“What are you going to do with her?” Dimitri demands as the Crusaders wrap their hulking grips around my biceps.
Sneering, Alphonse looks him up and down. “If anyone would like to join her, there’s more room in the neighboring cells.”
Dimitri stiffens and falls back into ranks.
The Crusaders drag me away. I have no fight left in me. Maybe if the accusations were wrong, but…as far as I know, they’re not.
Just before they drag me out of the crowd, my gaze settles on Fox. She’s another person I want to reassure, to comfort and tell her that I’ll be all right, but I find no surprise in her expression, no concern.
She shrugs unapologetically, and the breath leaps from my lungs. She was the only one who knew about what happened in the library, the only one who seemed to notice that the raven who attacked Alphonse was somehow linked to me, and she was missing for hours last night.
I thought she was my friend. She told me that she wouldn’t tell anyone.
But now I start to understand. The circumstances for how she came to the Shadow Crusade, the offhanded comments she’d make about our general’s attractiveness, her rank as ward, her absence last night and this morning.
I can’t piece it all together—I don’t know if her intentions were malicious or out of self-preservation—but I have no doubt that I have her to thank for my predicament. Should I ever be released or see a day of freedom again though, I will find her, I will have my confession, and I will make her pay.
They drag me to the back side of the castle, into a drafty dungeon below. I’m stripped of my necro-ink. My shadowsteel battle-axe is taken from me. But it’s the removal of Tor’s dagger that is most heart wrenching. It was the only thing I had left from him, the only possession I’d taken from Gravenburg, and now it’ll go to the next batch of recruits to walk these halls, if there is one.
The Crusaders throw me into a cell, the metal bars slamming shut behind me with a deafening metallic ring and leave to stand guard outside.
Once I’ve pulled myself off my knees, I slump to my rear on the cold ground, my back pressed against the wall.
“I warned you about telling anyone.”
I bolt upright at the silvery sound of my sister’s voice. “Kalli!”
I crawl to the bars and lean my head against them to try to look at the cell beside me. All I can see are her arms resting out from the bars. Her hands are clasped, her knuckles white beneath the crusted blood.
“What happened?” I ask her.
“How funny. That’s the same question I’ve been wondering myself. Not more than an hour after I left you, they came for me.”
Twisting around to face the darkness of my cell, I lower myself back to my rear and bow my head. “It was an accident. A friend saw something she shouldn’t have…”
“A friend?”
I snort my own contempt, but my heart aches to believe that I can still call Fox that. Maybe she was threatened? Maybe someone else saw something? Or maybe Kalli’s right. Maybe Fox never was my friend at all.
“I didn’t know what I was doing,” I tell her, since there’s no point in keeping it all in. She can’t run away from me now. “Why won’t you just tell me what this is?”
“Because I don’t know either.” I can hear the grinding of her jaw, the pressure of her knuckles popping beneath her grip. “Mother said she would tell me the next time I saw her. She said it was time for me to know my lineage. But then…well, I didn’t come home soon enough.”
I heave a sigh and sink lower. “But…you know, don’t you? The things that have happened to me, they’ve happened to you, as well?”
Kalli falls silent, and I can almost hear her mind at work.
But before she can answer me, the door leading into the dungeon creaks. I spin around and back away from the bars. The sound of footsteps echo down the corridor, and I brace myself for whatever scorn has come down to visit us—
“Dimitri?” I race back to the metal bars and reach for him. “What are you doing here?”
Hope blooms in my chest. He’s comes to rescue us, of course he has. He wouldn’t let Alphonse get away with something like this.
But that same hope bursts into flames when Dimitri flinches away from my grasp. He staggers a step back, and it’s only then that I see the guarded look in his eyes, the distrust and fear.
My arms retract back inside my cell. “Why have you come?”
He glances to the cell beside me, sees my sister, and shakes his head. “So, it’s true. You’re both mages. Your whole family is. All this time we’ve known each other and you never thought to tell me? I mean I—” He cuts himself off with a heavy sigh and begins pacing the dungeon. He rakes his fingers over his face, through his hair, and back down his neck. “What in the Eyve, Halira? You’re a mage!”
“No, I’m not…” I say feebly. “At least, I don’t know that for certain.”
He throws his arms up. “What does that even mean? I know I’m not a mage. I can say that with complete confidence. Every human can. Why can’t you?”
“We’re still human,” my sister growls in the cell beside mine.
“Are you?” he asks, voice as harsh as the crack of a whip. “Because last time I checked, humans were humans, and the mages were just the heartless, tyrannical filth who abandoned us to be picked off the face of the earth by demons.”
His chest is heaving by the time he’s finished. I’ve never seen him so enraged before, not even after his sister died in the Shadowthorn, not even after his father was lost to it shortly thereafter.
But it’s not his rage I’m concerned about—we’ve had many a spat and squabble that ended with one of us red in the face. No, this is something that stings deeper.
My eyes well with tears. “Is that really what you think of me? That I’m some tyrannical, heartless monster that would leave you to die?”
The flame leaves his eyes instantly, but my lip still quivers. I’ve lost him, the one person I had left to hang on to. He hangs his head low and buries his face in his hands. I don’t know what to do. I want to reach out for him but I’m afraid of what he might do.
A moment later, he finally resurfaces, crossing the space between us with such vigor that it startles me.
“No, of course not,” he says harshly, reaching through the bars.
Stupidly, I blink, my eyes alternating from his grasping hands back to his face. But I don’t risk making him change his mind. I grab his hands.
“I’ll talk to him,” he says. “I’m sure this is all just a mistake.”
I haven’t the heart to tell him it’s not. Whatever I may be, whatever they may call me, I do have magic. I’ve denied it long enough. But I’m too weak and afraid to admit it out loud, especially not now that he’s willingly come closer.
We lean our heads together, the bars digging into our skulls, but I savor the contact of his forehead.
When suddenly, there’s a commotion outside. The solid thumps of fists colliding with stomachs, the whooshing grunts of air being struck from lungs. A skirmish is happening, just beyond the dungeon door.
Demons is my first thought. Dimitri’s too, for he draws his sword and stands ready to defend me from behind these bars.