“We have reason to believe you havelight magic.” Falcrest stood from the bed to stare out the window on the left side of the room, across from where he and Anees must have sat while she was sleeping. A few more cots stood against the wall, all of them neatly made and ready to host patients.
“Light magic?”
Falcrest’s dark silhouette shifted in front of the sunlit limestone walls beyond the window.
“‘Illusionist’ is what they like to call it in King Ulder’s ranks, but what it really is, is the ability to manipulate light. You can shape it into whatever you like as long as it keeps a luminescent quality. Sunlight, firelight, starlight, moonlight. Take your pick.” He turned on his heels, facing Lory so abruptly she forgot to be confused. “At contact with the Almelyte gas, you shaped it into firelight, Vednis.”
“Almelyte gas?” The way she kept repeating his words made her wonder if she’d taken damage in that room where Falcrest had obviously poisoned her with what he calledAlmelyte gas.
Wait—that was the whole reason she was here to begin with. She’d stolen an Almelyte from General Ycken’s brother. Anees had even tried to grill her for what she knew about Almelytes that day in the brig.
“Is that what Airmal Ycken was carrying the day you wanted to execute me?”
Falcrest flinched ever so slightly at her words. “It’s a powder that helps with jumpstarting magic,” he explained, surprisingly volunteering information. “When you stole it from Lord Ycken, we had reason to believe it was what you had been after. Only someone working against Ulder and his policies to control magic would have reason to steal Almelyte.”
Jumpstart magic—that’s what he’d been trying to do in that chamber. He’d given Frost and her a task to distract them while he’d tried to force Lory’s magic to show itself.
Fuck him and his methods.
“You couldn’t have simply told me what you were doing? You had to make it into an escape room?” Lory didn’t care that Anees was there to witness her outburst. The phantom was below him in Ashthorn’s chain of command, so what would she do? Besides, Anees seemed to be on Falcrest’s side, whatever he did, anyway. “Perhaps, if you’d told me you were trying to trigger my magic, I wouldn’t have panicked and?—”
“You wouldn’t have panicked, right?” Falcrest held her gaze, unfazed. “Your magic wouldn’t have surfaced without said panic either. So, that left me with no choice.”
“But to torture me?” How anyone could be so cold was beyond Lory’s understanding, and she’d seen a lot of cruelty in her days.
A flicker of shadow ran across Falcrest’s expression as he stalked to the door, hand already on the doorknob. “You have no idea what true torture means, Vednis. Let’s hope it stays that way.”
He was out the door so fast, all of Lory’s objections sagged in her throat before they could make it to her tongue, and by the way Anees stared after the captain, she had some words of her own to share with him once she got him between her fingers.
“Prick.” It was all Lory had to say as the door closed, blocking the view on Falcrest’s tall form vanishing in the corridor.
“He can be.” Anees sighed, sitting on the foot of Lory’s bed, face unreadable.
“Heis. He has been since the moment I met him.” It was almost possible to ignore the tiny voice of betrayal at the back of Lory’s mind, but she couldn’t ignore the hollow feeling in her stomach.
“He’s the reason you are here rather than a skeleton in the sand.” Adjusting the blade at her hip, Anees studied Lory with suspicious green eyes, the bubbly woman from the brig nowhere in sight.
The hollow feeling spread to Lory’s chest as she fought for words. “If he wanted me to live, why hunt me down to begin with? Why not just let me get away instead?”
Anees’s throat bobbed. “Because if he’s right about what you are, this place is the only one you’ll stand a chance to survive in. And no matter how much you two hate each other, it’s better to live at Falcrest’s mercy than to die at Ulder’s.”
I told you to get out of here, not to set yourself on fire, Vednis.Falcrest’s words flashed through Lory’s head as she lifted her hands, examining where painful burns should have been marring her skin—her unbelievably smooth and paleskin. Skin that hadn’t seen the sun, rather than the golden tan she was used to.
“Falcrest said I have light magic.” Flipping over her hands, she checked for other signs of injury, only to find no trace of metal from the melted key sticking to her palms. Her fingers flipped to her neck, her chest, where Falcrest had definitely peeled off more than the fabric before she’d blacked out. “But I remember the flames.”
At that word, Anees cringed ever so slightly, the unfazed phantom gone. “I believe hehopesthat’s the type of magic you have.”
“Because manipulating light is harmless in comparison to the other option that could have brought on the fire?”
For a long moment, Anees remained silent, pondering her response as Lory ran her fingers over the tender skin along her sternum, where the fresh, linen shirt someone had put on her cleaved open a few inches. “Because the other option would be a death sentence.”
Anees didn’t give Lory a chance to process. “Light magic can, on extremely rare occasions, manifest as heat. Especially while triggering your magic under such circumstances, it seems plausible that light magic went rogue. It’s a good explanation—one that will allow you to live.”While fire magic wouldn’t.She didn’t need to speak the words for them to fill the air between them.
She’d be dead if anyone found out; if anyone believed she had the forbidden magic the King of Brestolya feared so much.
“Not a word about the flames to anyone, Lory. You’ll tan up soon enough, and if anyone asks, Falcrest torched you as a punishment for disobeying an order.”
“He’d actually do that?” Not that any degree of cruelty would surprise her, but Falcrest had just saved her. He’d brought her to the Medica Hand to take care of her burns. There had to be something more to him than the punishing captain. “He’d set people on fire for mishaps, in the name of the academy and the king he so loyally serves?”
