Page 56 of The Darkening (The Darkening)

Dejected, I return to the reading room and kick the door open.

“Cas—fix me up quick, and we’d better go—” Dalca stops. “Oh. Vesper.”

I blink stupidly at him, taking in the mussed hair and the white shirt that’s open to his sweat-slicked throat. He’s wiped the courtyard dust from his face, but traces of it remain in his hair. He perches on the edge of a table, his jacket and gauntlet in a pile on the floor.

“Are you all right?” I ask.

“Nothing that can’t be fixed,” he murmurs, holding the edge of his shirt up as he draws an ikon on his ribs.

I blink carefully at a point over his left ear. “Cas just left.”

He hops off the table and moves to go. Good. I might be able to follow him.

But the words bubble up out of me. “Congratulations. On being Trialmaker.” Some masochistic part of me needs to see if joy lights in his eyes.

“It is a great honor,” he says tonelessly, his eyes shadowed.

Surprise softens my tone. “You’re not thrilled?”

He sets his mouth in a grim line. “It is a great honor,” he grits out, and goes on, in a strange, angry, dead voice. “The people deserve to have their fears soothed. To see our Regia can protect us. To look at a man who was powerful enough to kill a Regia and see that he is nothing more than a rat in a maze. And this man, Vale... he earned his death.”

I blink hard, safe only because Dalca’s fixated on his hands. “He earned... death?”

Dalca pins me with his gaze. “You pity him?”

The look in his eyes is dangerous. “I’m sure he should pay for his crimes. But to humiliate a man before you kill him, to design theatrics so the whole city is entertained by his death...” I stop myself. “If the Regia wills it, I am sure it is right.”

I turn my back to him, but he catches my wrist before I take a step. He looks down at his fingers with surprise, as if they moved without his permission. “I do not like it,” he admits to our hands.

His hand is warm and callused, and his thumb makes small circles on the inside of my wrist. “Then why do it? Why be Trialmaker?”

Dalca stills. He doesn’t move for a long moment. “I find myself doing more and more that I do not like to do,” he says finally. “To do the one good thing that I must do, I find myself caught in a thousand small evils.”

I squeeze his hand until he looks at me. “I hope that one thing is worth it.”

“It is the only thing that matters.” Our eyes lock. In the subtle movements of his lashes, the widening of his pupils, is a language that I don’t want to understand. My body betrays me at his closeness: my heart thuds in a quickening drumbeat that warns me to run, my skin tingles everywhere his gaze lands, warmth pools low in my stomach. His gaze drops to my lips.

Abruptly, Dalca lets go of my hand and strides across the room, flinging the balcony doors open. He leaps up onto the sandstone ledge and turns, facing me. The wind tousles his hair, and the feathers of his cloak rustle. The air between us is thick with words unspoken, with secrets, with fury and something else.

Something that draws me to him. I fight it, but it pulls me forward one small step.

Dalca’s face breaks into a strange soft smile. He takes one small step back and falls.

I hold my breath until he rises, shooting into the air.

I walk the halls, vibrating with frustration, furious every time I turn down a hallway and find no sight of either Dalca or Cas. There must be something else I can do. Sticking like glue to Cas and Dalca must eventually lead me to Pa. But how can I follow Dalca when he’s likely to jump from any convenient balcony? When both of them seem to slip like phantoms through walls? I’ve gotten nowhere—and the noose has only tightened around Pa’s neck.

Desperate, I leave the Ven and climb the golden stairs to the second. But I’m turned away at the gates, as it’s too close to sundown, so, out of ideas, I return to my room.

I open the door and find Izamal sitting on my bed cross-legged, his nose in a book. He looks up when he hears the door click shut and raises an eyebrow at me.

“When did you know?” I ask.

“About the Trials? Same time you did.”

“Have you found anything?”

Izamal shakes his head. “But we have six days. We’ll find him.”