“My sister.” Jarek joined the conversation. “She’s in red.”
Lory tried to remember a face to go with the name, but with meals and training spent mainly in their own color, she couldn’t quite place her.
“So, you both came here together?” she wanted to know. “Applied together?”
Jarek bobbed his head, short reddish-brown waves falling into his eyes, and rolled up his gauze. “Maes is a year younger, but she showed signs of magic earlier than me, so they decided to take her this year.”
This might have been the most Jarek had ever talked to her, and Lory decided she quite liked getting an answer from someone without the side-eye.
“What magic do you two have?” she asked, glad that this conversation was going in any direction but her own little secret.
Instead of answering, Jarek lifted his hand, pointing it at the open windows along the side of the light-flooded room, and curled his fingers as if he was squeezing an orange. The curtains lifted, dancing on a sudden breeze, and a gust of cool evening air blew strands of hair out of her sweaty face.
For the first time that day, Lory felt like she could breathe. “Brilliant.”
“And incredibly useful,” Jarek amended. “Especially when it comes to all Veiled arts.”
“You can throw over a crate or shut doors, tug on people’s clothes with that power, and so much more,” she mused, seeing how she could make use of it on the streets when hunting for her next scraps of food or a couple of coins.
A genuine smile spread on Jarek’s face, giving away that it had crossed his mind to use his abilities for mischief.
“What magic runs in your family?” Lory prompted Tabi, forgetting that she shouldn’t pry if she didn’t want others to dig up her own secrets.
Tabi shrugged. “I’d have to kill you if I told you.” Her playful wink didn’t take away the queasiness in Lory’s stomach, and judging by the expression on both Thal’s and Jarek’s faces, they felt the same way.
“How about yours?” Tabi asked in return, leaning over the table to roll another length of gauze around Jarek’s forearm with professional precision.
Within a heartbeat, the momentary comfort of the conversation puffed into thin air, and Lory’s heart raced in her chest as if she were running from the city guards all over again.
“Anything fancy shown up yet?” Jarek wanted to know, studying her from the side as if trying to unearth terrible secrets. If he continued doing so, she might very well break and spill how worthless she was when it came to magic.
“Not really.” Fidgeting in her chair, Lory tugged on the bandage around her wrist. “At least, not yet. Falcrest mentioned something about how I wouldn’t last long if I don’t show my abilities, but so far, not as much as a spark.”
On the table next to hers, Tabi and Jarek shared a glance that made her wonder if she’d already said too much.
“How about you?”
Thal wasn’t happy about the attempt at diversion. His potential water magic hadn’t given an appearance either,even when Dunveil and Falcrest had put him under duress in the last knowledge class.
“I can sense the water jar on the table during meals, but that’s about as useful as not having any powers at all.” The defeat in his tone almost made her reconsider and bring the conversation back to her own lack of powers, but Jarek had that covered for her.
“Better than not having any clue at all, right?” His gaze wandered back to Lory, not letting her off the hook so easily. “I mean, they must have seen something in you to bring you to Ashthorn.”
Again, Lory shrugged. “Apparently.”We’ve been hunting you for two years, Ashling Vednis.The Knowledge Hand’s words were as fresh in her mind as if he’d spoken them yesterday. Jarek was right. They must have seen something more than a street rat with a knack for stealing from the wrong men, or they wouldn’t have bothered to even discuss her execution. She’d long be a pile of sun-bleached bones in the sand.
“So, did your parents have any particular abilities? Ever show any signs of moving objects or accidentally make things happen? Does the weather behave strangely around you, or are you having weird dreams that tend to come true?” With a tone as casual as Jarek’s, it would have been easy to let herself be lured back into wanting to open up, but something held her back. Something small and nondescript that might have been a spark of warmth or simply an impulse to run—the same instinct that had kept her alive as long as she could think back.
“My mother has been dead so long I can barely remember her.”
All three of them lowered their gazes at the raw emotion threatening to break through Lory’s carefully crafted defenses.
“I’m sorry.” It was Thal who placed a hand on her shoulder and squeezed, his tone soft and empathetic despite the other students in the classroom. At least, none of them was listening in, all too busy mastering the perfect wrapping and excelling at yet another task when this seemed to be the only class where death wasn’t the punishment for failure.
Warmth spread through Lory’s body from the place Thal’s palm was now resting against her biceps, and she would have attributed it to the heat of the unforgiving climate or her own embarrassment, but something told her there was more to it.
“What about your father?” Tabi pushed, and from her voice, Lory could tell this was no longer about the absence of her magic but about the man who’d given her and Evven life, then abandoned them to die on the streets like vermin.
“I never knew him.” Not the entire truth. She and Evven had found him and knocked on his door once, but he’d shut the door in their faces on sight like they carried an infectious disease. “Perhaps that’s for the best.”
