He retreated to our cluster, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.
“So much for gathering intelligence,” one of my teammates, Maddox, muttered, his voice carrying far enough for a few people in the group next to ours to hear and look his way. The sharp crack of his knuckles punctuated each word, a nervous habit that seemed to have gotten worse since we arrived at the castle.
His sandy hair fell across his forehead as he studied me with intense brown eyes, as if he was searching for something he expected to find but hadn’t quite grasped yet. The small scar through his left eyebrow gave his face a permanent expression of skepticism.
“Do not try my patience.” Nia pivoted and strode through an archway, taking a left this time instead of a right.
We trailed behind her into a stone-arched corridor that was no different from the one we’d walked through to our dormitory.
Torches flickered in iron sconces, our boots echoing like a funeral march. The corridors sloped steadily downward, tapestries giving way to bare stone, then moss and thick vines clawing through cracked walls.
Water dripped somewhere ahead, each hollow ping markingtime until we reached whatever waited below. The air tasted like earth and decay.
One of my teammates, Kerralyn, walked beside me, her auburn braid swinging as she matched my pace. Her violet eyes held the same nervous brightness they had last night when she’d sat on her bed, furiously scribbling in a leather journal by torchlight.
I’d wondered what she was recording, what patterns she might believe she’d found in our first day among these people who called magic a blessing instead of a curse.
“Are you afraid?” she whispered.
“I am.” From the shaky hands and spiraling eyes of my group, I suspected we all were.
“Me too, but I’ve been watching. There’s a pattern to everything here.”
She reminded me of Addie when my sister was younger, before life taught her that kindness often claimed a blood price.
She hugged her journal. “I’m determined to think this through. Logic, analysis, and careful observation will be enough. I notice things.”
“Such as?”
“You’re different from the rest.”
The word lodged in my throat like a boulder.
“You’re always watching everyone else,” she added quietly. “Like you’re afraid to slip. That’s not fear of the trial. That’s survival.”
My insides stilled. She saw too much.
“I believe it’s your way,” she hurried to say. “For me, it’s books. I read everything I can. Then I sit and think about it. Apply what I’ve learned from my observations, recording every bit of that in my journal.”
“What do you plan to do with all you write down?”
“Maybe write my own books for someone else to study.”
What else had she written in that journal? I forced a smile and pretended her words didn’t feel like knives poking at every weakness I’d tried to hide.
“Sorry,” she said, her cheeks flushing. “My mother keeps telling me to hold my observations to myself. She gave me my first journal, told me to write them down rather than be so frank with others or I’d never have friends.” She stared forward, a wistful expression on her face. “She’s wrong about that. These books are my best friends.”
She couldn’t know, couldn’t have guessed the truth about me. The lie I lived itched beneath my skin, tighter than the collar of my tunic.
We rounded a corner and started down another hallway, her keeping pace, though she walked closer to me, flinching when one of the vines reached out toward her.
“I think you’ve suffered a lot of loss,” she finally said. “You keep it buried inside where it doesn’t hurt you.”
This woman might appear naïve, but she was actually quite savvy.
A cinderhawk passed overhead with a whisper of wings, slicing through the torchlight before landing ahead on a piece of stone jutting out from the wall.
Not just any old bird.Trew’scinderhawk. What was it doing here?
