Chapter 25 #4
She crossed to the basin and washed the blood from her hands.
For several minutes, neither of us spoke.
I leaned back against the wall behind my bed and stared at the ceiling while six faces waited behind my eyes.
The Hollowborn. The Warrior. The Broken.
The Mourner. Shadow. The Queen. Me. I could still feel the moment the sword had left my hand.
One survives. No. I didn’t know where that certainty had come from, only that the moment I understood it, everything else had become simple.
The Crucible had wanted me to choose. I had refused.
I wasn’t one of those women. I was all the things that could make them.
Every choice that had come before them and every choice that hadn’t happened yet.
The Codex had been quiet since the projection collapsed.
I didn’t know whether I was grateful or angry. Or both.
Vareena wrung out the bloodied cloth. “What did it feel like?”
I looked at her.
She nodded toward my hip. “The Shadow. When that version of you appeared.”
I considered lying. Then remembered who I was talking to. “It wanted her.”
Vareena’s brow furrowed. “What did?”
“My magic.” I looked down at my hands. “It reacted to her. Like it recognized her.”
“What about your Light?”
“No.”
That answer bothered me more now than it had inside the Crucible.
Vareena came to sit beside me. “What do you think that means?”
“I have no idea.”
“Do you think she was you?”
I stared at the opposite wall. “I think they all were.”
The words felt strange once they were outside my head.
Vareena was quiet for a moment. “Even the crown?”
I groaned. “Can we never discuss the crown?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Vareena.”
“You appeared in front of half the Sanctum wearing a silver crown made of starlight.”
“I did not appear wearing anything. An evil future version of me did.”
“You just said she wasn’t evil.”
“Why are you listening so closely?”
“Because your contradictions entertain me.”
I leaned my head back against the wall. “Wonderful.”
Her smile lasted only a moment. Then she looked toward the locked door. “Halos was waiting for a reaction.”
“You saw that too?”
“I have eyes.”
My stomach tightened. “The Shadow?”
“Maybe.” I turned toward her. She was quiet for a second before continuing. “I don’t think he knows what he’s looking for yet. He knows your Light doesn’t explain everything he’s seen, and today he kept pushing because he wanted whatever else is there to show itself.”
Cold settled beneath my skin. “He suspects me.”
“He suspects there’s more.”
“That’s not better.”
“No.” Vareena looked at me. “But it matters. If Halos knew you had Shadow, that conversation would have happened very differently.”
I thought of the way he had looked at me. One of the manifestations wielded Shadow. “He’s going to keep looking.”
“Yes.”
There was no point pretending otherwise.
“And if he finds proof?”
Vareena hesitated. “Great.”
“He doesn’t have proof now.”
“He has a Shadow version of me crawling out of the Crucible.”
“He also has one wearing a crown and another dressed like a village healer. Unless he intends to accuse you of secretly being six different people, projections aren’t proof.”
I looked at her. “You’ve thought about this.”
“I started thinking about it approximately three seconds after the Shadow version appeared.”
“You were scared.”
“Terrified.”
The answer came without hesitation. I looked at her.
Vareena shrugged one shoulder. “Not of you.”
My throat tightened. I looked away before she could see it. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Be nice to me.”
“I take it back. You looked awful.”
“Better.”
She stood. “You need to sleep.”
“I need a bath.”
“You need both.”
“I smell like blood.”
“You smell worse than blood.” She gathered the ruined leathers from the floor and shoved them into an empty laundry sack. I watched her tie it closed.
“Are you actually burning those?”
“Absolutely.”
“I was joking.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Those were expensive.”
“They have three separate holes in them.”
“One was already there.”
“That does not help your argument.”
She set the sack beside the door. “I’m going to get food.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You lost enough blood today to qualify as a public health concern.”
“I did not nearly bleed to death.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“You were thinking it dramatically.”
“I was.”
I closed my eyes. “Bring bread.”
“I was going to.”
“And cheese.”
“Obviously.”
“And—”
“Anything else, Your Majesty?”
My eyes opened. Vareena froze. Then winced. “Too soon?”
“Significantly.”
“Sorry.”
I grabbed the nearest pillow and threw it at her. She caught it against her chest.
“Your aim is improving.”
“Get out.”
She laughed and tossed the pillow back onto the bed. At the door, she paused with one hand resting on the latch. “You did well today.”
That hurt more than I expected. I looked down at my hands. “I killed myself six times.”
“Technically five.”
I stared at her. “The Queen exploded herself.”
“That isn’t better.”
“No.”
A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth before disappearing. For a moment, she just looked at me. “For what it’s worth, I liked this one.”
“This what?”
She pointed at me. “The one who came out.”
Before I could think of anything sufficiently insulting to say, she slipped through the door and pulled it closed behind her. The lock clicked into place.