Chapter 39
I wake the next morning to light streaming in through the window. I inhale deeply, seeking the scent of roses, but only catch a hint of lavender. I’m still here, in the present.
There’s frost on the windowpane, white creeping at the corners of the glass. It wasn’t there before the oraculi. I lost days to my memories. Winter has begun.
I ring the bell for Flora. “Can you bring me some charcoal? And some scissors.”
While Flora steps out to fetch the charcoal, I make my way into the bathing room. I stand at the mirror. My familiar, rose gold hair grew back in a matter of days, as if my body wanted to match my remembered versions of myself. Or as if a year really had passed while I lay in bed.
I pick at the wavy strands. How long have I viewed this hair as proof of weakness? The lack of fiery color a living symbol of failed power?
Years spent holding my hand over candles and willing the flames to bend.
Pressing my palms together until the skin went white, waiting for heat that never came.
Watching my siblings and their children summon fire like breathing, while I was terrified to go out in public in case any situation ever required a spark.
All of it was a futile attempt to call on the blood of the wrong god.
I am not a failed divinial of Ignar. I’m a divinial of Cyralia.
Which means there’s something about my lineage I don’t know.
Flora returns with the supplies I need, and I rush through the process of spreading charcoal on my head.
She’s already seen my hair’s true shade, so there is no point in hiding how I color it.
She makes no comment, lending her hands to help me grind in the gritty paste and snip the length back above my shoulders.
I shower to rinse off the residue, as she fetches me some bread and water.
“Thank you,” I say as she delivers the food. “Do you know where the lord is?”
“In the office, Lady, for his daily territory update.”
Then he’ll be with Karns and Dashol. With everything I just learned, there’s a very good argument for staying in bed all day and staring at the ceiling.
But I can’t. I’m here to help with the wither.
The truth of my blood will still be there to mull over later.
The least I can do is make it down the hallway to share the knowledge my years in the Citadel bought me.
My disguise back in place, I dress as quickly as I can and tuck the voidstone beneath my clothes. I pull on my boots and cross the room. I grip the handle and take a breath, tensing my legs to run to the office. I throw open the door.
“Ack!”
A smirking lord is leaning against the corridor wall, waiting for me. “Flora told me you were on the move.” His eyes flick to my hair, then back to my face. “I thought you might like an escort.”
I purse my lips. It seems he remembers my confession that I’m afraid to leave the wards. “Are you still meeting?”
He nods.
I breeze past him. “Then let’s go.”
“Lyra!” Dashol smiles as soon as I enter the office. “Happy to see you up and about. We were just using one of the maps you helped me with.”
I give him a nod and a small smile. So much has changed since we worked together on the maps.
Karns’s expression is weary. He watches with calculating eyes as I take the seat Alaris offers. They dart from me to Alaris, then back to me. I can’t blame him for finding the situation strange. I was just escorted to their secret meeting directly from the lord’s bedroom.
Alaris doesn’t leave space for comments. “Where were we?”
“Discussing Lord Jorbyl,” Karns says, straightening his vest. “He’s due at the palace for the winter solstice. He could bring some of our men in as guards and extend his stay to overlap with us.”
“Jorbyl will be quartered in the windward guest halls,” Dashol says. “Those men would be on the far side of the complex from the main force.”
“But they could hold this entry.” Karns points to the map. “The main force takes the first checkpoint with that side already covered.”
“And if the rotation catches them there? They’re only four men, with no backup,” Dashol says.
“At least the alarm would go up in the wrong place. Advance teams accept that possibility.”
“We aren’t talking about possibilities, Karns. We’re talking about people.”
I can’t tell whose side Alaris is on as he leans forward. “What’s the rotation schedule?”
I sit back as they shuffle through papers and argue options. Most of their references are unintelligible to me, their plans discussed so many times they’ve been reduced to a shorthand. Unfortunately, the discussion makes it clear they still don’t have a plan they are all happy with.
I listen for an hour before I catch something on a map that might be useful, as they debate how to get small groups to converge without detection.
“You’re missing a hiding place in this plaza,” I say. I may not understand all their words, but I know the color coding and symbols on the maps at least. “Here. There’s a drainage tunnel beneath the Granato fountain. You can remove the grate and climb inside.”
Karns walks closer to the desk, eyeing the part of the map I indicate, brows raised. “How do you know that?”
If Alaris trusts these people, so should I. I take a deep breath. “Because I crawled inside it when I was seven.”
I glance at Alaris, whose dark eyes are even. There’s no warning there, just openness, or curiosity maybe, over how much I want to reveal.
“Useful delinquency.” Karns adjusts his glasses. “How many people could it hide?”
“Three, I think. Maybe four, if they squeeze.”
I wait for him to ask me something else about why I was hiding anywhere in the Citadel as a child, but instead, he holds out a pen. “Mark it, since you’re our cartographer.”
I grip the pen harder than necessary under Karns’s scrutinizing gaze, but I draw clean lines on the first try. I’ve seen Dashol do it enough to know when to use a dotted line, and which symbols indicate an entrance and a hiding place.
For the rest of the meeting, I listen, adding a few comments about which footpaths are covered and which are exposed to windows above.
“We’ll resume tomorrow,” Alaris says. Karns nods and leaves through the front, while Dashol gathers the maps and turns toward the mirror.
Before I uncurl myself from the chair, Alaris is before me. “If you’re up for an outing, there are some hawks that would love to see you.”
I half-walk, half-run to the aviary, letting Alaris trail behind me for once.
I throw open the door and squeal at the sight of the dark shapes high on their perches.
The whole stone tower erupts in a cacophony of cries, and the hawks descend.
I can’t track individuals as wings swirl around me.
I pick my way toward the bench so I can pet them, their claws too sharp to rest on my arms.
I settle in as I’m surrounded by jostling feathers and beaks.
Head after head finds the palms of my hands, my outstretched fingers grazing over wing after wing.
I recognize the one who fell into the water, his beak a little wider.
He chirps and bullies others out of the way so he can climb onto my lap, his claws snagging my skirt. My eyes well.
“I’m so glad to see you all,” I whisper, beaming even as my vision gets blurry. I don’t trust my voice to say more.
“It’s good to see your smile again.” Alaris’s dark eyes glint. With that focused gaze and onyx hair, he looks so much like these birds of prey. “Would you like to stay with them a while?”
“Of course.” I don’t want to sit in bed feeling useless until tomorrow’s meeting. The sea of round eyes implore me to stay. “But you’re busy. I think I should just go back to the rooms.”
I don’t say the rest: that I can’t stand the idea of staying outside the wards alone.
Alaris clears his throat. “I need to show you something.” His earring swings as he turns his back. “Do something.”
“What?”
“Do something. Anything I wouldn’t expect you to do.”
I hesitate. Then I hold up three fingers.
“Three fingers,” he says without turning. “Something else.”
I open my hand to four, then five.
“Numbers won’t surprise me, Ly. Try again.”
The back of my neck heats. He is not joking. I glance at the hawks around me. Some are preening. Others press against me with their eyes closed. One is perched on the crossbeam of the door, watching me, its black stare steady. I blink at it.
I lift my hand again and make the rudest gesture I know.
Alaris laughs, low and short. “Charming.”
He turns. There is silver in his eyes, a bright ring of it around each pupil. After a breath, it fades.
“I can see what they see,” he says. “They can be my eyes on you when we are not together.”
Divinials of Mordyn, Marith, and Nyvorn can communicate with living things, but I’ve never heard of arastorians having a similar connection. He did say the hawks were specially bred by the lords of night, and I sensed they were more than ordinary birds. Could having them keep watch be enough?
The masked man flashes across my mind, flipping his dagger and raising his arm to throw it.
I look down. “Sometimes, I don’t think anything will be enough to save me. It feels like he could be in any shadow.”
“No one can get near this castle now without me knowing.” His voice is sure. “The hawks have been monitoring the grounds since the moment they recovered.”
“But the forest—”
“They can spot a mouse in the grass at midnight. And besides…”
I barely blink, and he’s gone. His next words come from behind me, low and vibrating over the shell of my ear. “My shadowgates are working again. If danger appears, I can be with you in an instant.”
I force myself not to shudder as tingles spread. I blink again, and he is back in front of me, the crackle in the air the only evidence that he used any magic at all.
I try to wrangle down the lump in my throat.
“You see?” His lips quirk. “I have eyes on you everywhere.”
Everywhere. Everywhere…?
“Hey.” I straighten so fast the hawk in my lap startles. “I’ve changed in here. Just how often have you looked?”
Several hawks squawk at that, swiveling their heads to Alaris. I choose to believe they are indignant on my behalf.
“Only when you gave me reason to worry.” He pauses, a sly smile growing. “Which, admittedly, has been often. I might have caught a few choice words directed at me in those early weeks.”
“And you earned every one of them!”
“Have I? Now you understand the restraint I showed when I didn’t interfere the night you decided to sleep on that bench. I very nearly scooped you up and threw you straight in the bath.”
“You call watching me restraint?”
“Tremendous restraint. Truly, terrifying control.”
I want to scold him more, but instead, a laugh breaks through.
The light coming through the high windows catches silver in his gaze. “A smile and a laugh. What a day.”
The lump I was keeping down comes up. I turn back to petting the nearest hawk. The bed, the curtained room, the wards, and now the hawks. He is pouring resources into my survival when he has more important things to focus on, and I have given him little in return except sleepless nights.
“Stay with the hawks as long as you like, Ly. I’ll have Dashol come get you later.”
The door swings open and shuts behind him.
I lean toward the hawks arranged on the ground before me. “You like me more than him, don’t you? You’re on my side? Next time you see him, give him a good peck.”
Hawks don’t nod, but the cocked heads and attentive gleaming eyes tell me yes, we will. Alaris’s laugh reaches me, even through the door.