Chapter 10
Ten
Lory
The next morning, Lory’s appetite quickly disappeared when, at the second ring of the bell, the door closed and locked, and she realized there were too many empty spots at the tables.
Out of over one hundred and seventy ashlings, over a third were gone, killed for their tardiness or in one of the countless training sessions.
With a glance around her table, she marked her friends’ tense faces as they stared at the side entrance by the leadership platform.
Any moment now, Brunn or Ycken would call for the stragglers, and Khayrivven would march them in, his face not animated and full of emotions the way it had been when he’d sealed his words with a breathtaking kiss last night that had left Lory’s core throbbing, but dead as he marched someone to their execution.
Then there was the dread that this day would be the day she’d finally be called forward to be the one delivering their death, no longer a mere background noise, but a screaming concern that had her in a chokehold.
“So what’s the mission?” Tabi interrupted Lory’s musings. “Did Ycken give any more information? Are you going back to the Amrin Mountains?”
Lory had shared with Tabi and Thal that she was to go on a mission, but nothing more. Naturally, their curiosity got away with them now and, since that wasn’t a fruitful endeavor, apparently their imaginations, too.
“Or something here in the city. Perhaps some magic wielder hunting?” Thal suggested.
“I can’t tell you,” Lory whispered, her eyes fixed on the opening door and her heart stuttering at the heartbreaking image of Khayrivven with his saber pointed at the last of the four students entering the room.
The students didn’t deserve to die for missing a bell; perhaps some other sort of punishment would be more appropriate, but voicing that opinion would only put her right up there on the dais, at the front of which they were lined up like cattle for slaughter.
“Pick a student,” Brunn demanded from Khayrivven as she did every morning, except for the rare ones when no one was late.
“That’s Narica Hayley,” Jarek muttered a few seats down the table, his eyes wide as he took in the young man and two young women. “She’s in red with Maes.”
As if in confirmation that his sister wasn’t there on the platform with Narica, Jarek whipped his head around to the side of the room, where the reds were sitting at two long tables, and when he spotted her, his chest did a heave like he hadn’t breathed in a minute.
“Maes is safe,” Eira reassured him, but Lory had spotted the fear in his eyes at the thought that his sister could have been among the four. And Maes, clear as Eroth’s wrath, wasn’t fine, even if she wasn’t going to be killed. Her friend was.
Forcing herself to face the platform once more, Lory fought the tears of injustice pricking behind her eyes.
“Today, Captain,” Brunn barked when Khayrivven didn’t speak.
His throat bobbed, shoulders tense and free hand clenched. “Hadrian Bleek.”
Lory didn’t look when Bleek followed the summons and approached the platform, climbing the stairs to join the sentenced. His dagger sang as he pulled it from his scabbard, and the boy at the very right sucked in a sharp breath as he realized he would be first.
No, she didn’t want to watch as the light left his eyes, but she did.
For all four, Narica being the last of them to slump into a puddle of her own blood, did Lory watch, to memorize them as victims of this academy, of the Triad, and, per extension, of Ulder’s rule.
Bile rose in her throat as Bleek pulled his blade from Narica’s stomach, and the girl wrapped her arms around her torso as if she could hold herself together.
But her face wasn’t filled with fear anymore.
Instead, defiance stood written in the set of her chin, the hardness of her expression.
“Death to the tyrant!” she shouted, staggering back before Bleek could grab her. “Free Criulias. Ashthorn is a l—”
Her voice tore off like a ribbon cut with sharp scissors, and Ycken got to his feet, stepping out from behind his table to retrieve the knife he’d thrown at her neck, where it sat embedded, rivers of crimson gushing from the wound.
The collective whispers of shock and outrage erupting in the hall were smothered by the pounding of Lory’s heart, her powers sparking to life in her palms, creeping up her arms and heating her entire body until breathing became hard.
Her magic, ready to defend her and begging her to free them.
But when her gaze met Khayrivven’s, he shook his head ever so slightly.
No magic. She couldn’t lose control.
“What, by the Guardians, did she mean?” Eira prompted, but Lory barely heard the murmured conversation now occupying her own table, her mind spinning. What tyrant? Ulder? And if so, what did that have to do with Ashthorn?
“She was Criu,” Jarek was saying when Lory finally pulled her gaze away from Khayrivven, folding her hands in her lap to hide the thin glow beneath her skin.
“Maes told me Narica’s family fled Criulias years ago to find safe harbor in Dunai.
Her parents were both in the common army, loyal soldiers; that’s why the Triad decided to allow their children into Ashthorn when they showed signs of magic… ”
Lory was still trying to wrap her head around Narica’s last words. Ashthorn is a l—
A what?
Her eyes locked on Khayrivven’s across what felt like an endless distance, and the powers at her fingertips threatened to burst from her skin.
Ycken was standing not three paces from him, a second knife in his hand, ready to throw if anyone dared finish that sentence.
His gaze flicked over the murmuring crowd like a black whip.
Behind him, Brunn, Nahrit, and Dunveil were on their feet, their hands within casual reach of their weapons.
Only Lenya was missing, the Master of Whispers absent at a meal for the first time since Lory’s return.
“Silence!” Ycken boomed, followed by a silver crackle in the air that Lory wasn’t certain was his magic or simply the collective of all magics straining to protect their wielders.
The air tasted of singeing heat and the electricity before a thunderstorm, of spices and rain and damp earth. “SILENCE!”
Lory could have heard a needle fall to the stone floor; that was how quiet the room had become, all eyes on the general standing behind the four slaughtered students.
“What we all have just witnessed is an act of treason. Anyone repeating those words will die a similar death to Narica Hayley. Am I understood?”
No one seemed to dare take a breath.
“AM I UNDERSTOOD?”
His words struck like a whip, making her sit up straight and press her scaldingly hot palm on top of her thighs.
“Yes, sir!” Ashlings, thornlings, and tested alike responded, and as Ycken peered in her general direction, Lory’s heart almost stopped beating.
“Heener, Vednis, Ngala, Seine,” Ycken prompted, his infuriated expression making Lory wonder if the four of them were next. “Help Bleek dispose of the bodies. The rest of you”—he took a step toward the front of the platform, gesturing into the mess hall—“get to class. Immediately.”
All around Lory, students got to their feet, some of them grumbling that they had to start the day without breakfast, others whispering about what had just happened, while Lory exchanged glances with Thal and Tabi.
“We’d better go,” Tabi murmured, tilting her head so her little braids cascaded over her shoulder.
Thal was already on his feet, Lory and Tabi following suit, when she noticed Brycon was still in his seat, his brown face slightly green.
“Come on,” Lory uttered at him as she made her way past him after Tabi and Thal. “You don’t want to get on Ycken’s bad side today.”
Brycon swayed as he stood and filed in behind her, but he followed them through the leaving crowd as they slowly made progress toward the leadership dais, where Khayrivven was still standing guard by the dead students as if they could come back to life and wreak havoc on Ashthorn Ward.
Ycken had returned to his table, sipping on a cup of steaming liquid and murmuring with Brunn, whose eyes followed Lory through the room like she expected her to bolt and was ready to deliver punishment.
Thal and Tabi reached the stairs first, climbing up them in front of Lory and Brycon, who was slowing with every step he took.
None of them spoke a word as they spread out, Tabi and Thal standing next to the boy at the very right, then Lory, who was promptly joined by Hadrian Bleek, whose handsome face twisted with disgust as he reached for the second boy’s arms. “Take the legs,” he instructed. “We need to get him to the stairs.”
Lory more felt than saw Khayrivven drift closer, taking position at Narica’s head and picking her up by the arms while Brycon took the woman’s legs.
When Lory dared peek over her shoulder, Khayrivven’s serious expression was all she saw.
His eyes weren’t snapping to hers like on a silent summons; his mouth wasn’t quirking with the smirk he so often wore to make the world believe he didn’t care.
And when he finally carried Narica down the stairs, Brycon struggling not to trip over his own feet while balancing the woman’s legs, Khayrivven’s face turned near solemn.
The side door opened on a phantom wind, and the first pair disappeared with the corpse of what Ashthorn called a traitor, but whose opinions and ideas Lory would have liked to hear so she could form an opinion of her own.
Something had always been wrong with Ashthorn Ward, but this was her first time Lory had witnessed someone voice it and the retaliation that had promptly come.
“We’re next,” Bleek said in his usual confident tone, but there was no trace of the courtier he’d embodied in Gilded training the night before.
Something raw had entered his tone, and judging by the look in his eyes as he watched Narica’s body disappear through the door, his perfect veneer was about to crack.