Chapter 31 #2
Candidates moved around us toward the stairs. Neither of us did. It had been like this since the Crucible. Before, Neseryn had looked at me as though I were an inconvenience she intended to remove. Now she looked at me like I was a question she hadn’t found the answer to. I preferred the hatred.
“What?” I asked.
Her eyes moved over my face. “Nothing.”
“You nearly knocked my books onto the floor for nothing?”
“You’re still standing.”
“Your concern is overwhelming.”
A flicker of amusement touched her mouth. It disappeared quickly.
“I heard they’ve started calling you Starborn.”
Emrin stiffened. There it was. The word followed me everywhere now. I shifted the books against my chest.
“People here apparently need better hobbies.”
“You don’t believe it?”
“I don’t know what I believe.”
Neseryn studied me. “That might be the first intelligent thing you’ve said.”
“Careful. That almost sounded like a compliment.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Devastating.”
I started around her. Neseryn caught the edge of one of my books before I passed. Not enough to take it from me. Enough to stop me. I looked down at her hand. Then at her.
“Do you mind?”
Her fingers remained on the leather cover. “Halos has been asking questions about you.”
That stopped me. Emrin’s posture changed beside me.
“What kind of questions?”
Neseryn released the book. “The kind he asks when he’s decided something belongs to him.”
A chill crawled over my skin. “I don’t belong to Halos.”
“I’m sure he’ll be devastated to hear it.”
There she was. I shifted the books higher against my chest.
“How would you know what he’s asking?”
“Because he asked me.”
That caught me completely off guard. “What?”
Neseryn leaned one shoulder against the stone column beside us, apparently in no hurry despite the stream of candidates moving around her. “He wanted to know what I saw during our match.”
The Crucible. Not Halos’s projections. Mine and Neseryn’s fight weeks ago. My stomach tightened.
“What did you tell him?”
“The truth.”
Emrin gave a quiet, humorless laugh. “That sounds reassuring.”
Neseryn’s violet-rimmed eyes moved to her. It was the first time she had really looked at Emrin instead of simply registering her presence.
“You’re Dax’s sister.”
Emrin went still. “Yes.”
“I thought so.”
The particular weight she gave the words made me look between them. Emrin apparently heard it too.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Nothing.”
Neseryn’s attention returned to me. I almost asked. Almost. Then I realized she was waiting for me to. So I didn’t.
“What truth did you tell Halos?”
“That you lost control.”
My jaw tightened. “You seemed pretty convinced I cheated at the time.”
“I was angry.”
The admission came so easily I nearly missed its significance.
“And now?”
Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Now I know you had no idea what you were doing.”
Emrin shifted beside me. Neseryn’s attention moved to her. It lingered.
“You were in the ring.”
Emrin nodded. “I was.”
“When it happened?”
“Yes.”
Neseryn studied her for another moment. “What did you see?”
The question surprised me. Apparently Emrin too, because she took a second before answering.
“Lyra.”
Neseryn waited. “That’s all?”
“That’s all you need.”
A brief shift passed over Neseryn’s face. Approval, maybe. It was gone before I could be sure. Her gaze dropped to Emrin’s bandaged hand again.
“What happened?”
Emrin glanced down as if she had forgotten about it. “Archive shelf.”
I nearly choked. Neseryn looked at her. Emrin looked back. Neither blinked.
“An archive shelf,” Neseryn repeated.
“Yes.”
“What kind?”
“The heavy kind.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. Neseryn’s eyes shifted to me. I did my best to look innocent. She wasn’t fooled. Her attention returned to the bandage.
“Shelves are getting vicious.”
Emrin’s face remained perfectly straight. “You should see the tables.”
A beat passed. Neseryn looked at me again. I expected another question. Instead, she said, “If Halos asks you about the match, don’t assume he wants to know what happened.”
I frowned. “What does that mean?”
“It means he already knows what happened.”
Neseryn stepped past me. I turned.
“Then what does he want?”
She kept walking. “To see if you lie.”
The crowd swallowed her before I could ask anything else. I stood there staring after her. Emrin waited beside me.
“What the fuck was that?”
“I don’t know.”
That was becoming an increasingly common answer. I looked down the corridor where Neseryn had disappeared. Halos had asked her about our match. Not the Crucible as a whole. Not what she’d seen in her own projection. Me. The next bell rang somewhere above us. Emrin groaned.
“I have foundation work.”
“So do I, with Vareena.”
We started toward the central stair. Halfway there, Emrin stopped.
“What?”
She nodded toward the lower gallery. Kieran stood near one of the open arches.
He wasn’t alone. The man beside him was blond.
The same Shadow wielder who had been with him after my projection.
I remembered him because I’d been bleeding through my clothes while Kieran stood across the Crucible talking to him.
A ridiculous reason to dislike someone. Apparently I was keeping it.
“You know him?” I asked.
Emrin followed my gaze. “Eiryx Lark.”
Down in the gallery, Eiryx spoke too quietly for his words to reach us.
Kieran answered without looking at him. We continued down the stairs.
Kieran looked up before we reached the bottom.
His attention found me first. That was becoming a problem.
Yesterday came back too easily. His hands around my face.
We come back. You promise? Yes. Then his eyes shifted toward Emrin.
Toward the bandage around her hand. The blond man noticed the movement.
His gaze followed. There was nothing casual about the way he looked at people.
Kieran watched like he expected danger. Eiryx watched like he had already found it and was deciding whether it mattered.
Emrin slowed beside me. Kieran pushed away from the arch.
His eyes moved over my face. Just once. Enough to make me aware that we had not discussed yesterday since leaving the archives.
The promise. The record. The fact that at several points I had nearly forgotten Vareena was standing within arm’s reach of us.
I tightened my grip on my books. Kieran looked toward the man beside him.
“Lyra. Eiryx Lark.”
Eiryx’s eyes met mine. “Alerain.”
So this was Eiryx. Up close, he looked nothing like the louder Shadow candidates I had begun recognizing around the Sanctum.
No collection of silver rings. No ornamental knives arranged somewhere obvious enough for people to notice them.
His black leathers were plain, fitted for movement rather than display.
Pale blond hair fell untidily across his forehead.
A single knife sat at his hip. That was somehow more concerning than six.
“Emrin Balethorn,” Kieran added.
“I know.”
Emrin’s brows rose. Eiryx glanced at the bandage around her hand.
“Archive shelf?”
I stopped breathing. Emrin looked at me. I looked at Kieran. Kieran looked at Eiryx. Eiryx appeared to realize, approximately one second too late, that he had revealed knowledge he was not supposed to have. My stomach dropped.
“How do you know that?”
Eiryx’s gaze returned to mine. “Know what?”
“Don’t.”
His mouth closed. The gallery suddenly felt too open. Candidates crossed the far end beneath the arches. Two Aurora instructors stood talking near the stairwell. Somewhere below us, a group of first-years spilled from a training chamber. Too many people. I lowered my voice.
“How much do you know?”
Kieran stepped closer. “Lyra.”
I looked at him. That was enough. The cold in my stomach spread. “No.” The denial I wanted from him never came. “How much does he know?”
Eiryx looked between us but said nothing.
Kieran did. “He knows I’ve been training you.”
My grip tightened around the books.
Kieran’s jaw shifted. “He knows why.”
Everything inside me went still. For a heartbeat, I couldn’t make sense of the words. Then I could. My eyes went to Eiryx. He knew. “How long?”
“A few weeks,” Kieran said.
A few weeks. I almost laughed. Instead, I looked over my shoulder.
Nobody seemed to be watching us. That meant nothing.
Neseryn had found me less than ten minutes ago and told me Halos was asking questions.
Now I was standing in a public gallery learning that someone I had never spoken to had known my most dangerous secret for weeks.
“Who else?”
“No one,” Kieran said.
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“How?”
“Because I told him.”
That was somehow worse. I looked at Kieran.
“You told him.”
“Yes.”
The anger arrived quickly enough to burn through the fear.
“I wouldn’t have told him if I didn’t trust him.”
“You trusted him.”
“Yes.”
“What about me?”
Kieran went still. Eiryx’s attention shifted away from us. Emrin’s did not. I stepped closer to Kieran.
“That was mine to tell.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Because you’re doing a terrible job of showing it.”
His voice dropped. “Keep your voice down.”
I nearly laughed in his face. “You don’t get to tell me to keep my voice down right now.”
“No. But unless you want everyone in this gallery hearing what we’re discussing, I’m asking you to.”
Fuck him for being right. I looked away. One of the Aurora instructors had begun moving toward the eastern corridor. I lowered my voice.
“Why?”
Kieran glanced at Eiryx. Then back at me.
“Because I can’t always be where you are.”
I frowned. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“I asked him to keep an eye on you.”
Silence. I stared at him.
“You what?”
Eiryx rubbed a hand over his jaw. Kieran didn’t look remotely embarrassed.
“I asked him to watch for trouble when I couldn’t.”
“Watch me?”
“Watch for trouble.”
“That distinction is not helping you.”
“I didn’t expect it to.”