Zeryth crossed his arms over a broad chest. “Hello, Tisaanah.”
My fingers froze, struck with confusion — but it melted away with the heady warmth of his smile. The sight of it took me back to the evenings we had spent together in my little room at the Mikov estate. Some of my fondest memories there.
But, memories aside, it was borderline impossible not to be stunned by Zeryth’s smile. Somehow, I had managed to forget the sheer impact of him. He was the kind of handsome that seemed almost offensive, the kind that leeched out into the air around him in a magnetic cloud. He wore a close-fitting white jacket, similar to Nura’s, and with his white clothing and white skin and shoulder-length white hair, he stood out so starkly against the slithering shadows that I found myself squinting to look at him.
“Zeryth,” I said, in a tone that couldn’t decide whether it was pleased or confused or annoyed. I glanced back down at the orb, which sat between my fingertips. Were we done? I hadn’t completed my task.
“Tisaanah,” he said, “come here.”
I removed my hands. Watched my fingers slide away from the metal. And I stepped forward, past the pedestal, towards Zeryth.
His gaze swept over me, starting at my feet and traveling slowly up until he reached my eyes. “You look different than the last time I saw you,” he said. His teeth glittered. “Tell me, how long has it been?”
“A year and half, I think,” I replied, and his grin broadened.
“Your Aran is much better, too. What a treat, to communicate so clearly with you now.” He slid his hands into his pockets. “Tell me, do you like it here? In Ara?”
“I do.”
“You’ve enjoyed training?” “I have.”
“Your instructor must be very pleased to hear that.” He nodded up towards the balcony. “Turn around and wave to him.”
I turned. Lifted my hand. Snapped my eyes up to the balcony. They settled on Max, and the look of hardened fury on his face snagged my slippery thoughts on something sharp.
Wait.
This was strange.
I looked at my raised hand. Curled my fingers.
There was something I was supposed to do. Something important. I was here for a reason. And somehow I’d just forgotten —
My thoughts solidified as I looked to my right, at the orb that still sat on its pedestal. I began to turn around, to walk back to it.
“Stop,” Zeryth said.
My feet stopped moving. “Look at me.”
I turned back to Zeryth. He tilted his head. “Why do you want to leave?”
That was a good question.
I don’t, my thoughts hummed. I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to go anywhere.
But I forced my mouth to comply. “There is something I must do.”
“Nothing important.” Nothing important.
“Come here.” I did.
“Get on your knees.”
Get on your knees, Esmaris had said to me. I shuddered.
“No.”
“Yes.”
Yes, my mouth started to say, but at the last second— “No.”
No. No no no.
I realized what was happening. Realized that I had never seen Zeryth use magic before. Realized there was a pressure against my thoughts, a saccharine coating melting everything into one sticky, formless blob.
This was part of the test. The test I needed to finish.
“Get on your knees,” Zeryth said again. My body froze halfway down. My thoughts slipped from between my fingers like handfuls of worms. But I grabbed onto my evasive thread of consciousness with painful ferocity.
I looked at Zeryth, straight into his white, expectant eyes.
“No,” I said.
I’m not done.
Zeryth shot one brief glance at Nura, who stood a few feet away.
Then, everything went black again.
Black and cold. A living morass of all my greatest fears, all my worst memories. Gods, no— no, I couldn’t— I was plunged into a terror that made what I experienced in Tairn look like child’s play. I was being dragged through every fear I’ve ever had, everything I had ever had ripped away from me, every face I saw in the darkness at night, all
rolled into blackness and blood and the crack of the whip, the searing warmth of Serel’s lips against my cheek.
“Sit down,” Zeryth’s voice echoed.
Sit down, pretty butterfly. Rest. I know you’re so tired.
I was so tired. So tired. But —
I’m. Not. Done.
I didn’t know if I’d said it out loud, but I screamed it in my own head loud enough to drown out everything else.
I struggled to my feet, staggering like a newborn foal.
I’m not done.
I tethered that sentence to my heartbeat.
I whipped a string of magic from my hand to bring the nearest orb to me, but just as I did, a wall of wind bludgeoned me so hard that I went flying across the room. A sharp pain tore through my skull.
“Come back, Tisaanah,” Zeryth purred. An offering of relief, of safety.
No.
I touched my head and felt warm blood over my fingers. My legs were already beginning to obey, crawling towards him. But I found it — the one sharp piece left in my brain. Clutched it.
I rubbed the blood between my fingers. “Come here, Tisaanah.”
Rest, little butterfly.
I drew a circle.
My legs still moved. Only my fingers still clung to the ground.
A line.
I closed my eyes and I could see all of it, lit up like a map — me, the orbs, the three Valtain.
I’m not finished.
Another line.
“I won’t say it again—”
No, I thought. You won’t.
And I drew one final line of my Stratagram.
And then, all at once, there was a crash. Metal on metal and shocked grunts and a wall of light all converged into one beautiful, chaotic cacophony.
I opened my eyes just in time to see the final two orbs ricochet into the basin. To see Zeryth, Nura, and the third Valtain pushing themselves up from the floor. To look down and see my Stratagram smeared in my own blood beneath me.
And to hear a familiar voice shouting from the balcony: “What. The FUCK. Was that.”
I slumped back against the ground.
 |
WHEN I OPENED my eyes again, Max was leaning over me, hands on his knees. I saw his lips move but his words didn’t register.
The events of the last few minutes hit me in flashes. Nura. Zeryth. The shadows.
Get on your knees.
And the Stratagram. My successful Stratagram.
Max spoke again, each word hammered with sharp-edged intensity. “Are you alright?”
I did it.
I did it.
I touched the side of my head, still warm and damp. Pulled back my fingers to look at the red. I didn’t realize that I was grinning until I started to wonder why my cheeks ached.
Max pushed back my hair, examining the wound. I hardly felt it. “Sammerin can take care of that,” he said, but I couldn’t care less about that cut.
Because I did it.
“Tisaanah, I need verbal confirmation that you’re alright and that none of that turned your mind to custard.”
I couldn’t stop smiling. “I am very good,” I said, hoarsely. “Very, very good.”
Max dropped his head, letting out a sigh that started in relief and ended in exasperation. “Ascended above. Get up. You look like a lunatic.”
“Loo-nuh-tic?” New word. I hadn’t found one of those in a while.
My head spun as Max pulled me to my feet.
“A crazy person. Like, for instance, one that rolls around on the ground grinning to herself while covered in her own blood.”
Loo-nuh-tic.
I liked it.
A firm hand clapped me on my shoulder, shaking my knees. “Excellent work, Tisaanah. Incredibly impressive.”
Zeryth stood beside me, greeting me with a pleasant smile. His hand remained around my shoulders. That otherworldly magnetism was gone, replaced with a much more comfortable, human friendliness. Still, I resisted the immediate urge to shrug away from his hands.
Get on your knees.
But I simply smiled — gave him one befitting of the sweet teenage girl that I was when I first met him. Insulting the Arch Commandant was not in my best interest.
“It’s good to see you after so long, Zeryth,” I said.
One telltale wrinkle flickered over the bridge of Max’s nose, and I immediately knew what was coming.
“What the hell was that?” he spat. “Three high-ranking Valtain against one apprentice? In what world is that reasonable?”
I shot Max a warning look. As touching as it was that he was so angry on my behalf, I didn’t need him undermining my success, even if his intentions were good. Besides, I wasn’t afraid of being pushed hard. Not when it gave me that much more of a chance to prove myself.
Which I had. That was all that mattered.
“Maxantarius. What a surprise.” Zeryth had remained on my arm. His easy smile hardened. “Are you finally attempting to rejoin society?”
“It’s a temporary testing period. So far, my opinion is mixed.”
“Really? A happy-go-lucky person like you?”
Max practically snarled. “You didn’t answer my question. Do you want to explain why you thought it was acceptable—”
Shut up. “Max is a very loyal teacher,” I said to Zeryth,
infusing my voice with a shade of too-pleasant, too-sweet good humor.
Max caught my glare and shut his mouth, though doing so looked like it put him in physical pain.
Zeryth waved my comment away, chuckling. “We’re old friends. Trust me, I’m very familiar with his charming idiosyncrasies.” Then he turned back to me and his smile softened from hard-edged to gentle. “I can’t tell you how happy I was to hear that you made it here, Tisaanah. But then again, if anyone could do it…”
I beamed. “Thank you.”
I could hear Max’s unspoken response, visibly thrashing behind his teeth: Well, she would have made it here a hell of a lot sooner if you had—
I gave him a Look — capital L — before it could escape, and he turned his face to the ground, scowling.
And then, my most sparkling gaze firmly planted back on Zeryth’s lovely face, I finally asked the only question that really mattered: “Do you have any news from Threll?”
Zeryth’s expression stilled in a way that made my stomach lurch. “Yes. We need to talk.” He gestured to a small door off the main room, then turned to Max. “If you’ll excuse us, Maxantarius. I promise I’ll bring her back in one piece.”
“I’m not worried. She already had you on your ass once today.”
Gods, Max.
But Zeryth just let out a low chuckle. “We can’t argue with that, can we?”
Then he turned to me and beckoned. “Follow me, Tisaanah. Let’s talk.”
|
WE WOUND DOWN WHITE HALLS, narrow and empty. Zeryth was significantly taller than me, certainly well over six feet, and I had to crane my neck to look up at him as we walked.
“I apologize for my slow response to your requests,” he said, casually. “I was, you see, preoccupied with quite a lot of travel.”
“Of course.”
“I was quite surprised when I first stopped at Esmaris’s estate to find—” He let out a breath. “Well.”
Every muscle in my body tightened. “Tell me.” My saccharine facade was beginning to melt.
“Things there were in… significant disarray. Esmaris, as I’m sure you know, was dead.” He glanced at me. I wondered if he knew or suspected what I had done. If he did, he didn’t say anything about it. “His son was there to take his place.”
“Ahzeen.” I had met him only twice, and I disliked him intensely. He was the spitting image of Esmaris, inheriting every bit of his father’s ruthlessness but none of his charm.
“Yes. Not exactly the friendliest person,” I said, shaking my head. That was an understatement.
“While I was there, he was in the midst of a ruthless manhunt for his father’s killer. And when I say ‘ruthless’… I’ve never seen anything like it.”
I could only imagine. No one conducted manhunts like the Threllian Lords—all those pristine white outfits traded for blood red. There was a ritualistic quality to bloodshed that they embraced, inhaled. And Ahzeen had more reason than anyone to tread the bloodiest path. Esmaris had practically disowned him. The last time Ahzeen visited the estate, he and Esmaris had a very public, very loud argument that escalated to such brutality that it ended with Ahzeen being dumped at the gates—missing an eye.
Ahzeen’s reputation and respect had always been tainted by his father’s well-known disdain for him. But with Esmaris’s death, Ahzeen had a chance to reclaim the respect that came with the family name—without the inconvenience of Esmaris himself. That is, if he could prove himself strong and committed enough.
“I was there twice,” Zeryth continued. “Once on my way out, shortly after Esmaris’s death. And again on my way back, after I wrote to you last.” We rounded a corner. “The first time, Ahzeen and his men were frantically carving a path through Esmaris’s enemies, slaughtering anyone remotely connected to his death.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood up. A perfect opportunity—an excuse—to assert dominance over rival families. A very dangerous game.
“But when I returned a few months later, that wasn’t the biggest concern. The estate was facing serious retaliation from the other Lords. It was the talk of Threll.”
My hands trembled. With every new piece of the story, my mind flashed with images of how Serel could be killed—slaughtered in the initial bloodbath, rooted out in the internal manhunt, or sent to die on a bloody, impersonal battlefield in the name of a man he despised.
We stopped at a door. I placed my hand on Zeryth’s arm, first for emphasis, then left it there because I needed the support. “Tell me. Did you find him? The—the person I asked for?”
Zeryth gave me a serious, unreadable look. He reached for the doorknob but didn’t turn it. “I did everything I could. I know how much this means to you.”
Means to me? I wanted to scream. To ME?
You think this is about ME?
As if this wasn’t so much bigger than I was? As if this wasn’t an imminent danger hanging over the heads of thousands and thousands of people?
My fingers tightened. Clenched until I could feel the muscled flesh of his forearm beneath my fingernails.
“Show me.”
Zeryth opened the door.
