And she’d just responded to her thoughts rather than her words.
“Anees?”Lory cautiously asked in her mind, and the woman sat up, revealing she’d been sleeping in full uniform rather than her nightgown.
“It’s all right, Lory. I know. I’ve heard you before, when you were still unaware of your gift. It took me a while, though, to figure out if it was my ability or yours. For a moment there, I got pretty excited when I thought I could read minds.” A chuckle so low and bitter Lory could barely believe it belonged to Anees drifted on a phantom wind. “Would have been a truly useful gift for once.”
With her matter manipulation of textiles, Anees had one of the most useful gifts Lory had ever seen, but she understood the feeling of not being enough all too well. Carefully, she pushed to her feet, tucking the piece of paper into her sleeve as she swayed toward Anees’s bed and sat on the edge of the mattress. She curled an arm around the half-sitting woman and hugged her close. “Thank you for being here.”
Anees merely nodded into Lory’s shoulder.
“What happened with the three Flames? Did they—?” Lory whispered.
Another nod from Anees, then a small shake of her head. “Olive is the only one who got out. They slayed the other two on the spot.”
“Bythey,you mean…”
“Ycken came down to check in on the prisoners for more information on Lenya’s behalf soon after you left. We’d done everything as planned. Hadrian still has the black eye from where I punched him so he could pretend to have been knocked out by one of the prisoners. We setthe cells on fire after we let them out, to make it look like they were able to summon their magic. We even used the exact same stabbing technique as Khay does when it’s his turn to kill ashlings before breakfast.” Anees’s voice turned somber. “Ycken came just as we’d injured Olive. Hadrian was about to stab Enya, but Ycken took off her head instead. And before we could get Hadrick out of the cell, Ycken used his magic to draw the air from the man’s lungs and suffocate him.”
Lory wanted to sob, to scream, to say something that would make it better, but ultimately, there was nothing she could do.
“The plan was good,” Anees said, not letting go of Lory’s embrace. “ We failed at the execution.”
“You didn’t fail.” Now Anees’s self-deprecation from before made sense. “You saved a life.”
“Olive is healing in the crematorium, just as Khayrivven planned. She has food and water, but her wounds are deep, and we don’t know if she’ll survive the next days.”
There was someone in this very room who could help, but Lory couldn’t make that sort of decision about Khayrivven’s secrets. At least not yet. Maybe the Medica Hand would be willing to provide a tonic that would speed up Olive’s healing…
“She will.” Though Lory wasn’t convinced, she made it sound like she was, and Anees didn’t object.
Hope, she realized, was the strongest power of all. Stronger even than love, because while in her world, love gave meaning to death, hope gave meaning to life.
We might need to sneak some Medica supplies down into the…” She stopped herself, her arm folding Lory in more tightly. “Without some proper healing, Olive might not make it. I’m prepared to steal tonics and elixirs, but Khay told me to keep you out of it.”
Of course he had, not realizing he had an ally in the Medica quarters, who would aid in whichever way he could without drawing the Triad’s attention.
“What’s with all the fuss?” Tabi had woken in her chair, her disheveled braids swinging around her head as she searched the room for Lory, then bouncing into her face as she found her with Anees. “Aren’t you supposed to be in bed? You lost a boatload of blood.”
“About that…” Lory released Anees to drag herself to Tabi’s chair and hug her friend. Despite the whispering, she wasn’t sure how much Tabi had heard of their conversation. “Thanks for helping me.”
Squeezing her tight, Tabi stood with Lory in her arms and sat her down on her own bed, a frown hiding her slight smile. “You’d have done the same for me.”
It was a truth Lory had known since the moment Tabi had shown up in the Amrin Mountains to fight at her side. A true friend, who’d taken a risk to protect her. Just like Lory would wreck herself to help Tabi—and Thal, and Jarek, and Anees. Even Hadrian, who’d crept into a crevice inside her heart with his annoying ability to manipulate emotions—or just by being his charming self, she didn’t care. But most of all, for Khayrivven, who’d left once more without saying goodbye.
A sudden sadness befalling her, she reached for the bond originating at the center of her heart and tugged on it until it glowed a bright gold.“I love you, Khayrivven.”The thought drifted along the bond, curling into its essence as it slid away.
“Lenya gave you the day off?” Anees asked, her gold-flecked brown eyes wary. She flicked her fingers, and the orbs of light above her head came to life with a soft yellow glow. Lory heaved herself from the bed to open the window behind the desk and inhaled deeply.
Soon, the sun would beat down on the watered land, and Sen Dunai would return to being mostly desert. But for now, the air tasted of rain and life.
With glimmers of hope settling inside her chest, Lory glanced from Anees to Tabi and back, making up a plan of her own. It would need careful planning and even more careful execution, but if all pieces fell into place, maybe they could save at least one Flame.
With a grin, she took Tabi’s hand. “How much rest do you need before your powers are fully restored?”
The hallways wereempty when Lory and Anees snuck out of the room, not five minutes later. Oh, Anees had objected to every little detail of Lory’s plan and mentioned about a hundred times that Khayrivven would kill her if anything happened to Lory, which had put an even wider grin onLory’s face. Low torchlight illuminated their path, not a single window lining the hallway, a blessing that allowed them to slip from shadow to shadow like they’d practiced so many times in Veiled training.
Even with the exhaustion from her injury, Lory’s head was clear and her feet light. Whatever the tonic Tabi had poured over her injury, there was no more sign of the cleaving wound.
She’d examine the what and how of her excessive bleeding and Lenya’s involvement in her almost-demise later, but for now, another life needed to be saved. Onlyoneout of three bright lights that had known more about being a Flame than Lory would ever learn here at Ashthorn. Her heart ached at the injustice of it all.
