The beast’s call came back through her mind. Kasira thrust out a hand, knocking aside Thane’s arm. She spun away, but the edges of her vision were already darkening with blood loss. The pain had lessened, a sign she knew wasn’t good.
If she could just get ahold of the magic, if she could raise hernumb fingers—Thane slashed down with the blade, and it caught her across the chest. She crumpled as he stood over her, her blood dripping from his knife.
The scent of night-blooming jasmine reached her, a cool breeze caressed her face, and then her vision was full of white.
BETWEEN FLASHES OFlight, Kasira saw another world. A glimpse of a sharp blue eye, a flash of near-white hair, the edge of a hard-clenched jaw, before the vision shifted to another woman’s face. She wore a silver chain around her neck, a star and dagger charm at its base. Kasira stared hard at that charm, something telling her that if she looked away, if she so much as blinked, she might never see the stars again.
Kasira, came a voice, distant as the sky.
Kasira, rebounded her thoughts.
What makes a life?
She came to in bits and pieces. A flash of copper, the touch of soft hands. A ruffle of disgruntled feathers. Then pain. A sharp, sundering pain in her chest and her stomach and her leg that engulfed her until her breath seized.
“Kasira?” Allaster’s voice cut through the haze. “Breathe, Kasira. Just breathe.”
It sounded so simple, and yet the drag of air she pulled into her lungs was nearly too much. She forced it back out, and the tightness holding her throat closed went with it, her chest easing as the pain settled into something manageable.
Her eyes flickered open.
Hazy shapes resolved: May, alive and standing at the foot of her bed, chewing on a nail. Gievra peering over May’s shoulder with one burnt-golden eye. And at her bedside, Allaster pressed so close his knees were crammed against the mattress, the torc at his throat bobbing with his relieved sigh.
He sank into a chair. “I thought you were going to stop trying to get yourself killed.”
She swallowed against her dry throat. “I thought you didn’t care,” she croaked back, expecting him to scowl at her, if not remind her of the thousand ways she had screwed up. But he only stared at her with an intensity that stilled her.
It was then that she realized how much of a mess he was. His curls looked as though he’d run his fingers through them a thousand times, his rings crammed to the knuckles and his eyes hollow pits.
“What happened?” she whispered into the silence.
“We found you bleeding out in the north garden,” May replied softly, and Kasira realized that her eyes were red from crying. “Thane …”
“He tried to kill me.” The memories came flooding back to her: the plunge of the dagger into her gut, the feeling of her blood spilling between her fingers. “He tricked me into thinking he’d done something to you. I couldn’t find you. Are you okay?”
May touched one hand to her head, where a vicious cut swelled with bruises that had already begun to heal. “As well as could be expected, considering,” she replied. “Someone ambushed me in the portal room. When I came to, I was in the catacombs.” She brushed three fingers down the back of her forearm, gooseflesh rising on her skin.
“But I couldn’t sense your energy through the magic.” Kasira struggled to sit upright, and Allaster lunged forward with his hands on either side of her, as if expecting her to fall apart. They stared at each other a moment, his face now inches from hers, before his fingers sought her pillow to adjust it.
He cleared his throat, slumping back into his chair. “The catacombs are steeped in ancient magic. It blocks most other energy signatures.”
Kasira forced out a breath, the heat in her cheeks fading. “Is that common knowledge?” she asked, and he shook his head. So the spy had been a part of this too, then. Which meant it wasn’t Elyae. Wasit Talthari then, or another mage altogether? Were they the ones who had attacked May and let Vera through the portal room door?
Vera.
Kasira dove into the magic, but there was no sign of the Ambassador. Surely if she had been there when May and Allaster arrived, they would have said something. The spy must have let her back out through the portal room, and Thane—Kasira’s brow furrowed. She couldn’t sense him.
“Thane?” she asked.
“Is dead.” May shifted uncomfortably. “Gievra killed him.”
The Alkatir lifted his head, beak tilted to the air. Kasira gawked at him in utter stupefaction. He must have broken free of the Eyrie and come to her aid. He’d finally left his pen—to save her. She couldn’t reconcile that with the guilt clogging her chest, couldn’t process the sense of loss spiraling through her. What did she care if Thane was gone?
He was my last tie to Loraya.Her fingers curled into the sheets.My last tie to my past.
“There’s more.” Allaster slung one long leg over the other. “Someone already reported Thane’s death to Kalthos. Vera is claiming we killed him because we didn’t want a Kalish mage. She’s invoked the Conclave.”
The Ambassador’s threat came swarming back to her. If Kasira didn’t testify at the Conclave, she would destroy the Library. The royal army might be under the King’s command, but the Malikinar’s loyalty lay with Vera, and they outnumbered the mages ten to one. But if Kasira obeyed, if she unseated Allaster, they would all live, and she would be in a position to protect the Library and its mages as much as possible.
