Chapter 44
LYRA
Vareena had been hiding the dress from me for three weeks. I learned this because she confessed while standing barefoot on her bed with six pins between her lips and one hand buried in the back of her wardrobe. “You knew I didn’t own a dress.”
She pulled the garment free and nearly lost her balance doing it. “I couldn’t have let you go without one.”
She dropped the gown across my bed, and for a few seconds, I forgot what I had been about to say.
The fabric was deep midnight blue, dark enough to turn black where it folded over itself, with tiny silver beads scattered along the bodice and sleeves.
They weren’t arranged into constellations or flowers or any pattern I could name.
They caught the lamplight unevenly, the way frost did along the Edenlo fields before sunrise.
The neckline dipped lower than anything I had ever owned, though not obscenely so, and several soft layers made up the skirt, meant to move rather than stand stiffly around my legs.
I touched one sleeve. “This is yours?”
“It was.”
“Vareena.”
“I wore it once. Two winters ago. My aunt said the color made me look ill, so naturally I kept it out of spite.”
I turned toward her. “You had this here the entire time?”
“Not the entire time. I had it altered so it was gone for a while.”
“When did you do that?”
“While you were busy nearly dying in the Crucible.”
“That narrows nothing down.” She laughed around the pins. I plucked one from between her lips before she swallowed it. “You arranged for someone to alter a dress for me while I was unconscious?”
“To be fair I sent it off before that happened.”
“That isn’t a defense.”
“It fit the measurements I gave them.”
My hand stopped on the fabric. “You gave someone my measurements?” Vareena busied herself with smoothing an entirely nonexistent wrinkle from her dress. “How did you get my measurements?”
“I have eyes.”
“That is horrifying.”
“You’re welcome.”
I wanted to be irritated. I failed.
The room looked nothing like it had when I first arrived at the Sanctum.
Clothes hung from pegs that had once stood empty, and books crowded the ledge beneath the window.
One of my boots lay beneath Vareena’s chair because she had kicked it there two days ago and neither of us had bothered moving it.
Her half of the room had spread into mine and mine into hers until there was very little point pretending an invisible boundary remained between them.
Weeks ago, I had woken here thinking I was temporary. Tonight Vareena stood on her bed in her under dress, arguing with me about a gown she had secretly altered because I owned nothing appropriate for Solstice.
I swallowed against the sudden tightness in my throat. She caught me looking at her. “No. Do not do that.”
“What?”
“Whatever that face is.”
“I don’t have a face.”
“You do. And if you start becoming emotional before I finish my hair, I’m going to become emotional, then one of us will cry, and Lidia will arrive and mock us for it.”
A knock sounded. Vareena closed her eyes.
Lidia opened the door without waiting. “I could hear you talking about me.”
“I don’t remember saying you could come in.”
“I brought wine.”
“You’re forgiven.”
Lidia came in carrying a dark bottle in one hand and three cups hooked between the fingers of the other.
She had already dressed. Her gown was Cindralith red, darker than her hair, with narrow bronze chains crossing the open back.
She had left her hair loose except for two pieces pinned away from her face, and the effect was startling enough that Vareena climbed down from the bed to inspect her. “Well. Well. Well.”
Lidia stopped. “If you say beautiful, I’m leaving.”
“I was going to say respectable.”
“That’s worse.” Their arguing continued while I lifted the blue dress from the bed. Lidia saw it and went quiet, then pointed at Vareena. “You did that?”
“She required intervention.”
“She did.”
“You are both terrible.”
“You’ll survive.” Lidia poured the wine and handed the first cup to me.
I looked at it. “What?”
“You complained for a week that I kept you out of things.”
“I did.”
“You’re giving me wine.”
“We’ve moved into a more mature stage of friendship.” Vareena snorted. Lidia looked at me over the rim of her cup. “Also, I was angry because you lied to me. I wasn’t angry because I wanted you dead.”
The humor thinned.
There had been no clean moment when Lidia and I became ourselves again, no apology that repaired everything at once.
She had simply started sitting beside me at meals again.
Then she stayed after training to argue about whether one of my archive theories was ridiculous.
Yesterday, after seeing the bandage around my palm, she had taken a fresh one from the infirmary stores and tossed it at my head without comment.
The hurt had not vanished, but neither had she. I held my cup toward hers. “I’m glad you came.”
Lidia tapped hers against it. “I know.”
Vareena threw a hairbrush at her. “That word is banned tonight.”
Lidia ducked. “Why?”
“Lyra has spent the past two days hearing it from Nyxara. I’ve only had to hear about it all day.”
My face warmed, and Lidia’s mouth opened.
“Do not encourage her,” I said.
“I didn’t even say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I was about to ask whether the entire Shadow wing now knows you’ve been sleeping with him.”
Vareena made a strangled sound. I drank the wine. Lidia grinned. That was the last anyone said about it.
For a while, there were only ordinary things to worry about.
Vareena discovered a snag near the hem of her gown.
Lidia repaired it with a hot needle and more confidence than skill.
I got trapped halfway into the blue dress because the fastening at the shoulder had twisted, and Vareena laughed so hard she had to sit down before helping me.
By the time I stood in front of the mirror, I barely recognized myself.
The dress fit. That was the first surprise.
The second was that I liked it.
The fabric followed my body closely through the waist before loosening over my hips, the skirt falling nearly to the floor.
Someone had adjusted the bodice so it covered the rune beneath my ribs without requiring me to spend the entire night checking whether silver-blue light had become visible through the fabric.
A narrow slit ran up one side of the skirt to my knee, enough to keep me from feeling trapped in it.
Vareena came up behind me and adjusted one sleeve.
“There.”
“You planned around the rune.”
Her fingers paused. “Well I didn’t know about it at first so it was a last minute.” Our reflections met in the mirror.
“Thank you.”
This time she didn’t make a joke. “You’re welcome.”
Lidia moved beside us and inspected the three of us in the mirror. “This is disgusting.”
Vareena frowned. “What?”
“We look good.”
“That does sound difficult for you.” Lidia elbowed her. Then Vareena reached for the small wooden box on her dressing table. I knew what was inside before she opened it.
The ribbon.
She wore it constantly. Through training, when she wound her hair high enough to keep it from sticking to her neck.
At breakfast, tied around the end of a braid.
In the archives, when she got irritated and redid her hair three times because loose strands kept falling into her ink.
I had seen it soaked through with rain, stained with dust after the Crucible, tied around her wrist when she had forgotten to put it back into her hair.
Pale gold silk. The ends had softened from years of use, and one edge had frayed enough that a thread hung loose when she lifted it.
“You’re wearing that with this dress?” Her gown was soft cream with gold embroidery along the sleeves. The ribbon nearly disappeared against it.
Vareena looked offended. “I always wear it.”
“I know.”
“Then why would tonight be different?” She turned around and handed it to me. “Tie it.”
I stared at the ribbon in my hand. “You always do your own hair.”
“Well, tonight you’re doing it.”
“Why?”
“Because mine will end up crooked if I try to see the back of my own head.”
“That has never stopped you before.”
“Lyra.” There was no deeper reason in her face. She simply wanted me to.
I set down my wine. “Sit.”
Vareena sat at the edge of my bed. Her hair was already half pinned, soft dark waves gathered at the back of her head with several curls left loose around her face. I ran the ribbon beneath the gathered section and tied it slowly, careful not to catch any strands in the knot. “Too tight?”
“No.”
I adjusted it. The loose ends fell between her shoulder blades, and the tiny frayed thread caught against my fingertip. “There.”
Vareena reached back to touch it. “How does it look?”
“Like the same ribbon you always wear.”
“Perfect.”
I laughed and smoothed one curl over her shoulder. She reached up without turning and caught my hand.
There was wine on the table, music drifting through the walls from somewhere far below, and Lidia complaining that if we kept staring at each other she would drink the entire bottle herself.
Nothing about the moment felt important.
That was why I remembered every part of it.
The softness of Vareena’s hair between my fingers.
The frayed edge of the ribbon. The way she squeezed my hand once before letting go.
Then she stood and told Lidia to stop drinking from my cup.
The Solstice Hall did not belong to any single century.
That was the first thing I thought when we entered.
The mountain opened above it in a vaulted chamber so enormous the highest arches disappeared into darkness.
Ancient columns had been carved directly from black stone, but generations of Sanctum masters had added to them until Light crystals glowed between Shadowwork panels, living vines climbed Earth-cut alcoves, Fire braziers burned without smoke, and narrow channels of Water ran beneath transparent sections of the floor.
Tonight, the five affinities shared the space without borders.