But now, standing in the candlelit room, shadows dancing on each of their faces, I can see it as clear as the skies uninhibited by the Shadowthorn’s darkness. The regret. The terror. None of us would’ve chosen to be here if we didn’t think we had to be.
And yet, here we find ourselves.
A silent understanding crosses over the room, one that is the start of what I hope will be a long sense of comradery.
“Let’s see what we’ve got ourselves into,” I say to them all, warranting a few chuckles before going into the next corridor.
Alphonse was right. The runner he instructed us to follow stops directly before a door at the end of the next hallway. Part of me is a little uneasy to know that there is a direct path marked on the floor from the front entrance leading to our rooms, but I can’t afford to let that unnerve show now.
I twist the iron doorknob and push the door wide. It opens to a room with more doors. I step into the center, looking for the rug but finding that it will provide no more guidance. It ends at the door of the cold, eerily silent room. The others trickle in to stand beside me.
My confusion must be obvious because the raven-haired woman steps forward first and looks to me, something that is both thrilling and terrifying, to know that I have already gained such trust and respect.
“This is a dormitory,” she says, her voice like liquid fire. “Some of these rooms will have open beds. Others won’t. Hopefully it’s obvious which are which.”
The red-haired thief is first to open any of them, but her curiosity emboldens some of the others. We split into smaller groups. I follow the thief, feeling a sort of connection toward her for how sharply she spoke of my cousin. The raven-haired woman follows behind us.
“Holy Blight!” the thief exclaims, walking through the room lined with beds on either side. “This room’s almost entirely empty. I mean, right? I don’t see bags, or shoes, or anything.”
Nodding, I glance around the room. My eyes rove over the dozens of empty cots, the ones with unruffled bedsheets and pillows without head imprints. I wonder if these rooms have ever been full, if the recruits die too swiftly to keep them stocked, or if they’ve simply been promoted and moved on to guard one of the border towns.
Behind me, the raven-haired woman sits rim-rod straight on the first bed just inside the doorway. She stares at the wall, utterly silent, just as she has been for most of the journey here. From this angle, though I can only see the dark hair spilling down her back, for days now I’ve recognized the ghost of memories haunting her. She’s been like this ever since we left Gravenburg, and though I can’t say for certain, I believe she might’ve been one of the few survivors of Ashenvale, come searching for refuge.
I turn back around to the sound of the thief plopping onto a bed with a leap and a sigh. She lays down, arms crossed behind her fiery hair. There are at least another twenty beds available, and I could easily take one at the end of the room and put great distance between me and either of them, but the last thing I want right now is to be alone.
“Mind if I take this one?” I ask her, pointing to the bed diagonal from hers.
“Go for it,” she says. “If you don’t mind sleeping close to a pickpocket, then I don’t mind sleeping close to a girl from the Wallows.”
Such a thing could be an insult coming from certain people’s lips, but on hers it sounds more playful than anything.
“I don’t think a thief would have much interest in me anyway. I didn’t bring anything with me.”
She props her elbows beneath her and watches me as I, too, sit on my cot. Something glints from the loose neckline of her tunic, but I avert my eyes when she readjusts her collar to conceal whatever she has hidden there. “I had noticed that. From my cage. Everyone else packed their entire lives, but you only had that ragged cloak. I thought maybe that guy you were walking with was carrying all of your stuff.”
“Dimitri? No.” I laugh. “He had enough baggage to carry for himself.”
She chortles too. “Yeah, for someone leaving the Wallows, he had quite a bit with him. Where did he think he was going? On holiday?”
I shrug and give her a rueful smile. “When you have little to nothing left, I guess it’s hard to leave any of it behind.”
She becomes reflective, her nod knowing and all too telling of the circumstances that led her to a life of petty theft.
“My name is Foxlynn,” she says abruptly. “But you can call me Fox.”
I nod by way of greeting. “I’m Halira.”
“Nice to meet you.” She throws herself back against her pillow with another long sigh. “Tell me, Halira, did you always want to join the glorious Shadow Crusade?”
I scoot back along my cot until I’m pressed against the pillow and the headboard. To lie down fully would feel too…comfortable for a place I still don’t recognize as my new home.
“Not really,” I tell her. “When I was younger, I guess I pretended I did. But then, you grow up. You realize it’s not the heroic, valiant cause that you fantasized it being, and you decide that—”
“You decide that you’d rather live a life of running away from danger than one of running toward it,” she finishes for me. Staring into the rafters, she laughs, a small, sad sound. “I always told myself that if it ever came down to the choice between my freedom or my life, I’d choose to die a free woman. But, when the Crusaders told me it was either I lose my hands or I join them…I guess I wasn’t as fearless as I thought I was.”
Nodding, I look across the room to the other woman. She hasn’t moved since we got here, hasn’t shrugged off her cloak or leaned back into the warmth her bed might provide.
“What about you?” I ask her. “What brings you here?”
Her head twitches toward the sound of my voice, almost imperceptibly, but her breathing, she has no control over. It hastens almost instantly.
Fox lifts herself back onto her elbows and tries a softer approach. “You don’t have to tell us your life story. What’s your name?”
Still, the woman says nothing. Silence settles over us like a heavy blanket, one that could suffocate if twisted the wrong way. In the rooms on either side of us, I listen to the other girls getting settled. They choose their cots just like we did, talk about their hopes shrouded in fear, share their names, the places they came from.
“Come on,” Fox says, this time sitting all the way up. “If we’re going to be sharing a room together, the least you could do is—”
“Silver,” the woman says, her voice as smooth as her name. Abruptly she stands, back still to us, and makes for the door.
“Where are you going?” Fox calls after her. “The general told us to go to our dorms. Don’t you think we should—”
Silver looks over her shoulder, most of her face still shrouded by her hood. “Someone has come to retrieve us. We are to head to the dining hall.”
Fox and I exchange a brief, worrying glance. There are rumors that mages and other mystical beings still exist among us. Without knowing any personally, my knowledge of what they’re capable of is limited, but I imagine it could include things like foresight and premonition. But I’ve never heard of any mages being so open about their magic. Arcathainians hate two things with equal fervor: demons and the bastards who let us rot here when they fled with half of the continent.