Chapter 19 #2
Emrin smacked Dax’s chest with the back of her hand. “Honestly, what were you thinking?” “Truthfully?” Dax said.
“She’s terrifying.”
Raiden blinked. “And?”
“I’ve always had questionable judgment.”
“She threatened Lyra.”
Dax’s eyes remained on the archway. “She was just putting on a show.”
Vareena stared at him. “You genuinely are unwell.”
“I’ve said that for years,” Emrin muttered. Their voices softened into the movement of the courtyard, but I kept watching the place where Neseryn had disappeared. The skin beneath my ribs throbbed.
Once.
Twice.
A pulse that did not belong to my light. Vareena stepped into my line of sight. “You all right?”
“Yeah, I’m okay.” The lie came too quickly.
Her dark eyes narrowed. “You really don’t look okay, Lyra.” Another pulse rippled beneath my ribs. It spread lower this time, slipping beneath my waist like icy fingers tracing the curve of my hip. I sucked in a quiet breath.
No. Not here. Not now.
The ache sharpened. Not an ache. A burn. It carved across my side, hot and cold all at once, as though someone had pressed molten silver beneath my skin while ice seeped into the wound. My fingers twitched instinctively toward my left hip. I stopped myself just before they made contact.
“Lyra?” Vareena’s voice sounded farther away than it should have. The courtyard blurred at the edges. Sunlight fractured across the pale stone, too bright against the darkness steadily gathering beneath my skin.
“I’m fine,” I said again. Even I heard how thin it sounded.
Raiden’s attention fixed on me. “You’re pale.”
“I’m always pale.”
“Not like that,” Raiden said. The burning sharpened. A line of agony cut from beneath my lowest rib toward the crest of my hip, precise as the edge of a knife. My breath caught before I could hide it. The pain curled inward, following the shape of bone, then sank lower.
Too low.
I pressed my arm against my side, disguising the movement as I folded it across my middle.
It did nothing. The pain continued to spread beneath the waistband of my leathers, wrapping around my hip in a slow, merciless arc.
Every inch it traveled left a weight beneath my skin.
Not heat. Not pain. Presence. Like ink poured directly into my veins.
Vareena reached for me. I stepped back before she could touch me.
The movement was too quick. Everyone noticed.
Her hand fell between us. “Seriously, what’s wrong, Lyra?”
“Nothing.”
“Stop saying that.”
“I just need air.”
Dax glanced around the open courtyard. “We’re outside.”
“I need different air.”
Raiden frowned. “What does that even mean?”
Another blade of pain sliced downward. My knees nearly buckled. I caught the edge of the fountain with one hand and forced myself upright before anyone could move toward me. Water spilled over the stone beneath my palm, cold against my skin. The shadows below the fountain stirred.
Not Neseryn’s.
Mine.
They trembled across the ground in thin black strands, twisting toward my boots before the morning light swallowed them. I stared. No one else seemed to have noticed. Yet. Panic surged through me hard enough to clear the haze.
I needed to get away from them. Now. “I forgot something in my room.”
Emrin’s brows drew together. “What?”
“My notes. I forgot to grab them”
“Notes? For combat forms?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t take notes to combat forms.”
“I should start.” Dax watched me with an unsettling lack of humor. He knew I was lying. They all did.
Vareena stepped closer, lowering her voice.
“Lyra, tell me what’s happening.” I wanted to.
So badly, I wanted to. But I couldn’t. Not here.
Not with candidates moving around us and instructors crossing between the halls.
Not with Neseryn’s insult still hanging in the air and the secret beneath my skin tearing itself into existence.
My first rune had nearly broken me when it appeared.
I remembered light splitting across my ribs.
An ancient script carving itself into my flesh.
Maia’s blood. Edenlo burning. Power awakening inside me while everything I had ever known died around it.
This felt worse. The starlight rune had burned. This devoured.
“I need a moment,” I said.
Vareena’s face softened. That nearly undid me. “You don’t have to hide every wound from us.”
I swallowed against the iron gathering beneath my tongue. “I know.” My grip tightened against the fountain until the stone bit into my palm.
“Lyra,” Raiden said. This time there was no teasing in his voice. I pushed away from the fountain and turned before they could stop me. Every step sent pain lancing through my hip.
I kept walking.
Not too quickly. Running would draw attention.
Stumbling would draw more. I crossed the courtyard with my shoulders straight and my arm held rigidly against my side.
The Hall of Theory loomed ahead, its dark entrance swallowing candidates beneath carved arches, but I veered away from it toward the eastern passage.
My room was in the opposite direction. Vareena would realize that within seconds.
I didn’t look back.
The instant the courtyard disappeared behind the colonnade, I broke into a run.
My boots struck hard against the stone. Light poured through narrow windows in alternating bands, flashing across my vision.
I passed two Light candidates and an instructor carrying a stack of worn training texts. Someone called my name.
I didn’t stop.
The pain crawled lower. It curved around the front of my hip now, dragging toward the hollow beside my pelvis.
A shape forming where no shape had been before.
Each new line arrived with a tearing sensation that made my stomach heave.
I ducked into an empty stairwell and slammed one hand against the wall.
The stone was cold, freezing and somehow not cold enough.
My breath came in ragged, shallow pulls.
Sweat gathered at the base of my neck despite the chill spreading through me.
I looked down.
Nothing showed through the black leather. For one desperate second, I wondered if I had imagined it. If Neseryn’s shadows had merely unsettled my own magic like her words in the Crucible. If the pain would pass. Then the movement came again. Not across my skin. Beneath it.
A black shimmer slid over my hip and vanished.
I bit down on a cry. The nearest door stood half-open.
I shoved through it. A deserted preparation chamber waited beyond, lined with empty weapon hooks and narrow wooden benches.
Dust floated through a shaft of light from the high window.
I locked the door, though the simple iron latch would do little against anyone determined to enter.
My hands shook as I reached for the buckles at my waist. The first refused to open. “Come on.”
My fingers slipped.
The pain surged again. I tore the fastening loose hard enough to rip one of the leather ties and shoved the waistband down over my left hip.
My breath stopped. The shadow rune began near the hollow of my waist as a small black curl, almost delicate at first. A wisp of ink.
A flourish of smoke. Then it widened. Thin, intricate lines twisted together across the upper curve of my hip, dark as spilled ink at their center and edged in silver whenever the light struck them.
They formed sweeping loops and thorn-like curls, broken by tiny points that resembled the remains of shattered stars.
Not constellations.
Their ruin.
One long stroke curved toward the front of my body, disappearing beneath the loosened leather as it reached toward the hollow space beside my pelvis.
Smaller tendrils branched from it. Some delicate as lace.
Others sharpened into hooked, smoke-dark points.
The entire marking seemed to move even while it remained still, the black strokes shifting like shadow trapped beneath glass.
It was beautiful. It was wrong. The two runes almost met.
Almost.
Only a narrow strip of bare skin remained between them, as though light and darkness had reached an invisible boundary and refused to cross it.
The starlight rune flickered silver-blue.
Below it, the shadow rune deepened as a fresh black tendril curled across my hip.
Agony exploded through me. I clamped both hands over my mouth, but the scream escaped anyway.
My knees struck stone. Shadows poured from beneath the benches and weapon racks, racing toward me.
“No.” They climbed my boots, cold mist winding around my calves and waist. The dark lines beneath my skin pulsed.
Once.
The room dimmed.
Twice.
Sunlight vanished.
By the third pulse, every shadow in the chamber had risen.
They waited. Listening. Kieran had told me shadows responded to fear, instinct, desire.
But I wasn’t controlling these. They had come because some part of me had called them.
My starlight rune flared. Silver burst beneath my ribs, scattering the shadows against the walls.
Light burned upward. Darkness dragged down.
I folded over as pain tore through my side. “Stop.” Neither listened.
Kieran.
The thought was half mine, half the Codex’s, our voices meeting so completely inside my mind that for one terrible moment, they became one. He was the only person who knew.
Go to him, Starborn.
And so I did.