Chapter 41
Lukhan
The familiar, hated headache began behind my left eye during Chatelaine Lirelle’s announcement.
After she dismissed the assembly, it grew into a full-blown demon that pounded the inside of my skull with the vindictive rhythm of a torturer’s mallet.
Now, safely back in my rooms, I sat at my desk, pen and paper before me, every beat of my heart sending a fresh spike of pain through my temples.
I’d extinguished all but one of the mage-lamps in my rooms. But even the single reading light burning on my writing desk felt like too much. My eyes were raw, as though someone had scrubbed them with salt.
Three days. Three days of investigation, of waiting with false hope for vindication from Arcane Standards.
And for what?
I kept seeing Miss Fishwife, sitting next to that jumped-up merchant boy, accepting the chatelaine’s unbelievable verdict with a wide-eyed, disbelieving expression.
As if that manipulative, underhanded little trollop hadn’t known all along what she was doing!
As if stabilizing our banner had actually been a sincere attempt to help us!
If our banner had exploded, at least we would’ve died with honor on the field of combat instead of being humiliated like this!
I remembered Damien’s hand clamped around my upper arm as we stumbled out of the arena in the wake of our monstrously unfair defeat, and how he’d steadied me when my legs threatened to buckle.
He looked at me, not with pity, and whispered, “Let’s walk away with our backs straight and our mouths shut. ”
I hadn’t managed the ‘shut mouth’ part. The thought of having to face Father and confess that I’d lost to a pair of commoners… first-year commoners… it had been too much to bear.
It was worse than unfair. The outcome had been predetermined; that much was clear to me. Damien and I had only lost because someone had sabotaged us.
But Father wouldn’t see it that way. In his world, there were no legitimate excuses for defeat.
And through it all, Miss Fishwife had watched me with genuine pity in her eyes, which made the whole affair ten thousand times worse.
The demon rampaging inside my head swung his mallet again and drove a new spike of pain through my head. A fresh wave of nausea rose in its wake.
I swallowed hard and reached for the cup of willow-bark tea I’d brewed an hour ago. It had gone cold. I drank it anyway, grimacing at the bitterness.
A blank sheet of letter paper waited on my writing desk, my family’s seal embossed at the top in gold leaf that caught the light and threw it back at me in a searing blur. Beside it sat my pen and a stick of sealing wax.
I had to write to Father and confess what had happened. There was no avoiding it.
Because he would hear about the results of the Aurelian Trials one way or another—from his spies at the Academy, from his remaining friends at the imperial court, from the gossip that would travel into the depths of Frankia faster than any official dispatch.
Better that he learn it from me first. It would give me the chance to make my case that sabotage, not weakness or lack of skill, had led to my downfall.
I took a deep breath, uncapped my pen, and wrote the first line:
To Murad, Baron Demirkalé at Demirkalé Manor, your devoted son Lukhan sends respectful greetings. Dearest Father, I hope this letter finds you in good health—
My hand shook, and my pen dragged across the paper, leaving a ragged line. My handwriting had deteriorated into a spiky, uneven scrawl under the relentless agony of my headache.
This will never do. The sloppy penmanship alone will give him an apoplexy before he even reads my news.
I set my pen down and pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes. The darkness behind my eyelids offered no relief, only a throbbing red glow that pulsed in time with my heartbeat and the spikes of pain.
No matter what I accomplish, why am I never enough for him?
All my life, I’d worked hard to be the perfect son. I’d done everything he asked of me. Last year, before she came along, I’d been at the top of all my classes.
As Father had ordered, I had cultivated the right friendships here at the academy, and mostly avoided the wrong people.
I’d built a reputation here based on fear and charm in equal measure.
When the Custodes Sanguinis came looking for recruits among the second-years, it was a point of pride that they had approached me first.
And all this still wouldn’t be enough to counteract my failure to reach the Aurelian Trials final.
I could already picture his expression when he received my letter: the tightening around the mouth, the dangerous narrowing of his eyes. My son, you have disappointed me. Again.
I crumpled the ruined paper into a ball and took a fresh sheet from the stack in my desk drawer.
As I wrote, forcing each shameful word to appear in the beautiful script expected of me, my head felt as if it had been stuffed with hot coals.
And somewhere beneath the pain and the simmering sense of injustice, a more insidious thought crept in.
What if Miss Fishwife really was trying to help Damien and me because she knew we’d never be able to fix our damaged banner?
What if she really is a more talented mage and a better student than me?
The thought made me want to put my fist through the wall.
I finally finished, signed, and sealed the letter, then set it on the edge of my desk.
The ordeal was finally over. I blew out the candle and relished the slight relief that darkness offered my aching head.
This floor of the dormitory was mercifully silent tonight. Most of my neighbors were in the common room downstairs, commiserating with Damien.
He’d offered to stay and fetch cold compresses for me. I’d sent him away because I couldn’t bear his understanding and sympathy; not tonight. Not unless I wanted to compound the shame of my defeat by losing self-control and crying on his shoulder like a child with a skinned knee.
For a moment, I allowed myself to imagine what it would be like to allow him to hold me and comfort me. He’d offered me comfort before, after one of Father’s crueler missives arrived. I’d always refused.
Now, in the dark, with the migraine pulsing behind my eyes and the letter to Father sitting on my desk like an accusation, I prayed to the Divine Mother.
Not that she’d ever listened to me before. But tonight, I had nothing left to lose.
Divine Mother of All, if you have any mercy in you, let me die tonight.
Let me not wake up. Let me not have to face Father after this failure.
Let me not have to sit in those stands tomorrow and pretend I don’t care when Miss Fishwife and that merchant boy compete in the place that should have been mine.
My head throbbed with hammer blows of agony. The blood roared in my ears. The darkness pressed down around me, heavy and cold and final.
Despite my fervent prayers, the headache did not kill me. I lay there for a long time, waiting for divine mercy that never came.
∞∞∞
Talisa
I woke at dawn, feeling strangely calm. And ravenously hungry.
Unlike the mornings of my previous matches, I ate a hearty breakfast of porridge and grilled sausage without my stomach churning with sick nerves.
Elio noticed. He always noticed.
“You look oddly confident,” he said, studying me across the dining hall table.
“I even slept well last night.” I ate another spoonful of porridge drizzled with honey and laced with butter and cream. It tasted delicious. “I know I should be terrified about whatever is awaiting us in the arena today. But somehow… I’m not.”
“I, on the other hand, want to throw up.” He grinned at me, his cocky expression belying his words. “Would you like my sausage? I can’t even look at it right now.”
I picked up my fork and snagged it.
Waste not, want not. Mama’s voice was always with me.
“I know you’re going to win today,” Juno said. Sitting next to her, Mira nodded.
I chewed and swallowed before replying. “I hope you’re right.”
I knew I should be nervous. My future at the academy depended on what happened today. Elio and I had to win… or at least come close enough to winning to force Lirelle and Julissa to forgive my fine.
As long as we put up a good fight, I told myself.
But I didn’t want just a “good fight.” I wanted to win.
∞∞∞
We arrived at the amphitheater an hour later to find it had been utterly transformed overnight.
Gone was the smooth expanse of white sand, replaced by something that looked like the ruins of an ancient city that had been hit by an earthquake and then frozen mid-collapse.
Great slabs of stone rose from the floor at irregular angles, some tilting precariously, others jutting straight up like the spines of some enormous buried creature, joined by narrow corridors and impossible staircases.
Above it all, platforms floated at different heights, connected by narrow bridges of stone that shifted and realigned themselves with each passing minute, as if the entire structure were breathing.
And through it all, gusts of wind howled through and around the edifice with enough force to knock a grown man off his feet.
“It’s beautiful,” Elio commented. “In a horrifying, likely-to-kill-us sort of way.”
“It’s meant to simulate battlefield conditions,” said a soft voice behind us.
I jumped and turned to see Mage-Instructor Mundise at my elbow, their hands clasped behind their back, their expression grave. “This final challenge of the Trials will not be kind to first-years like you and Mr. Ferarro, Miss Bernswick. I advise extreme caution.”
“Noted,” I said. “Thank you, Mage-Instructor.”
They nodded once and moved away, melting back into the crowd of academy staff heading for the staff seating section along the arena’s edge.
The competitor’s section had been reduced to a single long bench positioned directly opposite the dignitaries’ box, close enough to the arena floor that the enchanted wind slapped my face and billowed my academic gown.
Elio settled beside me on the bench, his eyes wide as he surveyed the chaotic landscape.