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When Arthur calls it, I nod my silent agreement: Terra is ready to join the rest of the students—her control is outstanding. Edgar, on the other hand, I’m uncertain about. His hold on his Shadow is erratic.
Terra smiles at me as she and Raine take their leave and head back to Alkrose in time for lunch. Arthur and I walk slowly back toward the castle.
“Her muscle memory is brilliant,” Arthur says thoughtfully. He jots down more notes in his journal as we walk. Such a nerd, always carrying that book around.
“Uh-huh,” I say mindlessly as I try to remember what I usually start with for the first-year students in the destruction class. They’ll be learning their riding forms with Arthur today, so I’ll try to make them use that knowledge somehow in tomorrow’s training. “Let me know what Raine’s form is after their class today, will you?” I pull my hood up over my head when I feel eyes on me from the center tower. I always notice Emerai’s heavy gaze.
Arthur pulls his hood up as well. One of Emerai’s most irritable traits is his ability to read lips, even from great distances. He is the perfect war tool for recon.
“Sure, if I even get to see it,” Arthur mumbles and looks at me. His eyes are rimmed with red; sleepless nights, I’m guessing. “I like this group the most. They have so much promise and life still. It reminds me of us, back when we arrived.” He laughs but his smile soon fades into a nostalgic frown.
I lower my eyes to the lake as we descend the final hill. The mist has fallen low in the valley this morning, the sun’s rays warming the top layer of ice to an amber hue.
“They remind me so much of them. Which is why we can’t fuck up again.” I can’t keep the ice out of my tone.
Arthur nudges me. “The past is the past, Elias. No amount of trying to help these students will bring back our friends.”
Something cold pierces the inside of my heart, a pain I thought I’d long forgotten, but there it is, festering inside me still.
“You expect me to believe you aren’t helping them?” I banish all the faces from my past with one sharp breath.
Arthur lets out a low sigh and a short laugh, returning to writing in his journal. “You know I do what I can.” He nods at my knee. “Cein?”
I sweep my cloak over my shoulders so he can’t see my limp. “Yeah, he’s not happy at all about the delay. You try lying to him about why you let some punk skin you alive for a week.”
“Not possible, Cein cannot be lied to,” he says, knowing damn well that I already know this.
“Exactly.”
Arthur levels me a concerned expression. “Why did you let Raine keep you so long?”
“Well, when I woke up down in the bunker, my first thoughts were to kill them all and get to the surface. But then I realized that my Shadow beacon wouldn’t read at that depth in the cement tomb. Terra was looking for her brother and that Solas boy, and I wanted to give her a chance to find them.”
I lift my gaze to Alkrose, sleepy and drab in the cold, gray and black mountain terrain. Clouds huddle low today, clinging to the stone walls and crisping the air with their cold, wet sting.
“And surely you didn’t think that would take a week?” Arthur eggs me on. I don’t look at him though, I keep my gaze on the dreary view.
“After a few days, I came to the conclusion that I didn’t want to go back up. That brat Raine would tell me how much Terra was enjoying the city and how she fawned over him.” I let out a half laugh, running my hand down my face. “And I wanted her to enjoy that for as long as she could, because I knew what would come next. What I didn’t account for was her Nova and mine together in the bunker creating a stronger beacon.”
Arthur tuts. “Ah. That’s how they found you.” He flips his journal open again and jots down more notes.
I nod. My knee throbs and a shudder crawls through my spine at the memory of Cein sawing into my leg with his Shadow, a sharp serrated blade, as he threatened to make Terra the next beacon at Whales of Tauh. I will never allow that to happen.
No one can hold the weight of that much death and guilt except me.
15
Finn
Kai throws rocks over the icy lake as we wait for the Shadow riding class to begin. It makes strange sounds, like thin metal waving swiftly and making the air itch at your ears.
“Stop that,” Corvus hisses at him.
“What else am I supposed to do?” Kai drops the rocks and blows warm air over his reddened fingers.
I raise a brow at him. “Wait like the rest of us.”
He gives me a firm, annoyed look before his blue eyes catch on someone behind me. I turn as Terra and Raine join the class. My cheeks heat and my gut twists.
