Chapter 35
LYRA
For a moment, nothing happened. I heard the muted voices from somewhere farther down the corridor.
The lamp beside Vareena’s bed gave a faint hiss.
My hand was still on the latch behind me.
Lidia waited. I had spent weeks imagining what would happen if she found out.
In most versions, there were flames. Shouting.
Someone running for an instructor before I could stop them.
I had never imagined standing there after learning my mother had been Queen of Elyndor, too exhausted to come up with a decent lie.
I watched suspicion become certainty as the silence stretched.
“Fuck,” she said quietly. “I knew it.”
Vareena set the parchments she was carrying on her desk. “Lidia—”
“Please don’t.” She didn’t look at Vareena. Her eyes stayed on me. “I want to hear it from her.” There was anger in her voice now, but not the kind I was used to from Lidia. Usually she went off like dry brush near a flame, spectacular for a few minutes and finished almost as quickly.
She had been sitting here long enough for this anger to settle. I released the door. “Yes.” The word felt strangely small.
Lidia’s jaw tightened. “Yes, what?”
I understood what she was making me do. Maybe I deserved it. “I have Shadow magic.” She looked away. That hurt more than I expected.
Lidia crossed to the window and stood there with her back to us, arms folded tightly beneath her chest. I glanced at Vareena. She gave a small shake of her head. Not because she had an answer. Because this was mine. Lidia turned around. “How long?”
“Since not long after the first Crucible match.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “That long?”
“I didn’t understand what it was at first.”
“But Vareena did?”
“Not at first.” Lidia’s eyes moved toward her. Vareena stayed beside the desk. “She told me later.”
“And Kieran?” I hesitated. Lidia gave a bitter laugh. “Of course he knew.”
“He figured it out before I told anyone.”
“That somehow makes me feel so much better.”
“I know it doesn’t.”
“And Emrin?” My stomach sank. Lidia had seen us all leave tonight. There was no point insulting her further.
“She found out a few nights ago.”
Lidia rubbed both hands over her face. “Got it.”
“It’s not like that.”
She dropped her hands. “It is exactly like that.” Her voice rose for the first time. “You’ve been sneaking off for weeks, Vareena has been covering for you, Kieran Nyxara has apparently known this entire time, and now Emrin knows too. I’m not imagining that.”
“No.”
“Then don’t tell me it wasn’t like that.” I shut my mouth. Lidia paced once across the narrow space between our beds, then stopped when she reached mine. “I kept thinking I’d done something.”
That caught me off guard. “What?”
“You changed.” She looked irritated at having to explain it.
“After the Crucible. You started disappearing, and every time Shadow came up you got weird as hell. I thought maybe you didn’t trust me because I’m Fire.
Then I told myself I was being dramatic.
” She laughed without much humor. “Turns out I should’ve listened to myself for once. ”
“Lidia, I do trust you.”
“Apparently not enough.” The answer came so quickly I couldn’t argue with it. I thought of the archives. Of spending weeks furious because everyone seemed to possess some part of my life before I did.
Aurenya.
The Codex.
Kieran saying he would tell me what he could prove. All night I had been demanding the right to know what belonged to me. Now Lidia stood in front of me asking why I had made the same choice for her. “I was scared,” I said.
Her anger faltered. “Of me?”
“No.” She looked unconvinced. I tried again. “I was scared of what happened after I told you.”
Lidia’s mouth tightened. “That sounds a lot like being scared of me.”
“Maybe part of me was.” Vareena looked at me.
I ignored her. Lidia deserved the ugly version.
“I knew what Fire and Shadow were supposed to think of each other. I knew what everyone here thought of Shadow. I’d already spent days wondering whether Kieran was going to expose me before I realized he wasn’t.
Then I told Vareena and spent the entire conversation waiting for her to look at me differently.
” Lidia didn’t interrupt. “The more people who knew, the more chances I had to lose someone.”
Her face changed slightly. I wished I had a better explanation. I didn’t.
Lidia looked down at my left hand. “Show me it.” Every instinct I had tightened.
Vareena took a step away from the desk. “You don’t have to prove anything.”
Lidia looked at her. “I’m not asking for proof.” Then she looked back at me. “I want her to stop hiding it from me.”
My rune had already begun to warm beneath my clothes.
I could refuse. Some exhausted part of me wanted to.
I had given enough of myself away tonight.
But Lidia wasn’t asking about Aurenya or Starborn or anything else I hadn’t figured out yet.
She was asking for the truth I already knew.
I opened my hand. The Shadow didn’t come immediately.
It had become easier to summon in the weeks since Kieran began training me, but this was different from the southern ring.
There was no target, no instruction, no reason to call it except that one of my closest friends had asked me to stop lying.
I breathed out and darkness gathered along my fingers.
Lidia went utterly still. The Shadow curled over the back of my hand, soft at first, then thickened around my wrist. It moved differently from Kieran’s.
His usually appeared dense enough to swallow whatever lay beneath it.
Mine still carried a faint silver sheen at its thinnest edges, barely visible until it caught the lamplight.
Lidia stared.
I watched her instead of the magic. The change happened fast. A flame snapped into existence around her right hand. My stomach dropped. Shadow surged before I could stop it. It spilled from my wrist and rose between us, no longer soft. Lidia’s eyes widened.
Vareena stepped forward. “Lidia.” The flame vanished. Just like that. Lidia looked at her empty hand, then at me.
My Shadow remained between us. I couldn’t make it disappear. The fear I had spent weeks refusing to name sat exposed between us. Lidia saw it. Her eyes were cruel. “You thought I’d turn you in.”
I tried to answer. The silence stretched between us, and I watched her understand exactly what it meant.
“Fuck you.”
The words landed exactly where they were meant to. “Lidia—”
“Not for the Shadow.” Her voice shook now, which seemed to make her angrier. “For thinking that little of me.”
“I didn’t.”
“You just admitted you did.”
“I was afraid.”
“And you keep saying that like it changes what you decided about me.” She grabbed her boots from the floor.
Vareena moved toward her. “You don’t have to leave.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Lidia.”
“I’m angry, Vareena. If I stay, I’m going to say a lot worse.” That was the most self-aware thing I had ever heard from her. She sat long enough to shove her feet into her boots without bothering to fasten them properly.
I finally managed to pull the Shadow back into myself. Lidia noticed. She didn’t flinch. Somehow that made everything harder.
At the door, she stopped. “I’m not telling anyone.”
I swallowed. “I know.”
She looked over her shoulder. “No, you didn’t.” Then she left. The door shut behind her. I stood there for several seconds. Vareena didn’t immediately speak.
Thank gods.
Eventually I sat on the edge of my bed.
Once Lidia was gone, everything I had managed not to think about during the argument came rushing back—the royal seal in the archives, the Codex speaking about me before I had even been born, and Aurenya’s name sitting where the word mother had always been empty.
Somehow, after all of that, it was still Lidia’s face when her Fire appeared that I couldn’t stop seeing.
I covered my eyes. “I have had a terrible evening.” Vareena sat beside me. “I made her cry.”
“She didn’t cry.”
“She almost cried.”
“Lidia would stab us both before she cried in front of us.”
I lowered my hands. “She’s right.”
Vareena looked toward the door. “I know.”
I turned to her. “You could pretend a little harder to be on my side.”
“I am on your side.”
“That sounded suspiciously like her side.”
“They aren’t opposite, Lyra.” I hated when Vareena did that.
Mostly because she was usually right. I lay backward across the bed without taking off my boots.
The ceiling had a crack running from one corner toward the center.
I had stared at it enough nights to know exactly where it split into two thinner lines.
“I found out my mother was a queen tonight.” Vareena made a quiet sound of acknowledgment.
“And somehow Lidia being angry with me is what I’m thinking about. ”
“That’s because it feels easier.” Maybe.
Aurenya was dead. Lidia was a dormitory away and furious. One of those problems could still be fixed. I hoped anyway.
I rolled onto my side. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“I don’t think any of us do.” She leaned back against the bedpost. Neither of us mentioned Kieran. I appreciated that too. Eventually I changed clothes and climbed beneath the blankets. Vareena extinguished the lamps.
Sleep took a long time and when it finally came, it wasn’t Aurenya I dreamed about. It was a room full of people I loved, every one of them asking me why I hadn’t trusted them enough to tell the truth.
By morning, I felt as though I had slept for ten minutes. The dining hall was already crowded when Vareena and I arrived. I looked for Lidia before I meant to. She was sitting with Raiden and Dax. Emrin had taken the seat beside her.
I slowed. Vareena did too. Lidia noticed us. For a moment I thought she might turn away. She didn’t. She looked straight at me, then down at her breakfast. Not forgiveness but not an invitation either. But she hadn’t moved the chair. I took that for what it was worth.