Chapter 25 #2
She wasn’t wrong. One of them was kneeling beside the blackened fracture running through the wardstone, speaking urgently to another keeper while both made a point of staying well clear of it.
Mistress Calis descended from the platform. “Enough.”
Lidia laughed, but there was nothing amused about it. “Is it?”
A beat of dangerous silence followed. Raiden stood. Heat rolled outward from him, enough to distort the air around his body.
Kaiz noticed immediately. “Quillfin.”
Raiden didn’t look at him.
“Stand down.”
“Make me.”
Oh, gods.
Lidia caught the back of Raiden’s bracer before he could take a step toward the platform. His head snapped toward her. “Not yet,” she said.
Those words crawled over my skin. Not yet. The Codex had said the same thing before. I waited for its voice. Nothing came. Apparently ancient magical books were excellent company only when they felt like it.
Dax helped Emrin settle back onto the stone, then straightened. “I’m curious.”
That was somehow worse than if he had shouted.
Master Rhovan sighed. “Daxeran.”
“No, genuinely.” Dax gestured toward the fractured wardline.
“My projection tried to tear half my face off. I walked out without a scratch. My sister goes through hers after the Crucible starts breaking, and she’s still bleeding.
Lidia’s still bleeding. Lyra is lying in a puddle of her own blood.
” His eyes moved to Halos. “At what point during all of that did we decide everything was functioning well enough to continue?”
No one answered him. Dax nodded slowly. “Right.”
“Balethorn,” Halos warned.
A smile touched Dax’s mouth, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Just trying to understand the educational value.”
Neseryn stood several paces behind him. She wasn’t looking at me.
She was looking at Dax. Her violet-rimmed gaze moved over the rigid set of his shoulders, then toward Emrin behind him.
He had positioned himself between his sister and the platform without seeming to realize he had done it.
For half a heartbeat, her detachment slipped.
It returned before I could decide what had replaced it. Then her attention moved to me.
The healer finished wrapping my thigh and sat back. “You need to be taken to the infirmary.”
“No.”
Her brows rose.
Vareena answered before I could say anything else. “She said no.”
“This isn’t optional. We don’t know the extent of the residual damage.”
“Then perhaps the Sanctum should have considered that before ordering the wards reset after they began failing.”
The healer’s mouth tightened. “Lady Kamari—”
“Stop calling me that.”
The healer fell silent. Then a shadow fell across us. Not magic. Halos. Vareena’s fingers went rigid around mine. He stopped several feet away and looked down at me. Up close, I could see the pale lines age had carved around his eyes. “What did you see?”
For a second, I genuinely thought I had misunderstood him. “What?”
“Inside the second projection. What did you see?”
A laugh escaped me before I could stop it. Pain ripped through my ribs, and I immediately regretted it. “Three of us are bleeding from injuries that weren’t supposed to exist, and that’s your first question?”
A flicker of impatience crossed his eyes. “What did you see, Alerain?”
I pushed myself onto my elbows. Vareena tried to stop me, but I ignored her. “You were watching. I thought that was the point.”
Calis had come closer now. “Lyra.”
There was a warning in my name. I didn’t care.
Halos’s gaze never left mine. “The Crucible manifested six variations of you.”
“Thank you. I was there.”
Someone made a strangled sound behind us. Dax, probably.
Halos continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “One of those manifestations wielded Shadow.”
There it was. The rune hidden beneath my clothes seemed to pulse at the word. Vareena’s fingers tightened around mine. I forced myself not to look at Kieran. “So?”
Halos studied me. “So?”
“One of them was wearing a crown. Should I start packing for a palace?”
This time someone definitely choked. Dax. Definitely Dax.
Halos didn’t so much as blink. “The Shadow manifestation responded differently to you.”
My pulse stumbled. “Everything in there responded differently to me.”
“You stopped wielding Light when it appeared.”
I stared at him. Cold settled through me.
He had been waiting. The first projection had found the wound.
The second had shoved its fingers into it until my control gave way.
The cradle. The woman. The six versions of me.
Every time I survived what the Crucible threw at me, Halos had increased the pressure.
He wanted to see what happened when Light wasn’t enough.
Maybe he didn’t know about the Shadow. Maybe he didn’t even know what he was searching for. But he knew there was more.
“You ordered another projection after the first one damaged the wards.” I forced myself upright despite the pain tearing through my thigh.
Vareena moved with me, one hand braced behind my back.
“You increased the pressure after the Crucible stopped behaving the way it was supposed to, and then you let it keep going when the injuries became real.”
Halos’s eyes sharpened.
I looked around the ring at the fractured wardstones, Emrin’s bloody hands, Lidia’s temple, and the bandage around my thigh already beginning to stain red. Then I looked back at him. “You wanted to see what happened when you pushed me past breaking.”
The Crucible went quiet. Halos said nothing. I nodded toward the ruined wardline. “Now you know.”
For a long moment, he only looked at me. Then the faintest trace of satisfaction surfaced. My stomach turned. That was the problem with men like him. Even defiance became information if you gave them enough of it. “Take her to the infirmary.”
He turned away.
“That’s it?” The words were out before I could stop them.
Halos paused.
Every sensible part of me screamed to shut up, but apparently none of those parts were in control anymore. “You nearly killed us because you wanted an answer.” I swallowed against the blood coating my tongue. “Did you get one?”
His head turned slightly, not enough to face me. “No.”
Then he walked away. A chill moved through me as I watched him go because he wasn’t finished. I knew it, and somehow I thought he wanted me to know it too.
“Asshole,” Lidia muttered.
“Lidia,” Emrin said.
“What? We’re all thinking it.”
“We’re thinking it quieter.”
“Cowards.”
The healer beside me sighed. “I need you to stand.”
Vareena waved her away. “I’ll take her.”
“She needs further examination. We don’t know what happens when projection injuries become corporeal.”
I stared at her. “Corporeal?”
The healer looked like she immediately regretted using the word.
Vareena stood. “I’ll bring her back if anything changes.”
“Lady Kamari—”
“She isn’t staying here.” There was enough finality in her voice that the healer finally gave up.
Vareena hooked my arm over her shoulders, and someone took my other side.
For one stupid second, I thought it might be Kieran.
It was Dax. Together, they pulled me upright.
The world tilted violently, and my injured leg folded before I could put my weight on it.
Vareena swore.
Dax tightened his grip around me. “Easy.”
Across the Crucible, my eyes betrayed me.
Kieran was still there. The same blond Shadow wielder stood beside him, speaking quietly.
Kieran hadn’t reacted when I nearly fell, when Vareena caught me, or when blood soaked through the fresh bandage around my thigh.
Nothing. Then his gaze met mine and everything else disappeared.
I waited. I didn’t even know what I was waiting for.
A step toward me, maybe. Some indication that the man who had followed me into the Archives and warned me that my own magic could destroy me gave a damn whether the Sanctum had nearly done it first. He gave me nothing.
Then he looked back toward the Shadow wielder beside him.
Resentment twisted beneath my ribs. Kieran Nyxara could go fuck himself.
We made it halfway across the Crucible before Neseryn stepped into our path.
Dax’s grip tightened around me. “Not now.”
Neseryn ignored him completely. Her attention settled on me, and up close those violet-rimmed eyes were worse.
Too observant. Too patient. Her gaze moved over the blood at my mouth, the bandage around my thigh and the tear in my sleeve before drifting lower toward my left side.
Vareena shifted. Barely. Her body blocked the angle.
Neseryn noticed. I knew she noticed because those eyes missed absolutely nothing, but she didn’t comment. “Interesting collection of futures.”
“I wasn’t exactly taking requests.”
“Pity. I had suggestions.”
Despite everything, I managed, “I’m sure you did.”
Her gaze flicked toward the ruined Crucible behind us. “The one in Shadow suited you.”
My heart gave one hard beat. Dax went still beside me. Vareena didn’t. I managed a thin smile. “The mourning clothes were more your color.”
For half a heartbeat, Neseryn looked surprised. Then her mouth curved. Not kindly, but not cruelly either. Interested. “Perhaps.”
She stepped aside. Dax helped me forward, but we had barely passed her when she spoke again. “Though I don’t think the Crucible was showing you costumes.”
My step faltered. Dax steadied me. I looked back. Neseryn was already walking away. I could feel her attention long after we disappeared beneath the archway.
Vareena did exactly what she had promised. She got me back to our room, bullied a healer into giving her enough supplies to stock a battlefield, ordered Dax to take his sister to the infirmary, and somehow convinced Lidia that murdering Halos tonight would be inconvenient.
“I said tomorrow,” Lidia argued from the doorway.
“You said after dinner.”
“I get hungry when I’m homicidal.”
Raiden leaned against the wall behind her while Dax stood with one arm around Emrin. She looked exhausted. He looked murderous. “Come on,” he told her.