An Ember in the Ashes(86)

I win the first battle, but Helene rebounds in the second, nearly taking my head off with the swiftness of her attack. Twenty minutes later, when I yield, she doesn’t bother to relish the victory.
“Again,” she says. “Try and show up this time.”
We circle each other like wary cats until I fly toward her, my scim high.
She is undaunted, and our weapons crash together in a starburst of sparks.
Battle rage takes me. There is perfection in a fight like this. My scim is an extension of my body, moving so swiftly that it might be its own master.
The battle is a dance, one I know so well I barely have to think. And though the sweat floods off me and my muscles burn, desperate for rest, I feel alive, obscenely alive.
We match each other stroke for stroke until I get a hit on her right arm.
She tries to switch sword arms, but I jab my scim at her wrist faster than she can parry. Her scim goes flying, and I tackle her. Her white-blonde hair tumbles free of her bun.
“Surrender!” I pin her down at the wrists, but she thrashes and rips one arm free, scrabbling for a dagger at her waist. Steel stabs at my ribs, and seconds later, I am on my back with a blade at my throat.
“Ha!” She leans down, her hair falling around us like a shimmering silver curtain. Her chest heaves, she’s covered in sweat, hurt darkens her eyes—and she is still so beautiful that my throat tightens, and I want so badly to kiss her.
She must see it in my eyes, because the hurt turns to confusion as we gaze at each other. I know then that there is a choice to be made. A choice that might change everything.
Kiss her and she’ll be yours. You can explain everything and she’ll understand, because she’ll love you. She’ll win the Trials, you’ll be Blood Shrike, and when you ask for freedom, she’ll give it to you.
But will she? If I’m entangled with her, won’t that make it worse? Do I want to kiss her because I love her or because I need something from her?
Or both?
All this passes through my head in a second. Do it, my instincts scream.
Kiss her.
I wrap her silk-smooth hair around my hand. Her breath catches, and she melts into me, her body suddenly, intoxicatingly pliant.
And then, as I pull her face toward me, as our eyes are closing, we hear the scream.
XXXIII: Laia
The school is mostly quiet when Izzi and I emerge from the slaves’
quarters. A few students still out head to the barracks in small groups, their shoulders slumped with tiredness.
“Did you see the Farrars go in?” I ask Izzi on the way to the training building.
She shakes her head. “I was sitting there staring at those pillars, bored as a stone, when I noticed one of the bricks was different—shiny, like it had been touched more than the others. And then—well, come on, I’ll show you.”
We enter the building and are greeted by the almost musical ring of clashing scims. Ahead of us, a training room door stands open, and gold torchlight pours into the hallway. A pair of Masks battles within, each brandishing two slender scims.
“It’s Veturius,” Izzi says. “And Aquilla. They’ve been at it for ages.”
As I watch them fight, I find that I’m holding my breath. They move like dancers, whirling back and forth across the room, graceful, liquid, deadly.
And so swift, like shadows on the surface of a river. If I wasn’t watching it with my own eyes, I would never believe anyone could move that fast.
Veturius knocks the scim from Aquilla’s hand, and he is on her, their bodies entangled as they wrestle across the floor with a strange, intimate violence.
He is all muscle and force, and yet I can see in the way he fights that he is holding himself back. He is refusing to unleash his whole strength on her.
Even still, there is an animal freedom to how he moves, a controlled chaos that makes the air around him blaze. So different from Keenan, with his restrained solemnity and cool interest.
Why are you comparing them, anyway?
I turn from the Aspirants. “Izzi, come on.”
The building seems empty other than Veturius and Aquilla, but Izzi and I edge along the walls carefully in case there’s a student or Centurion lurking.
We turn the corner, and I recognize the doors the Farrars used when I saw them enter here the first time, nearly a week ago.
“Here, Laia.” Izzi slips behind one of the pillars and raises her hand to a brick that, at first glance, looks like all the others. She taps it. With a quiet groan, a section of stone swings away into darkness. Lamplight illuminates a narrow, descending staircase. I look down, barely daring to believe what I’m seeing, then envelop Izzi in a grateful hug.

“Izzi, you did it!”
I don’t understand why she’s not smiling back until her face goes rigid and she grabs me.
“Shhh,” she says. “Listen.”
The flat tones of a Mask’s voice echo from the tunnel, and the stairwell glows with approaching torchlight.
“Close it!” Izzi says. “Quickly, before they see!”
I put my hand to the brick, tapping it frantically.
Nothing happens.
“—pretend you don’t see it, but you do.” A vaguely familiar voice rises from the stairwell as I paw at the brick. “You’ve always known how I feel about her. Why do you torment her? Why do you hate her so much?”
“She’s an Illustrian snob. She’d never have you anyway.”
“Maybe if you’d left her alone, I’d have had a chance.”
“She’s our enemy, Zak. She’s going to die. Get over it.”
“Then why did you tell her that you two are meant to be? Why do I get the feeling that you want her to be your Blood Shrike instead of me?”