Chapter 9 #3
“And yet she’s bleeding on your floor without producing enough Light to illuminate a closet.” Kieran finally looked at him. “Perhaps your method is flawed.”
“I don’t remember asking for your opinion.”
“You didn’t.”
The shadows around Kieran’s boots thickened. No one spoke.Then Calis stepped between the edge of the ring and the two men. “The assessment is over.”
The fire instructor looked ready to argue.
Calis didn’t give him the opportunity. “Inserra, your are dismissed.”
Inserra extinguished the last flame from her hand. She passed me on her way out and slowed just enough that only I heard her. “For what it’s worth, I was trying not to hit your face.” Then she kept walking.
I didn’t know what to do with that. I stepped toward the edge of the Crucible. Whispers started before I reached it.
“They said the gates reacted to her.”
“Maybe the wards were wrong.”
“Hollowborn.”
That one I heard clearly. My spine stiffened. I kept walking. Another voice followed. “They should’ve left her beyond the Veil.”
My fingers curled.
I could see Vareena trying to reach me through the people crowding the rim, but someone else stepped into my path first.
A woman with deep brown curls and warm brown skin held out her hand. There was dirt beneath two of her fingernails despite the immaculate training uniform she wore. I stared at her hand. “I’m Emrin.”
I looked at her face. She wasn’t laughing or whispering like everyone else.
“I didn’t ask.”
“No.” Her hand remained there. “You also look like you’re about three breaths from falling over.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“I’ve been worse.” Vareena went still for half a beat, but she didn’t ask. I took her hand. Her grip was firm. She helped me over the low edge of the Crucible without making it obvious that she was helping me.
Kieran had stopped a few feet away. Up close, he was worse. Not more frightening. More irritating. His gaze moved over the burn at my shoulder, the blood on my palm, then finally my face. “You’re standing wrong.”
I stared at him. “Excuse me?”
“In the ring.” His voice was low and completely indifferent. “Your weight was on your heels. You watched her hands. You closed your eyes every time the fire came near your face.”
“I’m sorry my first experience being deliberately set on fire disappointed you.”
“It didn’t disappoint me.”
“Wonderful.”
“It confirmed what I thought.”
I shouldn’t have asked. I did anyway. “And what exactly did you think?”
His storm-colored eyes held mine. “That whatever happened in the Hollowlands had very little to do with skill.”
The words landed exactly where he intended.
My jaw clenched. “I never claimed it did.”
“No. Everyone else seems determined to do that for you.”
Vareena finally reached us. “Kieran.”
His gaze flicked to her. “Enough.”
Vareena held his gaze for a beat. The warning in hers required no words.
Then he looked back at me. His eyes dropped to the place beneath my ribs. I folded my burned arm across my ribs. His gaze lifted slowly. “Interesting.”
I hated the way he said it. “What?”
Kieran stepped closer. Every instinct I had told me to step backward. I did not. His shadow stretched between us. The rune beneath my ribs tightened. Then the shadow withdrew.
“Nothing,” he said.
“Okay.” I was ready to get the hell away from whatever this was. I side stepped him and tried to shake the feeling of him watching me as I walked away.
“Where are you going?” Vareena asked as she caught up to me.
“Far away from here.”
“Lyra—”
“I just need five minutes, Vareena.”
I didn’t wait for permission. I left the Crucible with my shoulder burning and my hand bleeding and every whisper following me until I passed beneath the first archway.
I should have gone to the infirmary. I knew that. Instead, I kept walking.
The Sanctum swallowed me quickly. One corridor became another. Pale stone changed to darker stone, then back again. I passed candidates I didn’t recognize and instructors who barely looked at me. Eventually the noise from the training grounds disappeared.
I kept going.
I wasn’t trying to find anything. At least, I didn’t think I was. I only knew I couldn’t go back to the room yet. If I saw Maia’s cloak hanging beside Vareena’s, I might start crying, and if I started crying, I wasn’t convinced I would stop.
So I walked until my shoulder throbbed with every heartbeat. Somewhere along the way, the pain beneath my ribs changed.
I slowed.
The rune was warm again. Not burning. Pulling. I pressed my hand against it. “What now?”
I took another step. The pull strengthened, like it was guiding me. I should have turned around. Instead, I followed it.
The occupied halls gave way to older corridors.
Fewer lamps. Narrower windows. Sections of stone patched with different masonry, as though this part of the Sanctum had been rebuilt and forgotten more than once.
I passed an archway choked with vines, then another where half the carvings had been worn smooth.
The pull continued.
Left.
I turned left.
Down a short flight of stairs. Right. I stopped. That was ridiculous. I had no idea where I was going. I turned around. Pain tightened beneath my ribs. I froze. Slowly, I faced the other direction.
It eased.
Then I kept walking. Rain had started by the time I crossed an open passage between buildings.
Cold drops struck my face and soaked quickly into my already ruined sleeve.
Ahead stood an older structure tucked behind the larger halls surrounding it.
Tall windows disappeared into weather-darkened stone.
Heavy doors sat beneath an arch with no name carved above it.
I knew I shouldn’t go inside. I opened the door anyways. The smell reached me first. Dust. Old parchment. Leather. The door closed behind me.
Silence settled around me. Rows of shelves stretched farther than I could see.
It was a library.
Not the bright one I had passed yesterday. This one felt older. The shelves were dark wood, some leaning beneath the weight of books that looked as though no one had touched them in decades. Light-orbs floated sparsely overhead, leaving entire aisles swallowed in shadow.
My rune pulled again. I stared into the darkness. “This is how people die.” My voice sounded too loud. I kept walking. Past one aisle. Then another. Twice, a faint scrape between the shelves stopped me. Both times, when I listened, there was only silence.
The pull became stronger. I followed it deeper.
The shelves eventually ended at a narrow stone passage I would have missed if I hadn’t been looking directly at it. There was no door. No sign marking what was inside. Only darkness beyond.
Every reasonable thought I possessed told me to leave. Apparently none of them had authority anymore. I stepped through the threshold. The passage opened into a small circular chamber.
And there, at its center, stood a pedestal.
A single book rested upon it.
I stopped where I was.
For several seconds, disappointment almost outweighed everything else. “That’s it?”
The book did nothing.
I looked behind me at the empty passage and then back to the book.
It was old. Older than anything I had ever held. Dark leather covered the binding, worn smooth along the edges and blackened in places as though it had survived a fire. A faint pulse traveled beneath the cover.
Thin blue-white lines appeared beneath the leather. One. Then another. They spread slowly across the cover like veins filling with light.
My breath caught.
Silver-blue.
The same color that had filled Edenlo. The same color that had raced through the Sanctum gates. The same color beneath my skin.
The light brightened until the rune under my ribs answered. I stepped backward. The book pulsed once, the rune with it. My heart began beating harder. I should have left. I knew that with an absolute certainty that somehow made no difference at all. Instead, I stepped closer.
The air around the pedestal felt different. It was not colder or warmer, but heavier. As though I had walked into a field immediately before a storm breaks.
I stopped within arm’s reach of it. The book hummed. Not loudly. I wasn’t even sure I heard it until I felt it, deep beneath my ribs. I lifted my hand toward it then stopped myself halfway.
This was stupid.
I had been at the Sanctum less than a day.
I had already been interrogated, examined, burned, humiliated, and followed an unexplained sensation into an abandoned section of a library.
Touching the ancient glowing book seemed excessive.
The light beneath its cover pulsed again. My fingers moved closer. “Fine.”
I touched it and the world disappeared.