Surely that was it, Kiva told herself. She was exhausted, underfed, and soul-weary. There was nothing left to fuel her power. That had to be why it had been so quiet for weeks. If she’d had magical training, she might have known how to summon it regardless, but everything she knew about her power had been self-taught. And mostly trial and error — with a lot of luck thrown in.
That luck had, apparently, run out.
“Don’t worry about it,” Cresta said. “I already told you I’m not that bad — a few days, and I’ll be all better.”
Kiva felt the guilt of her failure wash over her — another failure. Cresta had helped her through so much since her return to Zalindov, and she couldn’t even repay the ex-quarrier by easing her pain.
“It’s almost like I can hear you thinking,” Cresta murmured. “Stop it. I’m fine.”
“You’re hurt,” Kiva returned. “And I —”
“This is nothing,” Cresta said. “You should have seen what they did to me after the riot. That was unpleasant.”
Kiva winced. She might not have liked Cresta then — it was debatable whether she liked Cresta now — but she’d never enjoyed knowing others were suffering.
“If I’d been smarter, I would have stayed in the infirmary after I realized who you were, since I should have figured out that if you made it through the Trial, you’d go directly to your mother and the boy,” Cresta mused. “Then I could have escaped with you.”
Kiva tried to picture it — Cresta leaving Zalindov alongside her, Naari, Jaren, and Tipp — but the image was too strange for her mind to conjure. It did, however, prompt her to ask, “All along, you expected the rebels to break you out?”
“Fat lot of good that came to be,” Cresta muttered.
“How did you — I mean — I’ve always wondered —” Kiva tried again. “How did you become a rebel?”
“Get up.”
Kiva jerked. “What?”
“If you want the answer, you need to earn it,” Cresta said. “So get your ass up.”
Kiva’s brows bunched together. “I don’t —”
“My mother always said movement is the best thing for when you’re feeling down. Stay still for too long, and your troubles only catch up with you,” Cresta said. “You have a lot of troubles, and they’ve been weighing too heavily on you. I told you earlier that you need to get your fighting spirit back, and that starts now.”
“But, I —”
“Ass up, healer.”
“And do what?” Kiva asked, exasperated. “It’s not like I can go anywhere. This cell is barely large enough for the two of us.”
“Remember what I said about attitude?” Cresta asked. “There’s plenty you can do in a small space. You told me about your training with that prince — the cousin —”
“Caldon,” Kiva said again.
“Aside from the running, most of what you did focused on strength, balance, and endurance, all using contained movements and repetition.”
Kiva frowned. “Yeah, but —”
“So you’ll do that here. For as long as we’re locked away, you’ll move, you’ll train. It’ll get your blood flowing and cleanse your thoughts,” Cresta said. “And just maybe it’ll stop you from hating yourself long enough for you to see that you do have a reason to live — and that there are people who, despite you believing otherwise, need you to live, too.”
Tears prickled Kiva’s eyes. “Why are you doing this?” she whispered into the darkness. “Why do you care?”
“I didn’t, when you first arrived,” Cresta answered bluntly. “But you’re like an annoying rash — you’ve grown on me.”
Unbidden, a snort left Kiva.
Cresta turned serious then, her voice quieting as she said, “Everyone deserves to have someone fight for them, even — and especially — when they’re unable to fight for themselves. You did that for me, once. You fought for me, you saved my life, and I’ve hated you every day since because it meant that I then had to make the same choice: to fight, and to keep fighting, day after day. And that’s hard. It’s exhausting and it’s painful and it hurts. But I eventually realized that it’s also a part of life, and it will all be worth it one day. I have to believe that — for me, and for you.” Louder, firmer, she finished, “So get your ass up, healer. It’s time to train.”
A storm of emotion swept through Kiva, frustration, anger, and resentment, but there was also a flicker of something that she hadn’t felt for so long: hope.
Cresta was right — Kiva owed it to those she loved to get up, to keep going, to fight. She had no idea how to make things better, nor did she know if she’d ever get the opportunity, locked away as she was, but if there was the slightest chance that she could earn their forgiveness, then she had to try. For their sakes — and for hers.
So she stood up.
And then, at Cresta’s urging, Kiva began to go through the exercises Caldon had drilled into her every morning at the River Palace. She didn’t have a wooden box to step onto, so she modified by squatting until her thighs burned. She couldn’t run around the barracks, so she jogged on the spot until her lungs screamed. She didn’t have a practice blade, but she still went through all the lunges and parries she could remember until sweat dripped down her face.
All the while, Cresta fulfilled her promise and shared her tale.
“I already told you that I was ten when my sister overdosed,” she said as Kiva balanced on one foot with her arms stretched high in the air. “A year later, my father lost his temper, worse than ever before, and he started taking that out on me. But my sister jumped in to stop him, defending me with a fury he never expected. He — she — they —” Cresta broke off. When she started again, her voice was hard and emotionless. “In one night, I lost everyone but my mother. I was barely eleven years old. We were alone and terrified, owning nothing but the clothes on our backs. I still don’t know how we survived those first few weeks.”
Kiva was scarcely breathing, hearing the heartache in every word. Feeling the heartache. Her right leg began to tremble, so she lowered it back to the ground and swapped to the other foot, raised her hands again, and waited.
“For a long time after that we lived by the mercy of strangers as we traveled from village to village, making our way south out of Mirraven, until we finally managed to sneak illegally into Evalon.”
Kiva was surprised enough to say, “You’re from Mirraven?”
“I was, once,” Cresta said.
“You don’t have an accent.”
“We wanted to blend in after we crossed the border,” Cresta said. “It’s easy to hide what you don’t want others knowing. You of all people should know that.”
Kiva acknowledged her point, and switched legs again.
“For a few years we moved aimlessly, never staying in one place for too long. Mother didn’t have a plan — she was just in survival mode, trying to keep us both alive. But then, when I was sixteen, she got sick. Lungrot. It spread quickly, and soon she was coughing up blood and having trouble breathing.”