Chapter 37
KIERAN
For several minutes after the last of Lyra’s stars disappeared, neither of us spoke.
Moonlight spilled through the broken roof of Shadow, catching on stone and the clothes we had failed to keep anywhere sensible.
My cloak was twisted beneath us. One of Lyra’s boots had somehow ended up across the platform.
I had no memory of taking it off. Her head rested against my shoulder, her hair warm across my arm.
The silver-blue glow beneath her ribs had gone quiet, but I could still feel her magic beneath my skin, lingering where the falling stars had struck me.
One had disappeared directly into the rune over my sternum. I could still feel it there.
That should have concerned me more than it did. Lyra shifted and winced when the movement pulled at her ribs. I glanced down.
She caught me looking. “Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I was considering it.”
“Consider silently.” I almost smiled. There were several things I should have been considering.
The fact that I had just lost enough control over my Shadow to cover the entire southern ring.
The fact that Lyra had filled that darkness with a sky.
The gold. What it had done when it touched my runes.
What her Shadow had done when mine answered.
The fact that, somewhere between her arriving furious and leaving bruises down my back, I had managed to make an already catastrophic situation considerably worse for myself.
Instead, I remembered what she had said before any of it happened. “Neseryn. Lidia. Aurenya. Maerox.” Lyra went still against me. I turned my head enough to see her. “What happened with Lidia?”
For a moment she stared at the opening in the Shadow dome rather than me. I hadn’t forgotten the list. I doubted I could have forgotten anything she said tonight if I tried. She sighed and rolled onto her back carefully. “She figured it out.”
My body tightened before I could stop it. “The Shadow?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Last night. After we came back from the restoration room.”
I pushed myself onto one elbow. “Who told her?”
“No one. That was kind of the problem.” The answer did nothing useful for the anger beginning to gather under my skin. Lyra noticed. “It wasn’t like that.”
“You came down here tonight and somehow forgot to mention that another person knows?”
“I had a fairly busy day.”
“Yeah, Neseryn beat you bloody.”
“Among other things.”
“That isn’t an argument in your favor.”
She rubbed both hands over her face, then immediately regretted it when one finger caught the bruise along her cheek. “Lidia was waiting in our room. She’d been putting things together for a while, apparently. The disappearances. Everyone acting strange. You. Vareena. Emrin.”
“And she guessed Shadow.”
“She knew.” That stopped me. Lyra lowered her hands. “She made me say it anyway.”
I knew enough about Lidia to believe that. “What did she do?”
“That’s the part I was angry about.” I waited.
“She was furious.” My Shadow stirred along my wrist. Lyra saw it and gave me a look.
“Not because of the Shadow.” The darkness settled a fraction.
“She was angry because everyone else knew first. Because I’d already told Vareena.
Emrin knew. Eiryx knew because you told him.
She realized there had been an entire part of my life happening around her and I’d decided she couldn’t be trusted with it. ”
“You had reasons.”
“I did.”
“That doesn’t make them wrong.”
“No. It just doesn’t make her wrong either.” That sounded like Lyra. She had spent most of the night furious at half the Sanctum and somehow still managed to find room to understand why one of them had hurt feelings.
“What exactly did she say?”
Lyra glanced at me. “You’re going to hate this.”
“I already hate most things.”
“She asked to see it.” I stared. “I told you.”
“And you showed her?”
“Yes.”
“In your room.”
“Yes, Kieran.”
“Where anyone could have walked in.”
“The door was shut.”
“A formidable defense.” She elbowed me. It landed close enough to one of the scratches on my ribs that I hissed.
Lyra looked entirely too pleased with herself. Then the amusement faded. “Her Fire came up.” Every trace of humor left me. Lyra kept talking before I could. “It was instinct. Barely anything. Just in her hands. And then she put it out.”
I studied her face. “What did you do?”
“What do you think I did?”
“Something reckless.”
She exhaled through her nose. “My Shadow reacted.”
“I pulled it back. Lidia realized what I thought was happening, and that made it worse.”
Because Lyra had thought her friend might turn on her.
“What did she say?”
“She told me to fuck myself.”
“And then?”
“She left.”
“And?”
“She said she wasn’t telling anyone.” Lyra picked at a loose thread on the cloak between us. “I told her I knew.” I could already hear Lidia’s answer. Lyra’s mouth twisted. “‘And she said, No, you didn’t.’”
I looked away toward the ruined wall. No.
She hadn’t. That was the problem with secrets.
People liked pretending the damage came from the truth itself.
Usually it came from everything you had to decide for someone else in order to keep it buried.
I had made enough of those decisions for Lyra that the thought sat badly.
She had no idea how many. Beside me, she went quiet. I should have left it there. Instead I said, “She’ll come back.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know that she is your friend.”
“What does that have to do with anything? Friendships aren’t immune to falling apart.”
“She told you she wouldn’t expose you while she was angry enough to walk out. That matters.”
Lyra stared at the moonlight spilling through the widening gap overhead.
After a while she sat up and began collecting the pieces of her clothes nearest us.
I watched her wrestle her shirt over the bandaged shoulder and kept my hands to myself, knowing better than to help before she asked.
I failed when she reached for her trousers and nearly tipped sideways.
My hand caught her waist. She muttered a curse that sounded deeply ungrateful.
“You’re welcome.”
“I had it.”
“You were falling.”
“I was adjusting my footing.”
“To the floor?” She pulled the pants over one leg with considerably more violence than necessary. I found my shirt near the edge of the platform. The back was covered in dust.
So was most of me.
Lyra glanced at the scratches along my shoulder when I turned, and the satisfaction that crossed her face was so blatant that I laughed. “What is so funny?”
“Nothing.”
“Your face says otherwise.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I looked at her. She smiled despite the split in her lip. Dangerous woman.
I pulled the shirt over my head before I did something stupid enough to keep us there until sunrise. It was already close. The edge of the sky beyond the trees had begun paling.
Lyra noticed at the same time. “Vareena is never going to shut up about this.”
I looked at the state of her hair. “No, she won’t.”
Lyra followed my gaze and slapped both hands over it. “Oh, screw you.”
“Again?” Her mouth opened. I started laughing again before she could answer.
I slept for less than two hours. Eiryx let himself into my rooms shortly after sunrise.
I considered killing him.
He took one look at me, stopped halfway through closing the door, and leaned back against it.
“Get out.” I pulled a pillow over my face. He was quiet long enough that I almost believed he might leave.
Then, “You look terrible.” I threw the pillow. He caught it one-handed. His gaze moved to the scratches near my collar where my shirt didn’t cover them and the bastard smiled.
I sat up and dragged both hands through my hair. “What do you want?”
Eiryx tossed the pillow back onto the bed. “What did she tell you about her fight with Neseryn?”
I looked at him. “That their blood touched.”
Eiryx went still. “And?”
“Lyra’s Shadow reacted under her skin. Neseryn felt it. Her Shadow had already been behaving strangely around Lyra’s blood before that.”
Eiryx crossed the room slowly. He knew enough not to ask the question I couldn’t answer. Or the question I wouldn’t. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.” Neseryn’s reaction bothered me more the longer I sat with it. There were explanations for Shadow responding to blood. Old magic. Ward residue. Recognition of another wielder. None fit cleanly enough.
And Neseryn had reacted to it. That was what stayed with me. Not what Lyra’s magic had done. I had seen her afraid. Furious. Bleeding. I had seen her stand before men twice her size and smile because she knew they would be dead before they could touch her.
Recognition was harder to fake.
By the time I reached the Umbra Rings, I had slept badly enough that the first candidate who complained about the morning’s exercise almost died for it.
There were fourteen of them scattered across the lower ring, all advanced Shadow wielders and all old enough to have stopped expecting instructors to be gentle with them.
Most had trained under me before. The two who hadn’t were watching the others with the wary interest of people beginning to realize that whatever they had been told about my methods had been understated.
I walked the perimeter once while they finished warming their magic.
The Rings were built differently from most of the Sanctum’s training grounds.
There were no clean marble lanes or decorative elemental channels.
The Umbra courts had been cut directly into black stone, the walls climbing high enough to keep most of the morning sun out.
Shadow gathered naturally here, sleeping in corners and under the raised platforms.
I stopped near the center. “Put your weapons down.” A few of them exchanged looks.One man near the western wall kept his short blade in hand. “Today’s listed as close combat.”
“It is.” He frowned. I waited until he put the blade down. “Good. Now extinguish your Shadow.” That caused more confusion.