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I wasn’t wrong to guard her secret after all. I didn’t misjudge her control or her determination.
She’s still the woman I believed in.
I lift my gaze and nod at my student. “Thank you for your help. You can get on with the rest of the day—I trust your knee is all right?”
Bartos gives a rough chuckle. “Oh, I’m sure I’ll recover quickly enough. You did pick quite a tenacious assistant.”
He bobs his head to both of us and ambles out—with a hint of a limp, I can’t help noticing.
“You,” Ivy mutters under her breath. “Youaskedhim to— You were testing me?”
The last word is broken by a hiss. She wraps her arm around her belly and reels backward to brace herself against the wall.
Any relief that was buoying me washes out of my body. I dash forward to grab her elbow. “Ivy—are you hurt?”
“Fuck you,” she spits out in a strained voice, all pretense of a noble lady dropped.
Her legs wobble. She stiffens them for a second before they buckle completely.
My fingers clamp around her arm to slow her collapse. I sink down with her, my pulse suddenly thundering.
“Where are you wounded?” I demand. “You have to let me—”
Her words spill out between hitches of breath. “I don’t. Have to. Do.Anything. For an asshole. Like you.”
Her head bows forward to rest against her upraised knees. Her whole body shudders, a whine seeping from her lips.
The sound is so agonized it guts me.
I did this to her. My wretched test has left her more injured than the scourge sorcerers ever have.
My hand slides up her arm to her shoulder. I tip my head close to hers. “I’m sorry. I had to know—I had to be sure that even under duress— He wasn’t supposed to really harm you.”
Ivy manages to emit a derisive snort. “Wasn’t Bartos. Stupid power. Gets mad. When I won’t. Use it.”
She raises her head shakily, pain etched across her pale features, so her bright gaze can burn into mine. “But I didn’t. I never want to. I’m not. A fucking. Monster.”
Understanding jars into place in my head with a sharper swell of regret.
Did she tell us that much before and I didn’t heed it? I know she indicated that it was hard for her to resist her magic, but I didn’t quite make the connection—
That time Aleksi called us all to the archives because Ivy had supposedly been attacked. And later, when Benedikt raced into my classroom to tell me I needed to hurry to my quarters, that she’d collapsed and was coughing up blood…
Those incidents weren’t caused by spite from the idiots at this school. That was her magic lashing out at her. Because it wanted to take action and she refused it?
I never saw her in the worst grips of either of those fits. She was already recovering when I reached her the first time, and the second she appeared perfectly fine once we tracked her down.
I had no idea she experienced anything like this just to restrain her power.
How many times has she put herself through this agony since coming here, with all the threats and animosity she’s faced? Not least of all from me.
Gods above, she could have run back to the streets of Slaughterwell any time.
But she stayed. She stayed to fight the scourge sorcerers with us and protect so many people who’d have sent her to the gallows—even though she knew how I felt about the riven, even though the constant danger of staying in this place might have been killing her from the inside out.
She’s proven the truth again and again. Since the horrors of her childhood, she’s never used her magic except when the consequences of not using it were worse.
Have I ever really wished she’d let Wendos tear apart the city instead of stopping him?
