Page 49

“Easy, easy!” Myrion lifts both his hands before placing them on his knees and panting. “I yield.”

I straighten, relax my magic, and wipe my brow.

On occasion, I still train on my own. But coming to the Sanctum of the Majors in the evenings has given me the opportunity to practice wielding against others on the small dueling strip.

After the rocky start to my year, I’m determined to learn tarot the way the academy wants me to.

The mere idea of failing at something I know I can do well is downright unpalatable.

Plus, this is the only place I’m able to really flex my skills against people who are also capable of wielding a full deck.

“Unlike you to be beaten so thoroughly,” Elorin says to Myrion in her melodic, almost dreamy way. Her eyes then drift to me. “Now, if you could only channel that same competence into inking the Wheel.”

“Rude.” My tone is as dry as my throat, and I make my way toward the large pitcher of water that Thal set out for us.

“You must figure it out eventually.” Elorin continues to hover.

“You think I don’t want to?” I drink and give her a side-eye.

“Avoiding inking practice isn’t going to get you any closer to mastery.

” Every word is said with detached beauty, fitting her usual demeanor.

Elorin’s features rarely betray happiness or sorrow or any emotion at all.

She’s like a colorful porcelain doll: Everything about her is perfect—her aura peaceful and calm, her appearance flawless—and though she’s always clad in a rainbow of cheerful hues, she sometimes feels utterly soulless.

“She’ll get it in her own time.” Myrion comes up beside me and pours a drink from the pitcher. As he raises his glass, he gives me a warm and encouraging smile. Myrion is one of the few people I’ve ever met who has never put me on guard.

“I’m going to wash up for dinner,” he announces after draining his glass. “Nothing can be done on an empty stomach.”

“I’ll be on my way in a bit. I should work on my inking.” I make my way toward a desk, giving Elorin a pointed look. She merely smiles, somewhat coy in her triumph.

Myrion heads off, and Thal isn’t far behind him.

Elorin perches herself before the fire, leafing through a book that she plucked off one of the shelves that line one wall of the sanctum.

There are better, rarer books here than even in the library.

But unfortunately, I’ve found no material in them about the World.

I keep glancing at Elorin from the corner of my eye as I set to inking. If she notices, she doesn’t react.

Sorza finally departs with a loud stretch and a declaration of “That’s enough for today.” She’s been hunched over for hours working on her own card. She’s been as unsuccessful as I have been, but she seems much closer to a breakthrough. “Coming, Clara?”

I shake my head. “Go on without me.”

“I’ll stash some food in your room.” It’s not the first night she’s offered to help, and she’s always come through.

“You’re too good to me.”

“Isn’t that the truth?” She waves and leaves.

Now it’s just Elorin and me. I am not going to let her leave before me after the remarks she made—I am not going to have Elorin claim again that I’m not putting in the effort.

I keep my head down and persist in scribbling on the page.

My drawings mean nothing. I don’t feel any particular connection to them—they’re as soulless as the lines Raethana Duskflame teaches. But I look productive.

The moon is up and we’ve both surely missed dinner when Elorin finally yawns and shuts her book with a dramatic flair.

She tucks the dusty tome under her arm. I feel her eyes on me before I bring mine to hers again.

Wordlessly, she holds my stare, and time seems to stretch on even longer than our little game did over the past few hours.

“It’s not going to work, you know.”

My pen stops moving. “What isn’t?”

“Trying to stall your learning to avoid getting an assignment. It’s not going to work.” Her listless eyes take on new meaning. Their blue has clouded, becoming almost stormy with a tumult that she clearly fights to hide. I wonder just how much agony brews beneath the placid surface she presents.

“I wasn’t trying to stall.”

“Sure you weren’t.” She’s skeptical.

“I wasn’t,” I insist. Then my mouth runs away from me.

“If anything, I’m frustrated I can’t ink the card.

This is the first time tarot hasn’t come naturally to me and it’s completely and utterly maddening.

” I stop myself promptly before I say more.

Elorin tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, looking guilty.

People seem inclined to say things around me; they tell me things they might not otherwise admit, especially if I probe , Elorin said on my first day in the sanctum. I didn’t understand what she meant until now. That outburst was completely true, but not what I’d been intending to say.

“You should want to stall,” she murmurs, looking away.

“Why?”

“Once you can, they will have you and all the powers they can wring from you.”

“ They? ” I set my pen down. I can surmise what she means, but I want to be sure.

“The nobility you’ll be assigned to…the king himself.” Her gaze drifts out the window, and she stares with longing at nothing, as if the only times she’s ever been truly free are when she’s looked at the horizon. “We exist for them.”

“We exist for ourselves.” I refuse to accept anything less. She looks back to me, but, rather than arguing, she just smiles in a way that makes her disagreement palpable. I ask, “Do you know what clan you’ll be going to?”

“Not a clan, to the court at Fate Hearth. My power as High Priestess is too valuable to be anywhere else but at the king’s side.”

“What is your power?” I realize just how little I know about each of the Majors’ unique magic.

Myrion told me earlier that with the Lovers card he can make two people fall in love.

Eza showed me his card’s skill when he attacked me.

Thal told me their power to remove someone’s pain with the Sun on my first day.

Sorza is still figuring out her magic, just as I am.

And I know Silas’s…But Cael, the Emperor; Nidus, the Tower; and Elorin, the High Priestess, I don’t know what their cards do.

“I can look into someone’s mind and learn their innermost thoughts—their truth that they hide from the world.

” I lean back in my seat. She laughs at my reaction.

“Don’t worry, I haven’t used it on you, nor would I without being asked…

or ordered to by the crown. I don’t delight in giving up my memories.

I’d rather keep them for myself than exchange them for others’. ”

“I can only imagine.”

“I hope, for your sake, the inking requirements for Fortune are much more forgiving.”

She leaves me to my thoughts. I stare at my page of half-hearted scribbles.

My inability to ink isn’t just from not knowing the right symbol for Fortune.

A sinking feeling pools in my gut. I don’t know what I must sacrifice.

Until I do, I doubt the magic will ever coalesce into shape.

What if inking the Wheel of Fortune takes more than I can bear to give?

When I hear footsteps, I think it’s Silas come to find me, as he does from time to time when most are tucked into their dormitories. But the moment I turn my attention to the sound of his footsteps, I realize they’re not his.

A man whose hair looks white in the moonlight smirks back at me, his hand already hanging by the deck on his hip.

“Eza.” All warmth has left my voice. Our paths have crossed only briefly these past few weeks, and when they have, others have been present—all by my design. Now we’re alone. As if he sought me out.

“ Graysword. ” He sneers the name I went by in Halazar. Goading me from the first moment. I pretend to look down at my paper again, picking up my pen. But he isn’t one to be ignored. Every tiny hair on my body is on end. “I’ve heard you’ve been making use of the training grounds here.”

“My name is Redwin,” I correct. How does he know so much about me? When he first attacked me…and now.

“We both know it’s not,” he scoffs. He’s right, of course. But my real name isn’t Graysword, either.

“It is. And what I do here is not exactly a secret.” I make a few annoyed marks with my pen.

“I want to see what a Halazar inmate can do.”

“I’m not sure what you think you know about me, but I assure you that your information is wrong.” I drag my eyes back to him, hate welling in my stomach. But I keep my cool. “Moreover, I’m not interested in showing you anything.”

“You seemed willing to earlier in the year.”

I’m not going to let you get the better of me this time. “I changed my mind.”

“And if I don’t give you that option?” He wears a wild smile as he crosses the room to me.

“Why don’t I tell everyone that you are the person from all the stories—the escapee from Halazar—and put you back into the cage where vermin like you belong?

Can’t imagine the king would take too kindly to a harlot lying her way into his son’s bed. ”

His question, as rhetorical as it was, sticks… Why hasn’t he had me sent back to Halazar? He’s clearly certain about my identity, and he’s right. So why hasn’t he done anything more other than goad and attack me personally? Why not tell a professor to call the enforcers?

“Because you can’t put me back.” I keep the realization from seeping into the words. No matter what he might know, or threaten. He can’t put me back there. “Otherwise you would’ve by now.”

Eza’s gaze hardens.

“You think you’re so strong, don’t you? But you’re just as afraid of Kaelis as anyone else.” I want to laugh. Damn it, Kaelis was right…being engaged to him does come with its own protections.

“You don’t know anything,” he growls.

“Don’t I, though?”