Chapter Forty-Three
FORTY-THREE
Stars, I’m exhausted. I feel it in my bones.
I swear I’ve never had so much happen to me all in one day until I arrived here.
There’s never just one thing that comes out of the woodwork, it’s always everything, all at once.
And I’m scared that soon I’m just going to lay down and not want to get up to face whatever the day holds next.
Like now, as I walk up the stairs to my room, the thought of locking myself in there and not coming out calls to me like a siren song.
I just want to hide. I’m bone tired, I’m mentally drained.
I almost died! Again! And Sebastian and I …
Stars, I let him touch me – taste me. Worse, I liked it.
More than liked it. It tipped my entire world on its axis and now I don’t know what I’ll do the next time I see him.
Or what I’ll do if he sleeps in my room again tonight. Though, surely it won’t be him. He wouldn’t, not after the way I left him to leave with Tilly.
I’m not ready for it, I decide. I’m not ready to find out. I don’t want to walk in there and find him waiting for me because what the hell will I say?
The fact that I’m more concerned about how intimate we got than I am over slipping off a cliff is more than worrisome; it’s downright psychotic. Something is broken inside of my head.
The door to my floor passes by as I continue to walk up the stairs. I’ll face my room soon, but first there’s someone else I need to talk to. I just hope he’s here.
My knuckles rap three times on what I think is Jed’s door.
I wait several moments, wringing my hands together in front of me until the door eventually swings inward.
Jed stands on the other side shirtless, with a pair of dark grey pants that hang low on his hips, showing off the defined V of his lower abdomen.
All right, I see what Tilly was talking about.
‘Silver?’ Jed’s eyes widen; he pops his head out of the doorway to scan the hallway. ‘What’s wrong? Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine,’ I say quickly. ‘Nothing’s wrong, I swear,’ I reassure him – he looks two seconds away from going full protector mode on me. ‘I was just hoping I could talk to you for a minute.’
‘Oh.’
‘If you’re busy I can—’
‘No! It’s fine. I just wasn’t expecting you, that’s all.’ He takes a step back, pulling the door open wider. ‘Welcome to my humble abode.’ The crooked smile he flashes me is boyish and welcoming.
I walk past him, into his room that looks exactly like the set up I have in my own room.
Though the stark difference is the array of weapons mounted to the far wall over his dresser.
I imagine my eyes resemble saucers as I inch my way closer to them, examining how every single one has malachite embedded into the steel.
The daggers, like the one hidden under my clothes, have malachite running down the blade.
The stave has a green ring around each end, and the shield has a thick chunk of stone right at the centre, flickering in the lamplight like a heart in the centre of someone’s chest.
‘You earned all these?’ I ask in awe.
‘Sure did. I have more, these are just my personal favourites,’ he answers as he shoves his arms and head through a white t-shirt.
‘The malachite is stunning.’
I see him nod in my periphery as he walks up beside me and trails a finger over the stone at the heart of the shield that looks like it weighs more than I could lift with both hands.
‘Did you know that the night before battle, warriors will often lay their weapons beneath the moon to charge them and replenish the malachite’s protective magic?
Some will even sleep beside their weapons, instead of laying in their tents.
They pray to Molochītis to watch over them as they prepare to face their enemy.
To bless their blades and strengthen their shields. ’
My skin prickles, my flesh raises with goosebumps as I picture countless warriors mere hours away from battle, sleeping among their weapons that will soon be dripping with blood and praying to a Star they’ve never met, to grant them a safe passage home.
To fill their blades with the protection they need to heal fast and strike true.
‘I didn’t know that.’ My voice is a hoarse whisper. ‘Do you think it works? Do you think Molochītis can hear their prayers?’
His eyes meet mine, and what I see in them is something solemn, almost reverent. ‘I think it’s good to give people something to believe in before they step onto a battlefield, not knowing if they’ll make it out alive.’
It’s not the answer I was looking for, but I understand it nonetheless.
‘So, Silver.’ He quickly changes his tune, turning his back on the wall of weapons so he can lean against his dresser. ‘Tell me, what’d you want to talk about?’
My mouth opens and closes a few times as I debate where to start with this, but ultimately, I decide to just spit it out and say it. Jed is a man who says what’s on his mind, whether a person wants to hear it or not, and certainly not the type to beat around the bush.
‘Were you helping my brother cheat in his classes?’
His brows practically join his hairline. Clearly, he wasn’t expecting that to come out of my mouth. ‘Where did you hear that?’
‘Is that a yes?’ I t didn’t sound like a no.
‘I was doing a friend a favour, and it was only one class.’
Rattled. That’s the only emotion that can describe how I feel right now.
Jed must take my silence as judgement because he starts to ramble.
‘He needed my help, and it’s not like I was doing it all for him.
He helped me when I was struggling in Combat class during first year, so it was an even trade.
But when he told me he wanted to become headmaster someday, I knew he’d need my help to do more than just skim by, so I just kept doing it—’
‘Hold on, go back! He wanted to be headmaster?’ I gape at him.
Since when did my brother, the weapons master, wish to be a damn headmaster who resides within an academy all day ?
No. No way! All Lukas talked about since I was old enough to understand what magic is, was the day he’d become a war general.
‘That was his goal all along. But to become a headmaster you need to excel in every single class, every year. I could see how much it meant to him, so I made sure he didn’t fail SMC.’
‘He never told me,’ I say quietly, settling into this revelation. The more I hear about my brother from these people, the more I realise I knew very little about him.
‘He never told anyone.’
My gaze meets his. ‘He told you.’
Jed simply nods, and I have a feeling he’s hiding something from me. The man who blurts whatever he’s thinking is holding back and that makes me wary.
‘You might already be aware of this, but there’s never been a Malachite headmaster. In fact, there’s never been one that hasn’t been from Agate.’
I did know that.
‘Lukas was determined. He knew it would come down to two things. The vote and sheer power. Everyone talked about him as if he walked in here one day and suddenly he was good at it all, but no one saw how long he studied. How much he practised; hours upon hours he’d train and read and push his mind to the limit.
Not even Sebastian knew about it. He wanted to become the first ever headmaster that was brought in solely by vote and pure talent. Not hierarchy or legacy.’
‘Why would you do that for him though? You could have been expelled for helping him.’
‘Because that’s what you do for the people you love.’ He shrugs as if it’s the simplest answer in the entire world, but my mind latches on one singular word in that sentence. One that rocks me to my core.
Love.
Not loved. Present tense.
‘Y-you and Lukas?’ My voice shakes. ‘Were you … ?’
Emotion fills his eyes and Stars; my heart starts to ache.
My brother didn’t tell me this either, he never once spoke of being involved with someone.
How long were they together? Is that why Lukas came home smiling all the time?
Because he had someone waiting for him when he got back?
Is that why he left, even when I felt in my bones that something was wrong that very last time. Did he go back for him?
Jed nods. Just once, as if confirming it out loud is too much for him.
‘I’m sorry you lost him,’ I whisper, chewing on my bottom lip. ‘I realise I probably haven’t said that, and I should. Sometimes I forget I’m not the only one who lost him that night.’
Jed’s eyes soften; he reaches over and gives my shoulder a light squeeze.
‘Thanks, Silver. That means a lot.’ There’s a sincerity in his eyes I feel reflected in my own.
Jed still loves my brother. Jed knows things about him that others don’t.
That I don’t. I cling to the growing hope that it means we might be on the same side here. Lukas’s side. Not the academy’s.
‘Can I ask you one more question?’ I brace myself for his response.
‘Of course.’
‘How does someone who has been failing their Sympathetic Magic class since the first year have enough power to kill four students using black magic?’
I hear the small hitch in his breathing. It’s quiet and deafening all at once. My question fills the air between us.
Jed is silent for a long moment as he stares at me. Into me. When he finally speaks, it’s like he’s inflated my lungs with air that I didn’t know I was dying for.
‘That’s a good question, Silver. I don’t believe they can.’