Chapter 34 #4
Vareena fell into step beside me. We barely spoke on the way back.
The Sanctum hadn’t gone to sleep. Candidates still crossed the upper walkways.
Somewhere above the central rotunda, someone laughed hard enough that another voice told them to shut up.
Two Pyra candidates hurried past carrying towels and smelling faintly of smoke.
It bothered me that everything looked the same.
I didn’t know what I expected. Maybe the towers should have shifted.
The stars should have been different. The world should have acknowledged that I had walked into the western archives with no idea who my mother was and left knowing that her name had once belonged to an entire kingdom.
Instead, a candidate ahead of us complained that someone had stolen his soap.
Vareena glanced at me. I started laughing.
I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t particularly happy.
She didn’t ask why. By the time it faded, my eyes were wet again.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know.” We kept walking. Aurenya.
I tried the name silently. Then: My mother was Aurenya.
That hurt, but I could think it now. My mother was Queen Aurenya.
That was harder. I left the rest alone. A cool draft moved through the open gallery connecting the central Sanctum to Luminari Halls.
I stopped near one of the arches and looked out toward the dark mountains. Vareena waited.
“I keep thinking about the warning.”
“I figured.”
“Protect her, or lose everything.” My voice sounded small against the open night. “Her kingdom fell.”
Vareena leaned against the stone beside me. I didn’t look at her.
“The Codex thinks it put a target on me before I was born. Somebody went through these records and removed things that could connect her to a Shadow wielder. Somehow I ended up on the other side of the Veil without knowing either of them.”
The thought had been circling since the vision.
“I used to think everything started when Edenlo burned.”
Vareena stayed quiet.
“That was the moment my life stopped making sense. Light appeared, then the Sanctum, then the Codex. Even when I found out about Shadow, I still thought all of this was a fate that reached me after the attack.”
I rubbed my palms against my trousers.
“But it didn’t start there.” The Codex had spoken before I had drawn breath. People I would never remember had already been afraid of what I might become. My parents had been trying to protect a child who didn’t even have a name yet. Or maybe I had one. That thought was somehow worse.
“What if they already knew how this would end?”
Vareena considered it instead of immediately telling me no. “I don’t know what they knew.”
“Neither do I.”
“That may be the only honest answer tonight.”
I looked at her. “That’s terrible comfort.”
“I wasn’t trying to comfort you.”
She rested her shoulder against mine. For a while, we stood there. Eventually another thought came.
“Does your father know anything else about her?”
Vareena turned her head slightly. “I’m sure.”
“Would he talk to me?”
“I don’t know.” That was fair. “He doesn’t like talking about the palace fall. Most people from his generation don’t. But if I asked him carefully…”
She left it unfinished.
“Not yet.”
Vareena nodded. I wasn’t ready to sit across from someone who had known my mother and hear an entire life at once.
Tonight, the story about the kitchens was enough.
Maybe more than enough. We left the gallery.
Closer to our rooms, the longing for Edenlo settled over me unexpectedly.
Not the village as it had looked after the attack.
Before. I wanted Maia at the worktable with her sleeves rolled past her elbows, complaining because I’d used the wrong knife to chop roots again.
I wanted the smell of dried lavender and broth.
I wanted to sit across from her and be allowed to be no one important.
The thought brought another question with it.
What had Maia known? I refused to follow that one.
Not tonight. I had spent the last several hours discovering how much damage a single answer could do.
Our corridor was quiet when we reached it.
Vareena was a few steps ahead of me when she stopped.
Light showed beneath our door. We had left the room dark.
She opened it. Lidia was sitting on my bed.
Still in her training clothes. Boots kicked off beside her.
Red hair loose around her shoulders. Waiting.
“There you are.”
Vareena stepped inside. “Lidia—”
“No. I want her.” Her eyes found mine. I closed the door behind us. “Where were you?”
“The archives.”
“I know.”
I looked at Vareena. Lidia let out a sharp breath.
“That. Right there.”
I looked back at her. “What?”
“You two doing that every time I ask a question you don’t want to answer.” Her voice wasn’t loud. Somehow that made it worse. “You disappear. Vareena covers for you. Kieran is always somehow involved. Now Emrin is too.”
My stomach tightened. Lidia folded her arms.
“I kept waiting for you to tell me.”
“Lidia—”
“And then I started thinking about the Crucible.”
I went still. She saw it.
“Yeah.” Her eyes dropped to my left hand. “The version of you everyone keeps pretending not to talk about.”
My fingers curled. Lidia’s gaze lifted back to mine. “You’re not hiding what happened in the Crucible.” A beat. “You’re hiding what was already there.”
Vareena went silent beside me. Lidia took one step closer. “You wield Shadow.”