She’d known other street rats had formed alliances with them to survive, but friends… real friends like this, she’d never even known existed.
Over Tabi’s shoulder, Jarek grinned at her. “Will take some getting used to for sure, but I trust you not to torch me at a whim, so as long as you keep your magic to yourself, I’ll keep mine to myself, too.” Wringing his hands, he took a step back to make space for Tabi as she peeled Lory away and held her by the arms at a foot distance.
“That’s not a way to talk to the woman who was ready to get her ass handed to her because you and Heener almost threw yourselves off that bridge, Jarek,” she threw over her shoulder, fingers still painfully tight around Lory’s biceps, like she wasn’t ready just yet to let her go.
Thal made a face. “We’re all alive. Isn’t that the only thing that should count here?”
Jarek dipped his chin, running his hand over his scarred left brow. “Especially since they’ll be targeting all of us now that we’ve welcomed the Flame-born with open arms.” The obvious judgment in his tone came with a defeated half-smile at the impressive woman pinning him with her gold-flecked stare.
Whatever happened since Lory was locked in the dungeons must have led to a new sort of attachment between those two. Even when neither Tabi nor Jarek was showing any other signs they’d gotten closer, Lory could tell by the way Jarek was looking at her beautiful, deep-umber face.
“Attention, ashlings!” Hadrian Bleek shouted from the front of the parcours, where he stood on a small platform where the yellows had gathered in little groups, sending sharp gazes in Lory’s direction. “You’ll split up into two groups today. Phantom Frier will take half and Phantom Washings the other.” He shifted his casual stance, the sunlight catching in his dark-blond waves. “Go.”
As the crowd set in motion, Bleek leaped off the platform in a maneuver so effortless it had to be trained to become second nature, his feet landing lightly on the sandy ground. With his right hand, he adjusted the saber behind his shoulder while he marched right for Lory and her friends.
“You are coming with me.” He stopped in front of her, his tall, athletic frame casting a shadow on her.
“All of us?” Thal asked with the familiar, humorous tone of the man who wasn’t bothered by anything.
Bleek just stared down at the ashling as if he was about to tear his tongue out, but then he nodded curtly. “Bellmont, Heener, Grivor, Ngala, Vednis.” His gaze flicked over them, halting on Lory. “We need a third woman. Graccia!” he shouted over his shoulder, and Lory’s stomach coiled into a conglomerate of anger and fear at the sight of the pretty, yellow ashling peeling away from the group and sauntering toward them.
“Yes, Phantom Bleek?” Her unusually large, green eyes wandered to Lory, her nose crinkling as if she smelled something bad.
“You’re with us today.” Hadrian Bleek didn’t give any further explanations as he guided the group back into the building and up a set of stairs Lory had never seen before.
Inside her chest, the familiar-by-now sense of her magic rearing its head reminded her of both the danger of the yellow ashling who had wanted her dead before she’d know what unholy power Lory had, and the potential trap Bleek was leading them to. Thank the Guardians for Aiden and Tabi framing her like a pair of bodyguards as Ricca walked a pace behind the handsome phantom, her chin-length brown hair swinging every time she shot a glare back at Lory as if to check if a mouse was following into a trap.
At the end of the stairs lay a large, light-filled room that reminded Lory of the place she’d first stood trial before the Triad and where she’d first laid eyes on Khayrivven’s painfully handsome face. A streak of heat flared in her stomach as she noted the three tall windows reaching from marble-tiled floor to azure-painted ceiling. Potted trees stood spaced out along the limestone walls between, their green leaves tauntingeverything that was hot and dry to dare imagine a place where plants stood a chance.
In a flash, the last dream Khayrivven had cast her in sprang to her mind: lush forest, exotic plants she’d never seen before, mountain ranges tinted in wafts of mist. A dull pain of loss wormed into her heart at the thought that it had been a mere figment of her imagination, followed by the marvel of Khayrivven’s mind if he could dream up such wondrous places—and take her there in her sleep.
“This,” Bleek announced, spreading his arms and turning on his heels, walking backward into the wide, open space, “is the ballroom.”
“A ballroom,” Lory mumbled. “Why does an academy that kills its ashlings need a ballroom?”
Bleek stopped at the center of the light gray marble-tiled room, his arms loosely at his side, and his posture straight and elegant, unlike the casual stance he usually assumed on the training grounds. “You’d be surprised.” With a bow, he shucked the saber from his back, placing it on the polished floor and shoving it to the side of the room with a strong, elegant kick of his toes, where it lay, in the brutal sunlight breaching the space through high windows, its reflection glimmering in the marble beneath. “Get rid of your weapons and pair up.”
The way he eyed them made Lory’s question whether he was serious dry up in her mouth, and before she could consider if she was more scared of the lack of her own weapons or what they were going to do, all of them unarmed in a throne-room like space like this, Frost stepped to her side,folding his arms over his chest in a clear display that no one else was going to pair up with her.
Thal shrugged, turning to Tabi, who had just nodded at Jarek’s silent question about whether the two of them would form a team.
“That leaves the two of us, then,” he said to Ricca with the enthusiasm of a dog who’d been left out in the heat too long.
Ricca threw him a malicious smirk. “Come if you dare.”
Adjusting the sleeves of his shirt like he was wearing a dinner jacket, Hadrian Bleek observed them from his position at the center of the room. “Good. Now stand across from each other. Men on one side, women on the other.” He gestured at a darker pattern in the marble where Lory and Aiden were shifting on their feet. “Men over there.” And on a long, bright rectangle where the middle window allowed the light of the murderous star into the room. “Women over there. Leave ten paces between each couple.”
The ashlings got into position so fast, Lory’s vision blurred for a beat while Bleek stalked between them, assessing each of them like they were livestock for sale. “At attention, ashlings.”
Their heels snapped, and their backs straightened, but Bleek didn’t stop his stroll to assess if they’d made any mistakes, if their positions were flawed and their expressions not neutral. He stopped in front of Ricca, indicating a bow and holding out his hand. While Lory and Tabi shared a confused look, Ricca’s face lit up.
“Today, ashlings, we practice the art of Gilded,” Hadrian Bleek announced, moving his fingers in a motion Loryhad never noticed before, and a carpet of delicate music filled the air.
Lory choked on a breath, and Thal grinned from his position across from Ricca, grimacing over Bleek’s shoulder at Tabi, whose spot between Lory and Riccalyn served as a welcome buffer for the venomous glares the hostile yellow was shooting her.
“Dance…” Jarek was the first to get out the word.
It wasn’t like they’d never had Gilded classes. They’d even admired Ricca’s grace in some of them, but never like this. They’d never been paired up for a dance or been pulled out of other training sessions to partake in Gilded practice.
