28. The East Wing Staircase
THE EAST WING STAIRCASE
Seraphina
Ididn’t fly that night, or the next, or the one after that.
I didn’t even jump.
Now, with the echo of his voice still warm against the shell of my ear, I leave Silver’s living quarters for the fourth night in a row since my back has been fully healed.
“The next game is soon. Maybe you should focus on surviving that for now,” he’d said at the door.
It was the dismissal it sounded like. He’s given up on me. Why else wouldn’t he want me coming back tomorrow to try again like he’s been ordering me to all week.
Perhaps he hopes I don’t make it through the next game, it would certainly save him the late nights and the effort.
I shake the thought away, hoping he hasn’t given up just yet. Rather than turning west from the foyer, toward the dormitories like I normally do, my feet carry me east tonight.
The long way.
The forbidden way.
But no one is watching, and it’s so late, the entire fortress is sleeping.
Silver let slip a few nights ago that Yuvi and Zaheer don’t live inside the fortress walls like he does, and there’s been something I’ve needed to do ever since almost taking a dagger to Lilliana’s throat along this very corridor.
Since she’d laughed in my face and told me to start turning Vulcaris inside out if I ever wanted to see my journal again.
So, with the three Overlord’s accounted for, I figure it’s now or never to search their office.
My pulse quickens as I pass the Mess Hall. The heavy doors are shut, but the ghost of the scents of roasted meat and bitter herbs cling to the stone around here.
Next comes the library. It’s all closed up now, but I can easily imagine how magical the place looks at this time of night. Empty and silent with nothing but the tall arched windows letting moonlight spill across the tomes, turning the dust motes to sparkling silver.
I slow without meaning to, desperate for the peace in there. In a few hours, Ferrum will wake and it will be back to the loud and chaotic daytime routine which has become muscle memory over the last month.
Curling up in a feather soft chair with a book sounds like heaven.
The last few days of training have been exhausting. What with Silver putting us through our paces and my allies’ focus no longer being split between Diana and I, plus the long nights spent out on Silver’s turret roof.
No matter how many times he tells me to trust him, or promises to catch me if I fall, I can’t make myself jump.
I hadn’t lied to him on that first night in his quarters, I’m not afraid of heights. I could sit up on that ledge, my new favorite spot in Vulcaris, taking in the view forever.
Even if it meant sitting next to him.
Even if it meant the view of him.
I swallow and keep walking.
But fight every instinct of self-preservation I’ve learned over the years and throw myself off?
Impossible.
No matter how many times he’s given his word that my wings will save me. That he will save me.
He’s part demon.
A fact I’m reminded of every time I see a ripple of the power lighting his veins on fire.
Trust isn’t something you can pretend or fake. Not when a betrayal means hitting the hard ground at speed, flesh and blood and bones left for carrion.
I walk a little faster. The Meet lies ahead.
Even thinking the name makes my shoulders stiffen.
The last time I was in there, I’d been within lunging distance of two of the Seven Sisters.
That game feels like years ago now. Another lifetime.
Like another version of me. One who didn’t yet know what Silver’s hands felt like, his palms pressing gently against my skin, his fingers more gentle than I could ever have imagined.
My hand drifts unconsciously to my arm where the small scratch had been before it vanished like it had been little more than a figment of my imagination.
It’s completely healed now, not even a faint scar left behind to prove it existed.
Silver’s magic saw to that.
I sigh.
Everything about the man is magnificent beyond reason.
As I walk, I try not to remember the warmth of his hands on my back, the glow beneath my tingling skin, the old, ruined flesh stitching itself whole while leaving behind enough scar tissue to remind me I survived something most would think unsurvivable.
Like it wasn’t enough he’d healed me, he’d then coaxed me out onto the roof, and by the angels…
The memory makes my stomach twist.
The wind that first night was fierce, tugging at my clothes, the drop below dizzying.
He’d stepped off the ledge like it was nothing, wings catching the air in a smooth, effortless arc. And I’d remembered it wasn’t only the magic that made the man magnificent beyond reason.
“Jump, Seraphina,” he’d ordered, voice firm. “Trust yourself.”
Trust him.
When that hadn’t worked, he promised he’d catch me if my wings didn’t come.
Promised.
And he hadn’t sounded like he’d been lying.
But my feet were frozen to the tiles. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make my body move. Fear had wrapped icy fingers around my spine, whispering of falling…
Diana’s face rises unbidden in my mind, and my chest tightens in grief. I let the pain sit there. She’d been alive last time I’d been behind those imposing doors ahead of me.
I’ll come see you tomorrow, I silently promise her.
I’ll return to the Valley of Fallen Blades. I’ll talk to her there tomorrow.
And the next day.
And the day after that.
Even if she never answers.
Even if I’m speaking only to the wind and wooden dagger wedged into the hard, ash covered ground.
I round the final corridor to the office, toward the east wing staircase. And stop dead.
A girl stands balanced on the towering banister railing at the very top, so high I have to crane my neck to see her. Feet bare, wearing nothing but a nightdress and robe, with a makeshift noose of white sheets knotted together and tied around her neck.
Not just any girl either. She’s blonde and lithe and unmistakably nephilim.
The staircase’s stone steps rise into shadow.
My heart slams against my ribs so hard it hurts when she sways.
My body moves before thought catches up.
“Hey—” I start, already running toward the steps.
Her head lifts, and her feet slip.
Time fractures, and she pitches forward.
“No!” I sprint, boots pounding stone, but I’m too far away, too slow…
She falls, and the fortress seems to hold its breath with me as her body plummets down toward solid stone.
Wings.
She has wings.
“Unglamour your wings!”
But she’s almost out of slack sheets, no wings in sight.
What if she’s wingless like me?
That’s when they burst from her back in an explosion of pale gray feathers, snapping wide open with a thunderous crack of air.
The force jerks her upward and then sideways before her neck can meet the resistance of the makeshift noose.
I skid to a halt at the bottom step, gripping the railing as dizziness overwhelms me.
She’s alive.
Alive.
Her wings saved her.
Of course they did.
Relief floods me so fast my knees nearly give out as I start moving again, racing up the forbidden steps to the landing.
A sob rips from her throat. Not relief. Not gratitude. Anger and frustration and rage.
At the top of the stairs is a wide galleried landing and a row of doors.
I take Silver’s dagger out of my boot and slice through the white sheets tethering her to the banister.
The girl lands halfway up the staircase and slams her fists against the stone step. Once. Twice. Again and again, feathers shuddering with each impact.
“Stupid!” she chokes out, punching the ground. “Stupid, stupid things!”
Her wings twitch, half-spread, and she reaches behind and scratches at them as if they’ve betrayed her.
As if saving her life was an insult.
With a final glance at the row of doors the cadets are forbidden to look behind—seven of them, each identical, I walk back down the steps between us cautiously, heart still racing but more confused than ever.
“Hey,” I call softly. “Are you… are you okay?”
She freezes, like this is the first time she’s noticed she’s not alone.
Slowly, she looks up and I see her tear-streaked face through the long blonde hair for the first time. Blue eyes blaze with fury as the soft gray feathers frame her like storm clouds.
She stares at me, and for a moment, neither of us speak. Two girls on a forbidden staircase, her cursing the very wings I’d kill to have save me.
That’s when it hits me.
I know her.
The realization slaps me so hard I have to steady myself, my fingers curling around the banister.
Her hair is different now, washed and straight, no longer matted and whipping around her pretty face. No longer the bird’s nest it had been on the ship.
Her cheeks have filled out enough to pass as fed. But her eyes…
Her eyes are wrong.
They’re empty in the same way Diana’s were at first. Like something vital has been peeled out of her piece by piece, until not even survival remains.
She’s haunted.
By this place?
The Repentance Academy?
Diana had done well to keep hold of her sanity and learn to heal from the trauma of the academy… perhaps this girl was not so lucky. Perhaps she is still tortured and maddened by the ordeal.
“You—” My voice comes out quieter than I expect. “You were on the ship.”
She stiffens.
I continue gently, afraid she’ll bolt if I stop. “You didn’t choose to be a cadet. You went back-of-house. Kitchens. Laundry. Stables.”
Everything we don’t see.
Her jaw tightens, but she doesn’t deny it.
“I recognize you,” I say. “We were tied to the mast together.”
Her gaze flicks up to mine, sharp with something I can’t work out.
“I was between Jack and Diana,” I add quickly, anchoring us both in that memory.
Her breath hitches.
“Diana…” she whispers. “Diana’s one of the kind ones.”
“Yes,” I say softly, crouching down to her level. “She’s—She was amazing.”
Blue eyes shoot to mine. “Was?”
I swallow, then nod.
It’s the first time I’ve really spoken about her to another person since she died. Certainly the first nephilim or person who knew her before she was a Ferrum cadet.