Chapter 45
I wake up in a room that I’m sure is part of the monastery. I know it by the rough, uneven mortar between the stone. This place is painfully familiar now. A simple tunic covers my smallclothes as I shift underneath a heavy blanket.
It’s not one of the normal supplicant rooms. The finishes are a little too nice. Bed slightly wider. There’s a dresser and a proper desk with a chair. Perhaps this is one of the inquisitors’ rooms?
I turn my head and meet a familiar pair of gold and brown eyes. Father is seated next to me, shoulders hunched, as though he’s been perched there for hours.
“Isola.” He heaves a sigh of relief and leans down to plant a kiss on my forehead.
“The vicar actually summoned you.” I exhale my shock. “I wasn’t sure if he’d listen.”
“When I heard what had happened, I wanted to come, regardless. There are benefits to being a high curate.” He smiles weakly. “He said you wanted to tell me of a weapon?”
I see the vicar omitted my possibility of needing a sigil to stabilize the power within me. Strangely, I already feel better. Perhaps some rest—and not being in the Font—was enough. I glance toward the window. The sun is hanging low in the sky. I must’ve been out for a few hours.
“That was just an excuse.” I sit up, locking eyes with him. “You know about the tinctures Mum made me, don’t you?” His brows lift a fraction. A small amount I wouldn’t have noticed if I wasn’t staring right at him. It’s not a no, and for my father that’s a yes. “I need you to get me one.”
He runs a hand through his hair, looking away and shaking his head. “I can’t.”
“I know the rules of the Tribunal. But the Font… I have never felt worse, Father. And I don’t think I’m going to make it if we don’t find a way to—”
“Even if I wanted to, I can’t.” That stills me. He continues, “Your mother is gone, Isola.”
“Gone?” A sickening feeling churns in my belly. “Did the vicar…”
“No. She’s gone missing.”
I study him, letting those words settle on me. “Mum wouldn’t disappear.” I grip the sheets, my knuckles turning white. She wouldn’t leave me. “The vicar killed her.”
“He did not.”
“Stop being obsessed with him for just a second and listen,” I snap.
“Stop allowing your hatred for him to blind you to what’s right in front of you.” He grabs my shoulders, shaking me gently and locking eyes with me once more. There’s a truth in them he’s trying to get me to see. “She. Is. Missing.”
See what’s right in front of me… He’s so unshakably sure. Father wouldn’t be, unless… “You know something.”
“Listen to me.” His voice is low and urgent now.
He speaks without letting me go. So quietly that even if there were someone else in the room with us, they wouldn’t hear.
“When you take your place back in the Tribunal, you must be what they expect of you as Valor Reborn. No matter what. If the vicar demands that you draw Ether without a sigil, you must.”
“Even if it kills me?” The last thing I want right now is more Etherlight in me.
“It won’t kill you.”
“How do you know that?” I probe.
“You don’t think you were the only person your mother shared the details of her research with, do you?” he says softly, almost sadly.
I’m frozen in place. Silenced by my surprise. “She knows something. What did she tell you?”
“More than you give her or me credit for.” He chuckles softly.
“I was married to her. You don’t really think I could be oblivious to the woman I spent my hours and days with?
You don’t think that I—as a student of Etherlight—wouldn’t be fascinated by her theories?
” His face has a genuine but sad smile. “And we both knew, the moment you were attacked and became Valor Reborn, you’d need two champions—one within the system, and one on the outside. ”
I swallow hard. My throat has gone dry. “You and Mum…”
“We might have had our differences and troubles, but you, Isola, are the one thing we have always been able to agree upon.”
“All these years…you were both looking out for me?”
“All these years,” he repeats in a way that leaves no room for doubt.
“Why would you keep me in the dark?” I whisper.
“You were just a child, Isola. We told you what we could as we could, guiding you in our own ways.” Father saying to follow the vicar but never pressuring me to really take the Creed’s teachings seriously, despite him rising through their ranks.
Mother educating me about her research in secret to ensure I knew the truths of our world…
Suddenly, all the random points in my life align, drawing a straight line to this moment.
So many things are pulling into clarity. But there’s one thing still missing.
“I know we probably don’t have much longer, but there’s one thing I need to know, Father.
Even if you can’t get me one, what are the tinctures?
” Somehow, I feel like if I know that, then everything else will fall into place.
And the way he seems to tense at the mere question tells me I’m right.
“It’s my life at risk, too, and I’m not a child anymore.
I need to know what’s going on if I’m going to keep myself or anyone else safe. ”
“No…you’re not a child anymore.” There’s a wistfulness to his sigh, as though he’s imagining me still as the girl sitting on his lap, fiddling with the gears of the crossbows he’s working on. “The vicar intends to take your power for himself once it has fully matured.”
Like I’m some kind of incubator. I grimace. “Is that even possible?”
“He’s determined to find out. He believes he was the one destined to be Valor Reborn, and you were a…mistake.” There’s a flash of an anger in his eyes that I’ve never associated with my usually soft-spoken and level-headed father.
“What makes him think he could, though?” I keep rounding back to that question. “Even if I am a ‘mistake,’ how could he take whatever power made my eyes gold and allows me to draw on the Font without a sigil?”
“Your scar,” he says solemnly.
“What about it?” I press my hand against my chest.
“I’m not sure how it healed… But have you ever really looked at it?”
Looked at it? I can’t escape it a second of my life. “Sure. Gnarled. Twisted. Spiderwebbed. Like I’m some kind of clay doll that cracked. Ugly—”
“Don’t look at it with the eyes of society and their narrow ideas of beauty. Look at it objectively, Isola.”
I frown, and my brows knit. What’s he trying to get me to see? “Father, I know your instinct has always been to teach me through questions and probing, but now isn’t the time for it.”
“It’s a sigil.”
I inhale sharply and straighten. “A sigil… That’s impossible.” Now that I think carefully, it could look like one…
“It’s one we’ve never seen before. Not even I know what it does. My only theory is that the Etherlight you summoned was so powerful that it scorched the sigil into your flesh.”
“And the vicar knows this.” It was his curates who patched me up, after all. They would’ve seen the jagged outlines of what transformed into my scar. A sigil wrought in blood—my blood.
“I’ve dedicated my life to trying to figure out what, exactly, it does.
I’ve tried to stall Vicar Darius and throw him off course, but he has so many resources.
There is only so much I can do, Isola. I might be the master artificer, but there are others who are good.
Maybe not as good as me, but good enough to tell the vicar if they realized I was being intentionally obtuse. ” He sighs heavily.
Is that… Is that why he worked so hard to become the best artificer in Vinguard and place himself right next to the vicar as a high curate?
I throw my arms around him again, hugging him tightly. Father lets out a soft, surprised oomph but doesn’t say anything more. He merely embraces me just as tight.
“The tinctures are designed to manage the flow of Etherlight within you. Even if your mother and I couldn’t figure out what the sigil does, it does seem to increase your ability to draw on the Font. You were always inclined toward Etherlight, but after the attack, everything was different.”
“And if you minimize the flow of Etherlight in me with a tincture, you postpone me drawing upon the Font without a sigil.” Or, seemingly without a sigil, since we don’t know what the one etched into my chest does. “So the vicar couldn’t get what he wants,” I finish, pulling away.
The tinctures weren’t suppressing a dragon from within.
They were suppressing my abilities. Maybe, all along, I had Valor’s power—it just wasn’t safe for me to manifest it.
Because the second I did, the vicar would at last have what he wanted, and he’d no longer have any use for me.
He’d steal this power and wash his hands of me.
“If all this is true, Father, why would you say I should give in to his demands now? Why would I draw Etherlight without a sigil, even if I can?”
“Time is running out. The vicar made you Valor Reborn, Isola. He can unmake you just as easily,” he says.
An objection buds within me, but I don’t dare to speak it.
The Mercy Knights listened to me in the sundering pits because they viewed me as Valor, didn’t they?
And if I can control the Mercy Knights…who has the real power here?
“You must buy the rest of us time. We’re close, Isola, to solving this.
But your mother and I need a little bit longer. ”
“I thought you hated Mum?” I whisper.
“We might not have been the best partners romantically. But that doesn’t mean we can’t work together in other ways. I respect her more than you know.”
“And you never believed I was actually Valor Reborn?” I go to relax my grip, but he doesn’t, so we stay, every word whispered and hasty.
“No. I never believed you were Valor Reborn. But I believed that you needed to oblige the vicar to keep yourself and the rest of us safe while we figured out the best path. And you must oblige him for just a little longer, Isola. The Tribunal is almost over, and when it is finished—when you get into Mercy, everything will change.”
What he’s saying… It’s like I’ve waited a lifetime to hear these words. Dreamed of this moment, never realizing he understands me so completely. Proof that he was on my side, not the vicar’s. And now that I know, I feel foolish for believing anything else.
My father is mine, not the vicar’s. And it’s our whole family against that horrible man.
Without warning, the door opens, revealing the vicar, and the air in the room is suddenly colder and thinner.
“Good, you’re awake.” His eyes dart between me and my father. “A touching reunion.”
“It is. But I also shared with my father what I uncovered in the Font.”
“Good,” he praises. “And how are you feeling? Are you still able to draw on Etherlight without a sigil?”
I glance at my father, and he holds my gaze steadily. I borrow his bravery and the conviction in his words. This is all part of the plan. Even if I don’t know the full scope of what the plan is, I have faith in the love of my family.
I hold out my hand and find the connection with the Font easier than ever before.
Etherlight flows through me, souring my stomach and making my head spin.
I’m still exhausted, but I push through, ignoring the slimy sensation that coats the underside of my skin.
I focus on the Etherlight flowing through me.
The magic he demanded I bring forth during years of training.
I never could before, but this time, a tiny flame appears in my empty palm.
It dances in the vicar’s eyes like a fire that could threaten to burn down all of Vinguard.
He inhales slowly, as though he could breathe in the raw power that I’ve collected. As though I’m offering him the greatest gift he could imagine.
He takes a few steps forward, staring only at the flame.
I close my fist, extinguishing the fire, and his eyes flick to mine.
The spark I saw earlier still gleams within them.
His chest rises and falls slowly, as though he’s forcing himself to breathe evenly to conceal the wild excitement that I see behind his facade.
I hope whatever it is my parents have schemed, whatever has given my mother a reason to disappear, will bring an end to this soon. There’s less than one week now in the Tribunal.
Because whatever the vicar has planned for my power—I now know he’s not going to stop at anything to take it.