Chapter 25
LYRA
The first thing I felt was stone beneath my back. The second was Vareena’s hands on me, one braced against my shoulder and the other somewhere near my wrist. The third was pain, and that was what finally dragged me all the way back because the pain wasn’t supposed to be there.
“Lyra.” Her voice came from somewhere above me, sharper than I had ever heard it.
I opened my eyes and immediately regretted it.
Daylight flooded my vision, painfully bright after the bruised darkness of the projection, and for several seconds I could only stare at the blue sky above the Crucible and wonder where the broken ceiling had gone.
Then I remembered. The ruined hall. The cradle.
The six versions of myself. The sword sliding into flesh that had my face.
The Shadow version standing across from me as though she had understood a truth I hadn’t.
The Crucible came back around me piece by piece, along with hundreds of faces staring down into the ring.
“There you are.” Vareena leaned over me, and the fear on her face made my stomach turn. “Don’t move.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“Good.”
“I might never move again.” Usually that would have earned a reaction from her.
A smile, an insult, at the very least an irritated roll of her eyes.
This time she only looked down the length of my body, and that was when I realized what was wrong.
I could still feel everything. My thigh throbbed where the Warrior’s blade had opened it.
My upper arm burned, my ribs hurt badly enough that breathing felt like work, and when I swallowed, I tasted blood from where my lip had split against my teeth.
The injuries should have been gone. I had watched candidates limp out of projections all morning only to straighten the moment the wards released them.
Dax had taken a shard of stone across the cheek during his group’s assessment.
I had seen the blood. I had seen the cut.
By the time he returned to the Earth line, there hadn’t been so much as a mark left behind.
I looked down. Blood had soaked through the leather around my thigh and spread onto the stone beneath me. “Vareena.”
“I know.” The way she said it killed every question I might have asked.
A few feet away, one of the wardkeepers was crouched beside the fractured line running through the Crucible.
He reached toward it, and a black spark snapped from the stone hard enough to make him jerk his hand back. “Don’t touch the wardline,” he shouted.
Another keeper hurried toward him. “It didn’t release?”
“No.” The words spread through the ring faster than they should have.
Candidates began whispering. Overseers who had been standing calmly on the platform were suddenly moving, and the Sanctum healers waiting near the eastern arch rushed into the Crucible with their satchels already open.
Someone started swearing to my right. Lidia.
Strangely, that helped. If Lidia was cursing, she was alive.
I turned my head and found her sitting several yards away with one knee drawn toward her chest. Blood ran from a cut at her temple, tracing a line down the side of her face while a healer stared at it as though she couldn’t understand what she was seeing.
“This should have cleared when the ward dropped.”
Lidia wiped at the blood and looked at the red smear across her fingers. “Well, it didn’t.”
Raiden was beside her almost immediately. He crouched and reached for her face.
She slapped his hand away. “Don’t.”
“You hit a fucking column.”
“I noticed.”
“That wasn’t supposed to stay.”
Lidia looked at him then, and whatever answer she’d been about to give disappeared. Her gaze moved back to the blood on her fingers. “No,” she said quietly. “It wasn’t.”
Emrin was closer to me. She sat with both palms turned upward while Dax knelt in front of her.
Angry red wounds crossed her hands where the roots had torn through them, and one side of her leathers was dark with blood.
Dax’s cheek was completely clean. The wound from his projection was gone.
Emrin’s weren’t. He seemed to realize it at the same moment I did. “Where else?”
“Dax.”
“Where are you hurt?”
“I’m okay.”
“That isn’t what I asked.” There was no humor in his voice.
Emrin looked at him for a moment before giving up. “My ribs, mostly. The ground kicked back when I tried to hold the wardline.”
Dax’s eyes dropped toward her side. “Can you breathe?”
“Yes.”
“Properly?”
“Enough.”
“That also wasn’t what I asked.”
She gave him a tired look. “Yes, Dax. I can breathe.”
He nodded, but he didn’t look relieved. His attention moved past her instead, settling somewhere behind me with a stillness that made me turn to see what he was looking at.
Magister Halos hadn’t left the platform.
Everyone else seemed to be looking at the broken wardstones or the blood that shouldn’t exist, but he was looking at me.
My stomach turned. I looked away from him and toward the Shadow candidates.
Finding Kieran took less than a second. He stood near the edge of the Crucible exactly where he had when the projection collapsed, one hand resting against the stone barrier.
His knuckles were white. Our eyes met, and for one stupid heartbeat, I felt relieved.
He had tried to stop it. End the projection.
I remembered his voice cutting across the ring when the darkness around my feet had shifted.
I remembered the shadows gathering around him when Halos ordered us to continue.
He had known the Crucible was going wrong before anyone else had been willing to admit it.
Now he knew I was alive. He still didn’t move.
A blond Shadow wielder standing beside him spoke too quietly for me to hear, and Kieran turned his head to answer.
That small bit of relief vanished so quickly it embarrassed me.
Apparently nearly being murdered by six versions of myself earned me one fucking glance.
I planted my palm against the stone and tried to sit up. Vareena pushed me straight back down. “No.”
“Vareena.”
“I mean it.”
“I’m lying in my own blood.”
“Yes, Lyra. I’m well aware.” Two healers reached us before I could argue. One dropped beside my injured thigh while the other looked over the blood soaking through my leathers and frowned. “What caused this?”
I stared at her. “Which part?”
She apparently decided I wasn’t worth answering and reached for the buckles at my waist.
Vareena caught her wrist. “Don’t.”
The healer blinked at her. “Lady Kamari—”
I looked between them. “Lady?”
Vareena ignored me completely. “Her thigh first.”
“We need to assess all residual injuries. If the ward failed to release the projection properly, there may be damage we can’t see.”
That sentence turned my stomach. “The ward failed to do what?”
Again, neither of them answered me. The healer reached for my waist a second time, and Vareena shifted slightly between us.
It was such a small movement that anyone else might have thought she was making room.
I knew better. Her eyes met mine. She didn’t need to ask. “Thigh,” I murmured. “Shoulder. Ribs.”
Her gaze lowered. “How low?”
“Too low.”
Understanding flashed across her face. The Shadow rune sat beneath the left side of my clothes, close enough to the injury at my ribs that any healer examining me properly would find it. “Her left side is bruised,” Vareena said. “I already checked it.”
I stared at her. The lie came so easily I almost admired it.
The healer frowned. “You aren’t trained to assess residual ward trauma.”
“My grandmother was a healer for the Elyndorian throne. I know the difference between bruising and an open wound.”
Apparently Lady Kamari had uses. The healer looked irritated, but she turned her attention toward my thigh.
Vareena’s hand slipped beneath mine while the woman cut through the torn leather around the wound.
Her fingers squeezed once. I squeezed back.
Not long ago, I had been terrified of Vareena seeing what was beneath my clothes.
Now she was lying to a Sanctum healer without blinking to make sure no one else did.
The healer pressed a folded pad against my thigh. I nearly kicked her in the face.
Across the ring, Lidia’s voice rose. “Don’t fucking touch me.”
Her healer pulled back.
Raiden closed his eyes. “Lidia.”
“No. I am done being handled by people wearing Sanctum colors today.”
“You need stitches.”
“I need Halos’s head on a fucking spike.” The candidates nearest her went silent.
Master Kaiz descended from the platform. “Inserra.”
Lidia looked at him. He looked back. For perhaps the first time since I’d met her, Lidia appeared to seriously consider whether setting an instructor on fire would be worth the consequences.
“He knew.” Emrin’s voice wasn’t loud, but it carried far enough that everyone around us heard it.
Dax turned toward her. She wasn’t looking at him. She was staring at Halos. “He knew the wards were failing.”
Halos finally moved, coming to the edge of the platform. “The Crucible produced an anomalous response.”
“That isn’t what I said.” Emrin pushed herself upright.
Dax stood with her immediately, one hand moving toward her elbow when she swayed.
This time, she let him keep it there. “The injuries didn’t release.
Mine didn’t. Lidia’s didn’t. Lyra’s didn’t.
Every other projection released its damage when the wards came down.
” She raised her bleeding palms. “These are real.”
A murmur rolled through the candidates. Halos waited for it to die. “The wardkeepers were monitoring the structural integrity of the ring.”
“The wardkeepers look terrified,” Lidia snapped.