An Ember in the Ashes(107)

“You’re sick.” I back away from her. “Don’t you have any regret? Any remorse? Those were our friends we killed.”
“They were soldiers,” Helene says. “Empire soldiers who died in battle, who died with honor. I’ll celebrate them. I’ll mourn them. But I won’t regret what I did. I did it for the Empire. I did it for my people.” She paces back and forth. “Don’t you see, Elias? The Trials are bigger than you or me, bigger than our guilt, our shame. We’re the answer to a five-hundred-year-old question. When Taius’s line fails, who will lead the Empire? Who will ride at the head of a half-million-strong army? Who will control the destinies of forty million souls?”
“What about our destinies? Our souls?”
“They took our souls a long time ago, Elias.”
“No, Hel.” Laia’s words ring in my head, words I want to believe. Words I need to believe. You have a soul. Don’t let them take it from you. “You’re wrong. I can never fix what I did yesterday, but when the Fourth Trial comes, I won’t—”
“Don’t, Elias.” Helene puts her fingers over my mouth, her anger replaced with something like despair. “Don’t make vows when you can’t know their cost.”
“I crossed a line yesterday, Helene. I won’t cross it again.”
“Don’t say that.” Her hair flies about, and her eyes are wild. “How can you become Emperor if that’s the way you think? How can you win the Trials if—”
“I don’t want to win the Trials,” I say. “I’ve never wanted to win them. I didn’t even want to take them. I was going to desert, Helene. Right after graduation, when everyone else would be celebrating, I was going to run.”
She shakes her head, holding up her hands as if to ward off my words. But I don’t stop. She needs to hear this. She needs to know the truth of who I am.
“I didn’t run, because Cain told me the only chance I had to be truly free was to take the Trials. I want you to win the Trials, Hel. I want to be named Blood Shrike. And then I want you to set me free.”
“Set you free? Set you free? This is freedom, Elias! When will you understand that? We’re Masks. Our destiny is power and death and violence. It’s what we are. If you don’t own that, then how can you ever be free?”
She’s delusional. I’m trying to comprehend this dreadful truth when I hear the sound of approaching bootsteps. Hel hears it too, and we whirl to find Cain rounding a curve in the cliffs. A squadron of eight legionnaires accompanies him. He says nothing of the fight Helene and I are having, though he must have heard at least part of it. “You will come with us.”
The legionnaires split, four taking hold of me and the other four grabbing Helene.
“What’s going on?” I try to shake them off, but they’re big brutes, bigger than me, and they don’t budge. “What is this?”
“This, Aspirant Veturius, is the Trial of Loyalty.”
XLIII: Laia
When I enter the Commandant’s kitchen, Izzi rushes me. Bags shadow her eye, and her blonde hair is a bird’s nest, as if she hasn’t slept all night.

“You’re alive! You’re...you’re here! We thought...”
“Did they harm you, girl?” Cook comes up behind Izzi, and I’m shocked to see that she too is disheveled, her eyes red-rimmed. She takes my cloak, and when she sees my dress, she tells Izzi to bring me another. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” What else can I say? I am still trying to make sense of what has just transpired. At the same time, I’m remembering what Elias said about Bekkar Prison, and one thing becomes clear: I have to get out of here and find the Resistance. I have to figure out where Darin is and what’s really going on.
“Where did they take you, Laia?” Izzi is back with the dress, and I change into it quickly, hiding the dagger at my thigh as best as I can. I’m reluctant to tell them what’s happened, but I won’t lie to them, not when it’s clear that they’ve spent the entire night fearing for my life.
“They gave me to Veturius as a prize for winning the Third Trial.” At the twin looks of horror on their faces, I add, in a rush, “But he didn’t hurt me. Nothing happened.”
“Indeed?” The Commandant’s voice chills my blood, and as one, Izzi, Cook, and I turn to the kitchen door.
“Nothing happened, you say.” She cocks her head. “How very interesting. Come with me.”
I follow her to her study, my feet leaden. Once inside, my eyes dart to the wall of dead fighters. It’s like being in a room of ghosts.
The Commandant closes the study door and circles me.
“You spent the night with Aspirant Veturius,” she says.
“Yes, sir.”
“Did he rape you?”
So easily she asks such an abhorrent question. As if asking my age or my name.
“No, sir.”
“Why would that be, when the other night he seemed so very interested in you? He couldn’t keep his hands off you.”
She is, I realize, talking about the night of the Moon Festival. As if she can smell my fear, she steps toward me.
“I—I don’t know.”
“Could it be that the boy actually cares about you? I know he’s aided you—the day he carried you up from the dunes, and a few nights ago with Marcus.” She takes another step. “But the night I found you two in the servants’ corridor—that’s the night I’ve been wondering about. What were you doing together? Is he in league with you? Has he turned?”