Page 39 of Monster of the Dagger Mountains (Killers of the Towers)

Chapter 39

Kira

THE TRUTH

B y the time Zayne and the mercenaries leave the room at the end of the hall, wind has joined its old friend rain, and together they’re throwing fistfuls of water through the open door. Thunder rumbles in the distance, like the growl of some hungry beast. It’s almost enough to mask the sounds of heavy boots in the hallway behind me.

I step away from the wall and fall into place beside Zayne. He nods, the briefest possible acknowledgement of my continued existence, and then pulls his hood up and over his face before stepping outside. I follow him. A gust of wind tosses rain into my face.

“Kira,” Zayne whispers, his voice hardly audible over the constant drum of rain against the cobblestones. “You want something?”

Panic pulls my throat tight. I swallow hard. It’s one thing to turn words over inside the quiet comfort of your own mind, and quite another to say them out loud.

“Yes,” I whisper. “I need to go back. To the Daggers. I can pay.”

Zayne doesn’t respond. We turn toward the main gate. Wind rips at my clothes. Rain streaks down my face as disappointment pools inside my chest. Why did I think Zayne, of all people, would help me? Gods, this idea was doomed from the start.

Zayne stops. The Guards inside the entrance house stare through the window at us. Behind me, Barrance grumbles a few choice expletives.

“Good to see you again, sweetheart,” Zayne announces. “Glad the ankle’s recovered.”

I’m about to tell him to go fuck himself when Zayne leans forward and tugs me into a hug. My back stiffens.

“Tomorrow night,” he whispers. “At the Next Best Gander. Give the Towers a good cover story, okay?”

Before I can reply, he pulls back and slaps me on the shoulder hard enough to knock a spray of water out of my shirt. And then he’s off, melting into the shadows on the other side of the gate with Barrance and Girwin at his heels. The Guards inside the entrance house watch him go.

The Next Best Gander? That dockside tavern has long held the reputation for being the filthiest and most dangerous pub on the waterside; I’ve never been inside it. The shiver that steals across my skin isn’t entirely due to the rainwater trickling down my spine.

But, hells, it’s not like I’m doing anything with my life here in the Towers. And, after so many years of pretending to be a ghost, it’s not like anyone around here is going to miss me. Or even notice that I’m gone.

With a sigh, I shove my hands in my pockets and splash across the courtyard toward the Guards’ dormitory.

“So, uh, I know it’s a lot to ask,” I say, staring at my hands as my cheeks burn. “But, I— I mean, if it’s not too much trouble. I just need to get away.”

I dare a quick glance at Benja. He’s still watching me with a mixture of shock and deep, deep concern, like I’ve just told him I’ll walk off a broken leg or not to worry about that arrow through my shoulder.

Shit. Maybe someone here will miss me after all. The thought should make me feel better, but it doesn’t.

“Oh,” Benja finally says.

The lump in his throat bobs as he swallows. The air in this tiny room is stale and musty; it feels like we’re standing inside an abandoned boot. Benja gives me a smile that’s probably supposed to be comforting but instead looks a little like he’s desperate to find the nearest outhouse.

“Yeah, that’s fine,” Benja says.

My mouth falls open. It’s that easy? I begged and stammered about how desperately I need a few weeks off to go reconnect with the damned orphanage, and it’s that easy?

Benja rubs the back of his neck, then winces. “Look, usually when someone comes back from an expedition, they get a leave of absence,” he says. “I mean, you can guess why, right?”

I blink. I’m not at all sure what he’s talking about. He gives me another pained smile.

“I know it’s hard,” he says. “The things we do here. The things we see?—”

He shakes his head. When he turns back to me, it’s with a different expression on his face.

“You have to remember,” he says. “They’re not like us, Kira. The Exemplars, the Disciples, the Elites. Especially the Elites. They look like us, sure. But they’re not like us.”

Benja meets my gaze. Despite the stuffy heat of the room, I feel like I’ve just fallen into something very cold and very dark.

That’s how he can do it. Whatever Fyrris asks him to do, whatever makes people scream in the middle of the night, I’m now certain Benja is part of it. And he can walk away in the morning with his heart a clean slate. Because they aren’t people. Not to him.

“I know you came here hoping to be one of ‘em,” Benja continues, shaking his head. “A lot of us did. But, I mean, thank the gods you’re not, right?”

I force myself to breathe, in and out, just like a normal human being, but my mind howls inside my skull, and all I can see is Reznyk, hunched over in the meadow, staring at hands that once spilled the blood of an old god. Certainty closes around my heart like a fist.

I can’t be a Guard for this place anymore.

The Towers are full of monsters.

“So, um, it’s okay then?” I ask. “To take some time off?”

“Yeah,” Benja says, “it’s fine. We’ll cover for you. Like I said, we all know what it’s like.”

I know, my mind screams. That makes it even worse.

I walk out of the tiny front office with its smell of mildew and damp clothes, across the courtyard, and through the main gates. My throat pulls tight as I step beneath the shadow of the gate, but no one stops me. The Guards inside the entrance house nod at me, certain that I have some reason for leaving, or just certain they don’t give a shit. I’m another invisible Guard, after all. They’d be more interested in me if I were a rat scurrying across the cobblestones.

The warm glow of a late autumn afternoon fills the streets of Silver City, turning the air to melted gold. All around me, the city hums with life. A donkey pulls a cart filled with hay. Children who probably came from the orphanage shriek as they race down the street. Far above us, the gleaming white Towers thrust into the brilliant azure sky. I’m at the steps of the orphanage in just a few minutes, and sitting in Dame Serena’s tiny study a few minutes after that. Some part of me wonders that the geography of my entire life can be circumvented so quickly.

“So,” Dame Serena begins, after we’ve exchanged pleasantries and she’s caught me up on all the gossip, “what brings you here, Kira, my dear one?”

She calls every single child here dear one . Still, hearing it makes my chest ache and my eyes sting. I might as well be five years old again, reading a string of letters and looking up to see one of her rare smiles.

I threw this all away. Dame Serena, and the children who listened to my stories every night, and the pantry I learned how to manage after years of picking every lock and stealing every sweet. I left the orphanage the same day Fyrris arrived with his beautiful lies about my parents and my potential, convinced I was moving on to something better. I didn’t want to come back here unless I was wearing the white robes of an Exemplar, ready to share the secrets of my illustrious parentage with all the people I left behind. But something better never arrived, did it?

I try to swallow the lump in my throat. “I— I left quickly,” I stammer.

“Yes, you did,” she replies, with a nod. “They gave you a good offer.”

It’s not a question. Her mouth pulls tight in a way that makes me think she has her own opinions about the Towers, but she’s polite enough not to offer them.

“I never got to ask about my?—”

My voice cuts off. We don’t talk about where the children in the orphanage come from. Dame Serena tells them they are each a blessing, that they were delivered by birds or fish or foxes, and she is so fortunate to have them now. It’s only when someone leaves the orphanage that she unlocks the box on her desk, pulls out her massive ledger, and reveals what little she knows of their history.

I glance at her desk pushed against the wall, and the locked box in the center. In all my years in the orphanage, that’s the only lock I never picked. I wanted to believe it didn’t matter, that I didn’t care where I came from.

And maybe I believed that lie. At least until the first time Fyrris opened his mouth.

“Your history?” Dame Serena asks, finishing my sentence.

I nod. My throat feels tight, and my hands are trembling. Dame Serena pulls herself up in her chair and clears her throat.

“I knew your mother,” she says.

I blink. For all the time I’ve spent imagining my mother as an Exemplar, I never pictured her as an actual person, a human with friends and family, someone who might have known the same people I know.

“We grew up together,” Dame Serena continues. “Here, of course.”

My breath catches. My mother was an orphan?

“She wanted to keep you,” Dame Serena says. “Difficult, in her line of work, but not impossible. She came to me for advice.” She shakes her head. “If she had survived, Margot would have made a wonderful mother.”

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.

My mother wasn’t an Exemplar, and I was no long-lost princess of the Towers like the bedtime stories I made up for the children. She lived here, in these halls. I spent my childhood in her home, and I never knew.

“As for your sire,” Dame Serena continues, with a tight twist of her lips that reminds me of the expression she made when she mentioned the offer the Towers gave me, “I’m fairly certain I know him as well.”

“Lord Castinac?” I ask.

Dame Serena looks almost surprised.

“Yes,” she replies. “Yes, I believe so. He would deny it, of course, if you were thinking of approaching him, and you know there’s no way to prove it. But he did make a rather sizable donation to the orphanage after your mother’s death.”

I blink, then turn toward the room’s one small window set high in the stone wall. I can see the gleaming edge of a white tower standing like a bulwark against the wild blue sky.

The Towers really did lie to me. I have no magical lineage. I don’t belong there, or anywhere else. Being the bastard daughter of a nobleman means exactly nothing in this town; I can think of at least a half dozen other children in the orphanage right now who could claim something similar.

I truly am nothing special.

The gods only know what the Towers wanted with me when they pulled me from the orphanage with a story so blatantly false I should have seen through it years ago. But I fell for it, and Dame Serena didn’t stop them. Maybe she didn’t want to interfere unless I asked. Maybe she’s afraid of the Towers.

No, there’s only one person who ever told me the truth. I remember the way the wind tugged at Reznyk’s hair as he held my hand in the sunlight. He looked almost apologetic when he said I don’t have any magical potential, as if it was his fault that I’d swallowed that stupid lie years ago.

And then I betrayed him.

My eyes sting. I press my palms to my face to cover the flood of tears before it can spill down my cheeks. Dame Serena makes a clucking sound. Her chair groans as she comes to her feet.

“I’ll give you a minute,” she says.

The door creaks as she closes it behind her. And then I’m alone, in the only home I ever had, the place I left without a second thought, surrounded by a lifetime’s worth of mistakes.