Page 55 of Hearts Lost

I nod. My throat feels so tight that I might not be able to breathe. I have a momentary vision of myself falling out of this horrible chair and suffocating on the floor in front of my parents, and it makes me smile.

“The captive. She was— she is— a handler,” I continue.

Mother sniffs. “Low-born talent,” she murmurs.

That same flare of irritation spikes in my chest, just like an old injury that aches whenever the cold sets in. I force myself to smile. My parents know all of this already, of course. I have no doubt they’ve already gotten their hands on my report. What we’re doing here is pure theater. Like always.

I take another deep breath, then give them exactly what they want. It’s the same thing I gave King Galan in my official report, a day-by-day tally of the void beasts we encountered, the food we ate, the terrain we crossed. And all of the lies Ithronel told me.

Really, there are only a few glaring, gaping omissions in my official report, like the mistake I made beside the campfire when I fell into her arms, and the mistake I made when I’d tied her up and let myself fall much too far, much too fast. Those are omissions I’ll carry to my grave. Still, my voice stumbles as I tell Mother and Father how I swam into the waterfall that somehow carried me to a different part of the void.

Mother’s eyes narrow. She noticed. Of course she noticed.

“How’s your magic?” my father asks.

“What?” I reply as I rub my fist over the tightness gathering inside my chest.

He and Mother exchange a strange look, and I wonder what in the nine hells they’re getting at. They know I used my magic on Ithronel. By now, everyone in the Crystal City probably knows I’m the one who subdued the murderous saboteur from the Worlds Above. That’s my job, after all.

“We’ve heard,” Mother begins, in a strange, tight sort of voice, “that the void can alter magic.”

“That maybe someone could, sort of, draw on it,” Father adds. “Use the void in their magic.”

They’re both leaning forward now, watching me with an intensity I don’t much care for.

“Uh, no,” I reply, shifting back and meeting the absolute steel of this horrible chair’s backside. “My magic’s the same as always. I used it on Ithron— On the captive. As I’m sure you’ve heard.”

Mother’s shoulders sink. For a moment, she looks almost disappointed. Something dances through my mind, something caught halfway between a vision and a memory. Black smoke rising from the ground inside the teleportation hub, covering the huddled figures inside.

Orryen said that strange magic is what saved them, what protected everyone inside the teleportation hub from the explosive magic of Ithronel’s weapon. He said it was like nothing he’d ever seen before, like it had come from the void itself. There’s only one person I know who has magic that mimics the shadow creatures of the void.

“What, you thought I might get magic like Rowan?” I ask.

My parents turn toward me like two cats alighting on a mouse. I squirm in the chair.

“Rowan?” Mother asks, pronouncing the name very slowly.

“It’s nothing,” I say, clearing my throat again. “I haven’t actually seen his magic,” I lie, “so I wouldn’t know.”

My parents exchange another look, this one of sharp interest, and something inside me burns with a low, deep throb of warning. I suddenly want to be out of this room, out of this house, and away from the two of them. I glance to the window and see the glowsoft orbs are finally dimming.

“Well,” I announce. “If that’s everything?”

Father comes to his feet first, then offers a hand to Mother, and only then is it proper for me to stand. I shake Father’s hand, kiss Mother’s heavily powdered cheek, and set my empty teacup on the sideboard with one final glance at the brandy bottle. It’s much, much better brandy than what’s waiting for me in the Officers’ Mess. But the bottles in the Officers’ Mess have fewer strings attached.

Naturally, Archibald insists on accompanying me to the door, although I tell everyone several times that I’m perfectly capable of finding my own way out of the house where I grew up. Once I’m on the front steps, Archibald closes the massive marble doors of the family estate behind me with a smile that raises the hair on the back of my neck, and before I can stop myself I’m a child again, trying to open the one locked door in the house only to turn around and find Archibald behind me. With a thick leather belt in his hand.

Voids, my back still aches. No punishment in the Royal Guard ever came close to being whipped by Archibald.

“That guy creeps me out,” someone announces from just outside the thick stone wall surrounding the estate.

I jump as Orryen steps out of the shadows, and some part of me notes how easy it was for him to surprise me. It shouldn’t have been that easy. I shake my head, dismissing the thought.

“You and me both,” I mutter. “How’d you know where to find me?”

Orryen shakes his head and gives me that easy smile.

“You literally never go anywhere else,” he says.