risked his life, healing you with broken powers. How did he even manage it?
She looked at him anew and saw it suddenly, so clear that only a woman blind with self-absorption could’ve missed it. It was graven in him, body and soul—pain.
Gods below. Casting through shattered faculties . . . he’d have broken them beyond repair. He wrecked his powers to save you, and he didn’t say a word.
Myria slowly curled in on herself, knees drawing up, head sinking, fingers linking tight behind her hair. The realization drove a blade into her gut, and she let it. That one, she deserved.
“Damn,” she said softly, her voice cracking just a little. Felix gave a quiet laugh.
“Yes, I thought so, too,” he said. “Now. Tell me what happened.”
“I don’t know what to do,” Myria finished. It was a strange relief to say it—to let her spirit sink below the dark horizon and watch three years of plans come clattering down at last.
Felix sat silent beside her. He’d not tried to bolster her with hollow platitudes. He’d simply let the tale unwind, and listened.
“Even if we could take the box from Gloriana, Vixius won’t be fool enough to unlock the thing without examining it now,” she went on. “We’re stuck between the devil and the deep. Weapon in the enemy’s hands, crew an inch from mutiny, and no powers worth a damn.”
“They won’t abandon you, Myria,” said Felix, speaking for the first time since she’d begun. “It’s only fear. They thought you were going to die.”
“No. They’re angry, Felix. Furious,” she murmured, pressing the heels of her hands against her brow. “I said I’d make it right, and I haven’t.”
“Why you?”
“And I—what?” She broke off, baffled.
“Well, there are four of you,” he said. “Why’s it your job?”
She stared at him for a moment. The answer sat there like a splinter in her heart. All those years, she’d never dared touch it. Never been forced to.
Damn it all. What does it matter now?
She snatched the splinter and ripped it out whole.
“Because it was my fault. I leapt on the chance to rob the Elysius Vault to . . . to impress Vixius. I put us all at his mercy, and I knew. I knew what he was, and I still risked it.” A raw laugh escaped her.
“Thought I’d be the exception. Thought I was the exception to every damned rule. If I don’t undo this . . .”
Felix turned his gaze back out into the fog. “You tried,” he said. “Isn’t that enough?”
“No. It’s—” She took a sharp breath as tightness closed about her throat. “Hadria died to give us a chance. What do you do when someone puts that high a value on your life? She made something . . . something precious out of all of us. I have to protect it, and it’s not enough to die trying.”
“If you want to keep them safe . . . I hate to say it, Myria, but you could run,” said Felix.
You could.
Strange, really, how it hadn’t occurred to her. They’d emptied Vixius’s vault and dashed his prospects of election. She’d done everything she’d promised to Gloriana.