Chapter 11
Saipha is waiting for me on the fourth floor, a key in her hand held triumphantly aloft. “Got one!”
I hug her so fiercely it’s practically a tackle. “You’re a lifesaver.”
“They let me pick the room, too. Exchanged the key I found for one to a room of my choosing—I picked the one up here.”
I lean away, beaming. “You are brilliant.”
“I take it you didn’t get one?” She pats my back.
“No.” I release her with a sigh. “Where was it?”
“I noticed all the keys people found were in or around something related to dragons,” she says.
And here I am, too scared to even look at the statue, much less stick my hand in its mouth and rummage around. I’ve never admitted to my friend how dragons make me freeze up. Part of me has always been afraid of what she’d think.
So instead of mentioning it now, I just say, “I’m glad you noticed. I only ever saw one person with a key.”
No sooner have my words left my mouth than the copper box on the wall pops to life with a sizzle of Etherlight.
“All supplicants with a key are to report to the residence hall. Only one supplicant is permitted per room. Those without a key may continue searching into the night to find their refuge.”
Our gazes meet, and her eyes widen with guilt. “Isola, I—”
“Don’t worry about it. You got your key on your own. You earned a good night’s rest. I’ll be fine.” The words leave a foul taste on my tongue, soured with how wrong they are.
“Yes, you will.” Saipha nods and takes a few steps back, then opens the second door from the top of the stairs. We share a last look before she closes it behind her.
As the lock on her door engages, the confident smile I was giving her falls. I’m reminded of just how exposed I am. I look to the window at the far end of the hall. The city is vanishing in the quickly fading light. My heart shudders. I lose a breath and a beat at the same time.
I could wait out the night holed up in a defensible location, or I could keep searching for a key. I know what a Mercy Knight would do.
I walk down the stairs again and out to the central atrium, then stop mid-step. All the exits to different stairwells and hallways are closed. I check the nearest door, jiggling the handle. It doesn’t budge. I try the next. Locked. Every single one refuses to open.
The idea of being locked in this room has me dragging my eyes to the statue and tapestries.
Every dragon seems more realistic as night falls, their eyes shining as if they could come to life at any moment.
The individual stitches glisten in the fading light like they’re about to leap off the fabric.
Daring to approach the blue one, I scan the threads that perfectly depict large shards of ice coming off the monster’s claws.
Maybe they locked this room to force me to check here.
I try to warm myself up to the idea of getting closer to dragons than my body wants to allow.
Yet, as I draw closer, my skin prickles and my throat feels hot.
I massage my neck. Is it bulging more than normal? Hotter than normal?
Another set of footsteps draws my attention back to the residence hall. My eyes meet Lucan’s, and my heart beats harder as I remember what Cindel said earlier: You get to be Valor and have him.
Gross, I think in reply.
No, my heart is beating like this because I am relieved not to be alone in a room of dragon imagery—even if not being alone means being near him. Definitely not beating hard because I’m alone with a boy, and this might be the first time ever in my life when that’s happened.
Determined to not let him see my nerves, I fold my arms, mirroring how he was last night with Mum and me in that cell. I wonder if he catches it.
“You didn’t get a key, either?” he asks.
His voice is low and soft, meant for cloistered halls and prayer studies.
But there’s a hard edge under its almost gentle hum.
That’s what I don’t trust. That rougher part of him that his put-together, holier-than-thou facade hides.
But I know it’s there—he wouldn’t be the vicar’s son without it.
“No, I just thought it would be fun to give myself an extra challenge by staying out the first night.” I walk to the next tapestry as he approaches, making a point to keep distance between us without ever putting my back to him.
“You really don’t trust me, do you?” Lucan has never said anything so blunt to me, so it startles me, even if the observation is right.
“I don’t know you.” Cautious. Truthful. Better than the way-too-honest answer of, I’d trust a copper dragon not to eat me before I trusted you.
“You’ve spent years with me.” He steps closer, and my whole chest is tighter as he draws near.
I’m focused on the slightest sway of his shoulders.
The small bounce in his hair. Maybe my training is really paying off.
He’s not going to get a surprise attack on me when I’m this aware of every move he’s making.
“Years around you,” I clarify. “There’s a difference.”
“You might have spent years around me, looking through me like nothing more than another one of the vicar’s sycophants. But I’ve always seen you.” The way he says it causes my heart to race again. His hazel eyes are big enough to see the entirety of my soul.
“What do you mean?” I work to keep my head and voice level, wandering to the center statue to get some distance. He follows after one last glance at the tapestry. He looks almost…wary? I don’t dare think that maybe he’s also unnerved by the sight of dragons.
“I’ve seen how you never pray, yet you ask the curates for prayers upon you so you can retreat into your own mind.
The way you stare out at the wall like you’re searching for something—no, yearning for it.
How you scratch yourself whenever an artificer sigil is being drawn,” he says, and I’m grateful for the waning light.
It hides the heat in my cheeks at realizing I’ve been so thoroughly observed.
He continues, “How you pull the collars of your shirts up when he isn’t looking, probably for the same reason that you wear your hair down even though it’s more likely to get you hurt in a fight: because it upsets Vicar Darius.
” His gaze drops to my chest. It’s only then that I realize I’m pressing my palm into my scar.
It’s throbbing, as if the scarred seams of my flesh are about to rip back open and something is going to escape.
If he could see all of this, then what else might Lucan know about me?
What else that I try so desperately to hide…
And what right does he have to know it? “And, of course, how you rub your scar in the presence of Etherlight.”
“So studious. I’m flattered.” I can’t even feign sincerity as I turn away. This is…creepy.
“And I bet that, even now, you’re so scared around these tapestries that your heart is almost beating out of your chest. So scared that I’m shocked it doesn’t finally stop entirely.”
I halt, looking back to him warily. He knows too much. This is why he knew just what to say to make me trust him that day. Fooled me into thinking he was someone else.
Lucan approaches with slow, deliberate steps.
He almost infringes on my personal space but stops short.
The air in the room is suddenly too thin, the laces of my jerkin too tight, and I wish he was closer and across the room at the same time.
There’s something completely foreign to his stare.
Something that I couldn’t name even if I tried… and a part of me does want to try.
“Why have you never shared these observations before?” The question is as sharp as the point of a crossbow bolt, and the next shoots from my tongue just as fast. “Saving them for your evening discussions with the vicar?”
He scoffs at that.
“No?” I lean forward, trying to regain the edge in this conversation.
But closing the gap myself only makes me more aware of just how hot he is—he’s warmer than the stones of a hearth that’s been blazing all day.
Warm enough that my cheeks are definitely flush, and I hate that he’ll probably read into it. “You’re always so eager to run to him.”
“Is your hatred of me all because of that day?”
That day. It absolutely is, you two-faced liar. “It’s because you do nothing but his bidding,” I retort a little too hastily. Then I add, “But what you did that day didn’t help.”
“Isola—”
“One day off. One. That’s all I wanted, Lucan!
You made me think I could trust you.” Made me think you liked me.
I’ve had very few friends since becoming Valor Reborn.
Not many want to genuinely spend time with the “savior of Vinguard”—most are insufferable suck-ups trying to get close to me to improve their position somehow.
I thought he’d know what it’s like being stuck under the vicar’s shadow.
But I’m not about to tell him any of that.
Instead, I take a deep breath and lower my voice so that no inquisitors lurking in the shadows will hear.
“One day on my mother’s birthday to be with her. ”
I shake my head and turn, walking away. I’ll do laps around this room all night if that’s what it takes to keep my distance from him.
His footsteps follow, because of course they do. “I told you I didn’t advise it.”
“But you let me leave. Which obviously seemed a lot like agreement.” I don’t look at him. “If you were just going to run to the vicar, why let me go at all?”
“I couldn’t say no to you without going against the teachings.
” He laughs. That gets my attention. It’s a bewildered sound, steeped in disbelief.
“You really thought I could? And that I, an eighteen-year-old apprentice of the Creed, could cover for Valor Reborn when she was suddenly missing—the most watched person in all of Vinguard—and everyone would just accept my word for it? You’re even more delusional than I thought. ”
The words hit me like a slap across the face. When he puts it like that… Anger has my chest to the tips of my ears burning, but I can’t tell if it’s directed more toward him or toward myself. “Excuse me?”
“I’m just a cog in the vicar’s automaton, Isola.” He sounds…tired. “Grinding away at his command. Heeding his whims and executing his wishes.”
A cog? “But you’re the vicar’s son.”
“And you’ve seen me live such a privileged life because of it,” he says sarcastically.
When I think about it, he’s always in one of the same few outfits, unlike the vicar, who regularly changes his regalia.
But I’ve attributed that to the rank and file of the Creed wanting to model the behavior it expects from the citizens of Vinguard.
Though I’ve never seen him eating anything special, either.
And even around the vicar, the two seemed…
Lucan seemed more like a dog heeding its master’s call than a son.
“What did he do to you, Isola, for leaving that day?” Lucan comes to a stop before me once more, staring down at me. Why does he have to be so damn tall? I can’t even posture my way into looking down on him, and I am not short by any measure.
“I got a measly half hour with my mum, and in exchange he made my training hell for six weeks.”
“How do you think he punished me?”
That silences me. I’ve gone from too hot to cold all over. I hadn’t thought about it at all. Hadn’t seen him as anything more than…a cog.
I’m about to reply when the lights in the hall extinguish at once, like they do in all of Vinguard an hour after the sun sets.
Lucan disappears before my eyes as we’re plunged into near-total darkness, though I can feel the heat rolling off him in small waves that crash against the chill realizations I’ve just been having.
“Are you all right?” he breathes.
Did he move closer in the dark? Sounds like he’s only a few inches from me now. “I’m fine,” I lie. I am not fine with that massive silhouette looming in the dark. The dragon sculpture seems even more real now that my imagination is filling in the details… “Why?”
“Your breathing changed.” His fingertips land on my cheek, and I gasp. It’s a clumsy movement. I know he was likely searching for the statue or my shoulder. He withdraws his fingers as quickly as they landed. “Isola?”
His warmth. The sound of his breath. Knowing he is right there and I can’t see him.
It’s all so distracting…enough that I nearly miss the movement to our right: the brief flicker of light before we both dive in opposite directions and a ball of flame tears through the air, exploding half a scale’s width from where I was just standing.