Chapter 5
I expected killing him to feel better than this. I stare down at him. The man is finally dead.
“How did you know where I was being held?” I ask as I stand, swaying slightly. It’s not as though I was being kept in a normal cell.
“You told me once where he kept you when he forced you to ink.”
Did I? My mind might be hazy from the pain, but I’m fairly certain I never told him. Did he mean Glavstone had told him? After all, the warden was playing both sides.
The last time I’d really given thought to where I was being kept when Glavstone took me from my cell to ink was when Eza put me in that mental prison of his.
Kaelis was the one who pulled me from it.
I’d heard his voice then. Did he somehow see what I was seeing?
Or was I rambling in the real world without realizing it while trapped in my vision?
Or…Did Eza used to report to Kaelis, too?
The relief I’d first felt at the sight of him dulls.
The blood on the Oricalis symbol still gripped in my palm is a reminder of everything I stood for—and still stand for.
It reminds me of everything he is…and yet also is not.
My instincts try to tell me I cannot trust him, almost in defiance of what is before me: the man who is risking it all to rescue me.
I shift my feet and drag my attention back to him. I keep expecting him to explain or plead with me.
But this man does neither.
Without a word, he turns for the door. As he pulls it open, he barks a short and simple command: “Do it.”
Instantaneous movement on the other side of the door. The sounds of clanking armor, a brief scuffle, and then the sizzle of magic.
I’ve no idea what Kaelis is playing at, but I will not be caught off guard.
I drop to Glavstone’s side. He keeps his deck in a holster attached to his belt.
I undo the whole thing, slip the belt off him, and cinch it around my waist. As Kaelis opens the door wider, I reach into the card holster.
The moment my fingers come into contact with the deck, a surge of magic races through me like a gust of wind.
Instantly, I know every card. And it’s not a moment too soon.
Plated Stellis rush inside the office. A hulking knight dashes toward me, arms out, as though he means to tackle me.
I summon a card. Glavstone’s inking is clunky and awkward.
The magic doesn’t flow nearly as smoothly as I’m accustomed to.
If I wasn’t as good at wielding as I am, I might not have managed to summon the Five of Swords at all.
Before I can actually cast it, however, the Stellis rips off his helmet. My eyes widen. The card I’d nearly used falls to the floor harmlessly, its magic dissipating.
Gregor crushes me in a bear hug. It’s particularly spiky thanks to all the plate he’s wearing.
“Wh-what?” I’m unable to form a cohesive thought.
Kaelis drags the bodies of the Halazar guards into the office with the help of two other Stellis.
“A bit of help here?” Kaelis snaps at Gregor.
“Right. Sorry.” Gregor releases me with a sheepish grin.
Then a fourth Stellis with a slight but all-too-familiar limp enters.
“Twino?” I meet familiar eyes as Twino pulls off his helmet.
“Ren? Jura?” As I say their names, each Stellis straightens away from the bodies they were hauling in with Gregor’s help. Ren lifts his visor, and even though I can’t see his face, I can see the smile in his eyes. Jura removes her helmet entirely and tosses it aside.
“You’ll want your helmets to get out of here,” Kaelis cautions.
“But it stinks.” Jura scrunches her nose.
Kaelis barely refrains from rolling his eyes.
I’m not sure where to look. Gregor’s beaming face. Jura and Kaelis looking surprisingly at ease with each other.
Or Twino, who comes to a stop in front of me. His palm lands gently on my cheek. “You look like you’ve been chewed up and spit out.”
“You look…alive.” I throw my arms around my friend’s shoulders. I don’t think he can feel my embrace through the armor. But it doesn’t matter; we’re so relieved to see each other we heave a simultaneous sigh of relief. “How did you all get in here?”
“Him.” Twino steps away and nods in Kaelis’s direction.
My eyes meet the prince’s once more. “You…How did you even find them?”
“I made it so your friends wanted to find me.” Kaelis looks smug, and judging from the way my friends all scatter their gazes and press their mouths into hard lines, it must have indeed involved skillful manipulation on the prince’s part.
“However it happened, thank you. Though I wonder if I should feel offended you let me rot for a year the last time if you were able to break in all along,” I say, mostly in jest.
“We couldn’t have pulled this off without him.” Twino taps his Stellis breastplate, and I give a knowing nod.
Reunions and further questions can wait. “We need to get to the dungeons,” I say.
“You already know, then?” Kaelis asks.
Something about the question makes time grind to a halt. A part of me has already connected the dots between everything I know, but I chose to ignore the truth he hints at until this moment. “Know what?”
“We’re getting the Star, and we’re taking her with us. She’s being kept in the dungeons.”
There it is. The thing I’d been yearning to overlook. To protect myself from as though it’d somehow protect her.
I remember the day Kaelis and I briefly discussed the Star. He’d told me they were in or had been through Halazar, and I’d wanted to hear no more. Now I sway and stagger, Ravin’s words echoing loudly between my ears.
This time, she goes into the dungeons of Halazar. Somewhere deep. Somewhere no one, but especially not my brother, will ever find her…Put her with her sister.
A tapestry of memories weaves across my mind, threads of individual moments knotting together into a final pattern.
Glavstone’s office fades away. I’m with my mother, cradling my sister as she sleeps.
“Mother,” I ask quietly so as not to wake my sister, “will Arina be like me?” I sit on the floor with my sister’s head in my lap; my inking supplies are scattered around us—half-finished drawings that I’d started while listening to Mother’s instructions of “feeling the cards” but that didn’t go anywhere.
Pages of circles, endless circles wrapping on one another.
She doesn’t look up from her inking. She is always working, over and over, on the same meaningless drawing exercises that she has me focusing on regularly. “How like you?”
“Will she also be drawn to the cards?” I stroke my sister’s hair. She doesn’t even stir.
“Perhaps, but you are very, very special, Clara. If she is drawn to the cards, it will not be in the same way as you are.”
I close my eyes and speak with intention. “I want—I wish for Arina to be very, very special, too. That way, we can be special together, forever.”
I’d said it with every fiber of my being. With the same force of will and flare of magic as when I cast a card. I remember Mother’s panicked expression, her slightly parted lips. She never told me what surprised her about what I said, quickly moving the conversation on.
What if I…Could I have inked my Major all those years ago? Had I spun the Wheel without knowing what I was doing when I was nothing more than a girl? Were those cards I was inking rudimentary versions of my Major? Did I make Arina “like me” in that I shifted fate and made her a Major?
Has there ever been a turn of fate where my power hasn’t made those around me suffer?
“…Clara.” Gregor shakes me. Twino is at my other side, looking on with worried eyes.
I’m shaking. I stagger and grip Glavstone’s desk with white knuckles. But not for support…It’s to keep me from hurling myself at the prince.
Whatever expression I wear is enough that Kaelis takes a half step back. For a split second, he looks as though he might bolt.
Good. You should be afraid of me.
When I speak, my words are colder than the night between the stars. “Did you know?”
A thousand questions are wrapped up in that: Did you know the Star was my sister? Did you know she was alive? Did you keep the truth from me?
Whatever he says next will shape everything.
“Know what?” Jura interjects.
“That she was the Star.”
“Who?” Ren looks among the remaining members of the Starcrossed Club for clarity, but none of them has any to offer.
“My sister.” I don’t remove my gaze from Kaelis. “Did you know Arina is the Star?”