Chapter 22
Elora
The manors wavered like mirages against the evening sky.
Purple and gold bruised the horizon where the sun sank, bleeding light across distant rooftops. One by one, lanterns blinked awake along the street, their flames dancing in glass windows and glinting off polished brass knockers.
Elora’s fingers found the frayed thread on her satchel strap, picking at it until her nail caught the edge.
Marcus, Rowan, and Nevin walked ahead, their silhouettes sharp against the dimming sky.
From behind, they passed easily for Empire officials and attendants on some quiet errand.
They moved like they’d practiced this a hundred times—shoulders back, pace steady, heads turned just enough to suggest self-importance.
Rell slowed his stride to match hers, letting the apprentices drift half a dozen paces ahead. He’d left his usual coat unbuttoned, the Empire insignia clipped at his belt instead of pinned over his heart, as if even his disguise refused to fully commit.
“You’re glaring,” he said under his breath. “I can feel it from here.”
Her jaw cracked when she tried to relax it. She hadn’t noticed the tension until that moment.
The manors stood like sentinels on either side of the street.
White stone gleamed even in twilight. Dark slate roofs cut sharp lines against the sky.
In the front gardens, every blade of grass stood exactly as tall as its neighbor.
Hedges curved in perfect arcs, as if someone had measured each leaf with calipers.
A breeze whispered between the buildings, carrying distant laughter and the clop of hooves on cobblestone.
Her vision blurred, and suddenly she walked through the Myrrhshade Wilds again.
Roots erupted from soil in wild, knuckled fists.
Flowers hung from branches like drunken revelers, petals splayed open without permission.
Vines strangled stone, claiming it. Trees bent at impossible angles, following sun and wind rather than some gardener’s vision.
In the Wilds, sound pressed against her eardrums from all sides—cricket symphonies, the rustle of unseen creatures, leaves chattering to each other, and beneath it all, Mahōamorah’s heartbeat pulsing through the earth.
Here, only flames and people dared move without permission.
Her shoulders prickled beneath the robe. It was too smooth. Too quiet. She felt like a spill waiting to happen on an immaculate table.
“You’re very talkative tonight,” Rell observed.
She realized belatedly he’d been speaking for a while—about the drive, about how the Ravenpoint checkpoint had gone smoother than expected, a half-remembered mention of The Hive. Violette’s name. Someone else’s.
Elora hadn’t answered once.
Her thoughts kept snagging on the wrong things. The angle of shadows between the houses. Consider how effortless it would be to duck into them, shift, and launch herself into the air. To feel wings again instead of heavy robes. To fly until this street was a line of light too small to matter.
Rell glanced down at her, eyes narrowing. “Elora?”
She kept walking.
“They’re going to be glad you’re here,” he tried again, voice low and careful. “Violette especially. She’s been—”
Elora’s boots scraped to a halt on the cobblestones as the boys crossed into the courtyard ahead.
Her lungs seized. Through the gate, familiar silhouettes moved across lit windows, the same ridged stances, the same tilt of heads that had turned away when she entered rooms. One laugh cut through the evening air—high, sharp—and her stomach clenched as if she’d been struck.
She blinked and saw tea spilling across a dormitory floor, her own hands trembling as she gathered shattered ceramic. A whisper: “Tehvan’s little pet.” The memory of her smaller self, hunched over a desk, searching for notes that had vanished overnight.
Her fingers brushed her face, tracing the new angles, the sharpness that hadn’t been there before. The golden eyes that now reflected lamplight like a predator. The Empire robe hung heavy across shoulders that had once curled inward, trying to disappear.
“And Symond?” The name escaped her lips before she could catch it. Her neck prickled as if he was already standing behind her, his gaze cataloging each change, each weakness.
Rell’s hand settled on her shoulder. “You’re worried about Symond?” A laugh burst from him, quickly muffled by a cough when a guard glanced their way. He leaned close, breath warm against her ear. “Did you forget you can turn into a massive fucking cat?”
Her claws itched beneath her skin, ready. But the image of herself tearing through the manor, blood on her muzzle, made her flinch.
“Come on.” Rell’s arm slid around her shoulders. His stride lengthened, chin lifting as he guided her forward, each step projecting ownership of the very air they breathed.
The manor materialized through the evening mist—pale stone, bleached bone-white against the darkening sky. Windows like vacant eyes stared down, reflecting nothing. Unlike its neighbors, this building seemed to lean slightly forward, as if listening for secrets.
Iron bars rose before them, twisted into thorns that curled and reached. Lantern light caught the points, turning them to liquid fire.
A guard’s shadow stretched across their path. His eyes moved over Marcus, Rowan, and Nevin with practiced recognition, lingered on Rell with deference, then stopped at Elora. His hand shifted imperceptibly toward his weapon.
“She’s with us,” Rell said, his chin lifting just enough to expose his throat—a gesture of such casual power that the guard’s shoulders straightened reflexively.
Metal scraped against metal as the gate swung inward.
As they passed through, Rell’s arm remained across her shoulders, his grip transforming from casual to deliberate, the way someone might steady a boat against rough waters without trying to control its course.
Just… bracing.
The gate shut behind them.
She flinched, then hated herself for it.
Her pulse thudded in her throat, hot and sharp, like the moment she’d stepped into the arena in Kilfaire, the one where Thorn had planned Tehvan’s execution.
The one she’d entered knowing it was bait, knowing she might die there, and still feeling that treacherous flicker of hope.
She had no chains now. No master. No overseer. She could leave anytime.
Couldn’t she?
Up ahead, the apprentices jogged up the steps toward the manor’s front doors, their boots tapping eagerly across the pristine stone. They looked comfortable. Familiar. Like they belonged here.
Elora did not.
A shrill burst of laughter cut across the yard.
Her body jerked before she could stop it.
Four children sprinted past from the side garden, wooden swords clacking, scarves billowing behind them like battle flags. A small girl with copper braids lunged at a boy twice her size, her face flushed with triumph as he dramatically clutched his chest and staggered backward.
Elora froze entirely.
Playing. Laughing. Untouched.
For a heartbeat, she saw The Institute courtyard.
A boy with a split lip standing at attention while a master circled him.
The same boy, days earlier, chasing a friend with a wooden sword just like these children.
She remembered his laughter—bright, uninhibited—before the first time he was beaten for speaking out of turn.
How his shoulders gradually curved inward over months, how his eyes learned to study the ground.
How his voice, once clear as a bell, became a whisper that cracked when addressed directly.
These children had no idea how quickly a place could turn oppressive. How fast laughter could turn into silence.
Rell’s arm gave the faintest squeeze around her shoulders. “They’re just kids,” he murmured.
Elora tore her gaze away as the children rounded the corner and vanished into another part of the grounds, their laughter fading into the dusk.
Rell’s footsteps echoed ahead of hers as they moved deeper into The Hive.
Her fingers traced the cool wooden walls, expecting the grit of neglect but finding only smooth polish beneath her touch.
The hallway opened suddenly into a vaulted chamber where dusk spilled through stained glass, casting jewel-toned shadows across marble floors worth more than entire villages in the North.
A dark flag hung from the balustrade, its edges fraying like crow feathers, strange symbols embroidered in tarnished gold thread.
Her boot caught on a deep groove in the floor where something heavy had been dragged repeatedly across the marble.
A crooked portrait of a man who strikingly resembled Tehvan watched them pass, its gilded frame deliberately hung at an angle.
Rell’s shoulder brushed hers at a junction, nudging her right without a word. Their footfalls echoed in perfect isolation—no voices, no clatter of weapons, no pitter patter of running children. Only silence.
Rell pushed open the doors to a large common room, and the sounds hit her first—a wall of noise leading her to flinch.
Laughter that rose and fell like waves. The clinking of glasses.
Someone’s boots scraping across wood as they dragged a chair.
A voice with that particular Institute lilt that made her neck muscles tighten instinctively.
She stood frozen at the threshold, blinking against the sudden blur of movement and color.
Bodies draped across mismatched furniture, a velvet settee with one leg propped on books, three different wooden chairs around a table scarred with knife marks, pillows scattered across the floor where two boys arm-wrestled.
A girl with copper hair braided a taller girl’s dark locks by the window.
The room looked like someone had collected pieces over years, adding each one without discarding the old.
“Elora?”
Her name, spoken in a voice she’d thought she’d never hear again.