I don’t know if we’re talking about the same thing. I’m talking about the world…but I think she’s talking about herself.
“Let’s get you cleaned up and back to bed. We have the last test tomorrow, and you should get some sleep before it.” I’m certain she’s going to object, but she surprises me and doesn’t.
I help her up and draw a bath. Thanks to the thermal springs, hot water is common throughout Vinguard, but after our time in the cages, it feels like a luxury. I wait outside while she cleans herself. Then I follow her back to the room.
Lucan doesn’t wake up. Or if he does, he gives Saipha privacy. I help my friend into her bed, pulling the blankets up to her chin and running a hand over her hair.
“You don’t have to tuck me in like a child, you know.” Yet, even as she says it, her eyelids are growing heavy.
“I’m looking after you like a friend, not a child.” I’m doing all the things that I wish someone had done for me every night growing up when my skin crawled and I was afraid that the curse was ravaging my body. I’m not afraid of that now. Perhaps that’s one good outcome of the Tribunal.
“I feel so weak and pathetic.” She laughs. It’s a hollow, broken sound filled with self-deprecation and hate. “I thought this place was going to be easy. Maybe not ‘easy,’ but that it wasn’t going tobe this hard—at least not for me.”
I sit on the edge of her bed, trying to think of the right words to say. I feel like no matter what comes out of my mouth next, I’ll always look back on this moment and wish I’d said something more. Different.Better.
“You’re right; it’s harder than we thought.” I emphasizeweso she doesn’t feel alone. “But think of how much stronger we’re going to be on the other side. We’ve already faced a dragon head-on. That’s something that Mercy Knights don’t usually accomplish until the end of their first year of training. Let’s break down here, so we don’t break up there.”
“Ifwe make it there.”
“Saipha—”
“I overheard them,” she interrupts, her eyelids fluttering open. The cold fire of her stare halts what I would’ve said next. Her words are barely more than a breath, hardly audible over Lucan’s soft snores. “The inquisitors—when they took me to the bathroom to bathe, I overheard them talking when they thought I wasn’t listening. They said that they had pulled us aside because your father did something with the sensor and they had managed to narrow down that it is one of us who is cursed.”
My blood runs cold. My father wouldn’t, unless he was forced to. The notion of what the Creed might have done or said to have him put me and my friends at risk of suspicion has me wanting to go into the main atrium and demand answers.
There must be a plan. I trust my parents. There’s a plan to this.
“One thing that my father has always told me is that an invention is only ever as good as the artificer behind it or the materials that make it—and not even he is perfect.” I lock eyes with her. “If they had a perfect solution—a clear test to identify a dragon cursed—then they wouldn’t need to push us so hard. There wouldn’t even be a Tribunal. They would know who it was, administer Mercy, and be done with it. Whatever system they’reusing is not perfect or foolproof.”
Saipha looks away, avoiding my stare. She wraps her arms around herself and shivers, then shakes her head.
“It’s me.” Her words are as soft and small as the ones I always said to myself. Like a hidden confession. No… More like a damnation.
“Don’t say that.” I grab both her hands.
She looks at me with pure terror and whispers, “But I feel it…moving underneath my skin. Rattling my bones. Warring within me. It’s going to rip me apart with claws and teeth, Isola.”
Instantly, I’m back on the floor of the sundering pits, the vicar forcing magic through me. That feeling of something,somethingjust under my skin, trying to get out.
“We went through every burning level of hell down there. Everything they did was for the sole purpose of breaking us. But here we are. We are stronger than them—youare stronger.”
“What if I’m not?” Her voice is tiny, trembling with bone-deep fear we both feel.
I’m clenching her hands so tightly my knuckles are white. “If you must shatter, then shatter. But after, you pick up one of those broken, jagged-edged shards of what you once were, and you shove it so far down their throats, they will never find a voice to doubt you ever again.”
She looks at me as if she’s never seen me before. “You’re going to do incredible things in Mercy.”
“Wewill,” I insist again. A fragile smile curls the corner of her lips, and she nods. It’s the best I’m going to get from her, and I know it. “Now, go to sleep.”
“I’ll try.”
I don’t release her fingers. I just lie back down and clutch them for the rest of the night.
For as much as I know I should use this time to sleep, I can’t shove down the guilt that this level of torture is much, muchworse this year because of me.
That the vicar has lied to the inquisitors to justify these more brutal challenges.
What if no one here is dragon cursed and it’s a lie?An alternative theory forms. He said as much, forcing my father to put the target on my back with his sensor to justify pushing me. To get me to draw Etherlight without a sigil.
