An Ember in the Ashes (22 page)

We slip up the cellar stairs and out to Blackcliff’s funereally quiet grounds. I shiver, although the night’s not cold. It’s still dark, but the eastern sky pales, and Veturius speeds his gait. As we hurry across the grass, I stumble, and he is beside me, steadying me, his warmth seeping into my skin.

“All right?” he asks.

My feet ache, my head pounds, and the Commandant’s mark burns like fire. But more powerful is the tingling enveloping my entire body at the Mask’s closeness.
Danger!
My skin seems to scream.
He’s dangerous!

“Fine.” I jerk away from him. “I’m fine.”

As we walk, I sneak glances at him. With his mask on and the walls of Blackcliff rising around him, Veturius is every inch the Martial soldier. Yet I can’t reconcile the image before me with the handsome Tribesman I danced with. All that time, he knew who I was. He knew I was lying about my family. And though it’s ridiculous to care what a Mask thinks, I feel suddenly ashamed of those lies.

We reach the servants’ corridor, and Izzi breaks away from us.

“Thank you,” she says to Veturius. Guilt washes over me. She’ll never forgive me, after what she’s been through.

“Izzi.” I touch her arm. “I’m sorry. If I’d known about the raid, I never—”

“Are you joking?” Izzi says. Her eye darts to Veturius standing behind me, and she smiles, a blaze of white that startles me with its beauty. “I wouldn’t have traded this for anything. Good night, Laia.”

I stare after her, open-mouthed, as she disappears down the hallway and into her room. Veturius clears his throat. He’s watching me with a strange, almost apologetic expression in his eyes.

“I—uh—have something for you.” He pulls a bottle from his pocket. “Sorry I didn’t get it to you earlier. I was . . . indisposed.” I take the bottle, and when our fingers touch, I pull away quickly. It’s the bloodroot serum. I’m surprised he remembered.

“I’ll just—”

“Thank you,” I say at the same time. We both fall silent. Veturius rubs a hand through his hair, but a second later his entire body goes still, a deer that’s heard the hunter.

“What—” I gasp when his arms come around me, sudden and hard. He pushes me to the wall, heat flaring from his hands and tingling across my skin, sending my heart into a feverish beat. My own reaction to him, confusion tumbled with head-spinning want, shocks me into silence.
What is wrong with you, Laia?
Then his hands tighten on my back, as if in warning, and he dips his head low to my ear, his breath a bare whisper.

“Do what I tell you, when I tell you. Or you’re dead.”

I knew it. How could I have trusted him? Stupid. So stupid.

“Push me away,” he says. “Fight me.”

I shove at him, not needing his encouragement.

“Get away from—”

“Don’t be like that.” His voice is louder now, sleek and menacing and devoid of anything resembling decency. “You didn’t mind before—”

“Leave her, soldier,” a bored, wintery voice says.

My blood goes cold, and I twist away from Veturius. There, detaching from the kitchen door like a wraith, stands the Commandant. How long has she been watching us? Why is she even awake?

The Commandant steps into the corridor and surveys me dispassionately, ignoring Veturius.

“So that’s where you’d got to.” Her pale hair is loose around her shoulders, her robe pulled tight. “I just came down. Rang the bell for water five minutes ago.”

“I—I—”

“I suppose it was only a matter of time. You are a pretty thing.” She doesn’t reach for her crop or threaten to kill me. She doesn’t even seem angry. Just irritated.

“Soldier,” she says. “Back to the barracks with you. You’ve had her for long enough.”

“Commandant, sir.” Veturius breaks away from me with seeming reluctance. I try to squirm away from him, but he keeps a proprietary arm slung around my hips. “You sent her to her quarters for the night. I assumed you were done with her.”

“Veturius?” The Commandant, I realize, hadn’t recognized him in the dark. She hadn’t cared enough to give him a second look. Her eyes shift to her son in disbelief. “You? And a slave?”

“I was bored.” He shrugs. “I’ve been stuck in the infirmary for days.”

My face goes hot. I understand, now, why he put his hands on me, why he told me to fight him. He is trying to protect me from the Commandant. He must have sensed her presence. She will have no way of proving I haven’t spent the last few hours with Veturius. And since students rape slaves all the time, neither he nor I will be punished.

But it’s still humiliating.

“You expect me to believe you?” The Commandant cocks her head. She senses the lie—she smells it. “You’ve never touched a slave in your life.”

“With all due respect, sir, that’s because the first thing you do when you get a new slave is take her eye out.” Veturius tangles his fingers in my hair, and I yelp. “Or carve up her face. But
this
one”—he yanks my head toward his, a warning in his eyes when he glances down at me—“is still intact. Mostly.”

“Please.” I drop my voice. If this is going to work, I need to play along, disgusting as it is. “Tell him to leave me alone.”

“Get out, Veturius.” The Commandant’s eyes glitter. “Next time find a kitchen drudge to entertain you. The girl is mine.”

Veturius gives his mother a short salute before releasing me and sauntering through the gate without so much as a backward glance.

The Commandant looks me over, as if for signs of what she thinks just happened. She jerks my chin up. I pinch myself on the leg hard enough to draw blood, and my eyes fill with tears.

“Would it have been better if I’d cut your face like Cook’s?” she murmurs. “Beauty’s a curse when one lives among men. You might have thanked me for it.”

She runs a fingernail across my cheek, and I shudder.

“Well. . . . ” She lets me go and walks back to the kitchen door with a smile, a twist of her mouth that is all bitterness and no mirth. The spirals of her strange tattoo catch the moonlight. “There’s time yet for that.”

F
or three days after the Moon Festival, Helene avoids me. She ignores knocks on her door, leaves the mess hall when I appear, and begs off when I approach her head on. When we’re paired together in training, she attacks me as if I’m Marcus. When I speak to her, she goes suddenly deaf.

I let it go at first, but by the third day, I’m sick of it. On my way to combat training, I’m concocting a plan to confront her—something involving a chair and rope and maybe a gag so she has no choice but to listen to me—when Cain appears beside me as suddenly as a ghost. My scim is half-drawn before I realize who it is.

“Skies, Cain. Don’t do that.”

“Greetings, Aspirant Veturius. Wonderful weather.” The Augur looks up at the hot blue sky admiringly.

“Yeah, if you’re not training with double scims under the baking sun,” I mutter. It’s not even noon, and I’m so covered in sweat that I’ve given up and taken off my shirt. If Helene was speaking to me, she’d frown and say it’s not regulation. I’m too hot to care.

“You are healed from the Second Trial?” Cain asks.

“No thanks to you.” The words are out before I can stop them, but I don’t feel particularly regretful. Multiple attempts on my life have taken a toll on my manners.

“The Trials are not meant to be easy, Elias. That is why they are called the Trials.”

“I hadn’t noticed.” I speed up, hoping Cain will piss off. He doesn’t.

“I bring you a message,” he says. “The next Trial will take place in seven days.”

At least we get some warning this time. “What’s it going to be?” I ask. “Public flogging? A night locked in a trunk with a hundred vipers?”

“Combat against a formidable foe,” Cain says. “Nothing you can’t handle.”

“What foe? What’s the catch?” No way the Augur will tell me what I’m up against without leaving something essential out. It’s going to be a sea of wraiths we’re fighting. Or jinn. Or some other beastie they’ve woken from the darkness.

“We haven’t woken anything from the darkness that wasn’t already awake,” Cain says.

I bite back a response. If he picks my mind again, I swear, I’ll shove this blade through him, Augur or not.

“It wouldn’t do any good, Elias.” He smiles, almost sadly, then nods to the field, where Hel is training. “I ask that you pass the message along to Aspirant Aquilla.”

“As Aquilla isn’t speaking with me, that might be a bit difficult.”

“I’m sure you’ll find a way.”

He drifts off, leaving me more ill-tempered than before.

When Hel and I argue, we usually patch things up in a few hours—a day at most. Three days is a record for us. Worse, I’ve never seen her lose her temper the way she did three nights ago. Even in battle, she is always cool, controlled.

But she’s been different the past few weeks. I’ve known it, though like a fool I’ve tried not to see it. But I can’t ignore her behavior anymore. It has to do with that spark between us, that attraction. Either we crush it or
we do something about it. And I’m thinking that while the latter might be more enjoyable, it will create complications neither of us needs.

When did Helene change? She has always been in control of every emotion, every desire. She’s never shown interest in any of her comrades, and, other than Leander, none of us is stupid enough to try to start anything with her.

So what happened between us that changed things? I think back to the first time I noticed her acting strange: the morning she found me in the catacombs. I’d tried to distract her by leering. I’d done it without thinking, hoping to keep her from finding my pack. I figured she’d just think it was me being male.

Is that what did it? That one look? Has she been acting so strangely because she thinks I want her, and so she feels like she has to want me back?

If that’s the case, then I need to clear things up with her straightaway. I’ll tell her that it was a fluke. That I didn’t mean anything by it.

Will she accept my apology?
Only if you grovel enough.

Fine. It will be worth it. If I want my freedom, I
have
to
win the next Trial. In the first two, Hel and I depended on each other for survival. The third will probably be the same. I need her on my side.

I find Hel on the combat field sparring with Tristas while a Combat Centurion looks on. The boys and I tease Tristas for constantly mooning over his fiancée, but he’s one of the finest swordsmen at Blackcliff, clever and cat-swift. He waits for Helene to slip up, taking note of the aggression in her strokes. But her defense is as impenetrable as the walls of Kauf. Minutes after I arrive at the field, she’s thrown off Tristas’s attack and jabbed his heart.

“Greetings, oh holy Aspirant,” Tristas calls out when he sees me. At Helene’s stiffening shoulders, he glances between us and makes a quick departure. Along with Faris and Dex, Tristas has tried repeatedly to figure out what went wrong between Helene and me on the night of the party—which neither of us attended. But Hel’s been as silent as I have, and they’ve given up, instead grunting to one another pointedly when she and I beat each other down on the battlefield.

“Aquilla,” I call to her as she sheathes her scims. “I need to talk to you.”

Silence.

Fine, then.
“Cain said to tell you the next Trial is in seven days.”

I head to the armory, unsurprised when I hear her footsteps trailing.

“Well, what is it?” She grabs my shoulder and pulls me around. “What’s the Trial?”

Her face is flushed, and her eyes flash.
Skies, she’s pretty when she’s angry.

The thought surprises me, accompanied as it is by a pulse of fierce desire.
It’s Helene, Elias. Helene.

“Combat,” I say. “We’ll be up against a ‘formidable foe.’”

“Right,” she says. “Good.” But she doesn’t move, only glares at me, unaware that the tendrils of hair that have escaped her braid make the glare much less intimidating than she’d like.

“Hel, look, I know you’re mad, but—”

“Oh, go put on a shirt.” She stalks away, muttering about twits who flaunt regulation. I stifle an angry retort. Why is she so damn stubborn?

As I enter the armory, I run straight into Marcus, who shoves me into the doorframe. For once, Zak’s not with him.

“Your whore’s still not talking to you?” he says. “Not spending time with
you either, is she? Avoiding you . . . avoiding the other boys . . .
alone
 . . . 
”
He looks speculatively at Helene’s retreating back, and I go for my scim, but Marcus is already holding a dagger to my stomach.

“She belongs to me, you know. I dreamt it.” His calmness chills me more than any boasting could. “One of these days, I’ll find her, and you won’t be around,” he says. “And I’ll make her mine.”

“You stay away from her. Anything happens to her, I’ll slit you open from your neck to your sorry—”

“It’s always threats with you,” Marcus says. “You never actually
do
anything. Not surprising for a traitor whose mask hasn’t even melded yet.” He leans forward. “The mask knows you’re weak, Elias. It knows you don’t belong. That’s why it’s still not a part of you. That’s why I should kill you.”

His dagger cuts into my stomach, releasing a trickle of blood. One thrust, one pull upward, and he could gut me like a fish. I shake with anger. I’m at his mercy, and I hate him for it.

“But the Centurions are watching.” Marcus’s gaze flicks to our left, where the Combat Centurion is fast approaching. “And I’d rather kill you slow.” He strolls away lazily, saluting the Combat Centurion as he passes.

Furious with myself, with Helene, with Marcus, I shove open the armory door and go straight to the heavy weaponry rack, settling on a tri-flanged mace. I swing it through the air and pretend I’m taking off Marcus’s head.

When I get back out to the field, the Combat Centurion pairs me with Helene. My rage spills out of me, tainting every move. Helene, on the other hand, channels her fury into a steely efficiency. She sends my mace flying, and only a few minutes later, I’m forced to yield. Disgusted, she stalks away to battle her next opponent while I’m still scrambling to my feet.

From the other side of the field, I see Marcus watching—not me but her, his eyes gleaming, his fingers caressing a dagger.

Faris gives me a hand up, and I call Dex and Tristas over, grimacing at the bruises Helene’s gifted me. “Is Aquilla still avoiding you?”

Dex nods. “Like the pox.”

“Keep an eye on her anyway,” I say. “Even if she wants you to stay away. Marcus knows she’s avoiding us. It’s only a matter of time before he decides to attack.”

“You do know that she’ll kill us if she catches us playing guard dog,” Faris says.

“Which do you prefer,” I say, “angry Helene or beaten Helene?”

Faris goes pale, but he and Dex vow to keep an eye on her, glaring at Marcus as they leave the field.

“Elias.” Tristas lingers, looking alarmingly awkward. “If you like, we can discuss . . . uh . . . ” He scratches his tattoo. “Well, it’s just I’ve had some ups and downs with Aelia. So with Helene, if you want to talk about it . . . ”

Ah. Right.
“Helene and I aren’t—we’re just friends.”

Tristas sighs. “You know she’s in love with you, right?”

“She’s—not—no—” I can’t seem to make my mouth work, so I just close it and look at him in mute appeal. Any second, he’s going to grin and slap me on the back. He’s going to say, “Just kidding! Ha, Veturius, the look on your face . . . ”

Any second.

“Trust me,” Tristas says. “I have four older sisters. And I’m the only one of the guys who’s been in a relationship that’s lasted longer than a month. I can see it every time she looks at you. She’s in love with you. She has been for a while.”

“But she’s Helene,” I say stupidly. “I mean—come on, we’ve all thought about Helene.” Tristas nods gamely. “But she doesn’t think of us. She’s seen us at our worst.” I think of the Trial of Courage, of my sobs when I realized that she was real and not a hallucination. “Why would she—”

“Who knows, Elias,” Tristas says. “She can kill a man with a twist of her hand, she’s a demon with a sword, and she can drink most of us under the table. And because of all that, maybe we’ve forgotten that she’s a girl.”

“I have
not
forgotten that Helene’s a girl.”

“I’m not talking about physically. I’m talking about in her head. Girls think about things like this differently than we do. She’s in love with you. And whatever happened between you two is because of it. I promise you.”

It’s not true
, my head tells me with the zeal of denial.
Just lust. Not love.

Shut it, head
,
my heart says
.
I know Helene like I know fighting, like I know killing. I know the smell of her fear and the rawness of blood against her skin. I know that she flares her nostrils very slightly when she lies and that she puts her hands between her knees when she sleeps. I know the beautiful parts. The ugly parts.

Her anger at me is from a deep place. A dark place. A place she doesn’t admit she has. The day I looked at her so thoughtlessly, I made her think that maybe I had that place too. That maybe she wasn’t alone in that place.

“She’s my best friend,” I say to Tristas. “I can’t go down that road with her.”

“No, you can’t.” There’s sympathy in Tristas’s eyes. He knows what she means to me. “And that’s the problem.”