“Don’t say that.” May’s dark eyes grew sober. “You are here because you are meant to be, and I am glad for it.”
Kasira shook her head and kept on shaking it. What else could she say? That she was a fraud? A cheat? They would strip her of her magic and turn her over to Vera, who would stuff her in a cell so deep, she would never see the light again. The future she and Loraya had promised each other would wither and die in that darkness.Shewould wither and die.
Kasira stared at the look of openness and concern on May’s face, and then her gaze settled over May’s shoulder, where Allaster stood, clearly having heard every word. Somehow, it was the sight of him that brought her back to herself, that reminded her she could still spin this mistake in her favor. Strong emotions made it almost impossible not to react, but a good player only redirected them into something else.
She let her fear and uncertainty wash across her face, let Allaster see it, before she snapped her fingers.
THEALKATIR CUBsat as far away from her as he could, his body pressed low to the ground. Though his injured wing was still in a splint, it had healed enough the past few days to join the other in a defensive posture, like two shields driven point-first into the dirt. She sat with her arms around her knees, chin resting atop them.
She had been there for hours.
No one had come looking for her, though she knew Allaster could find her if he wanted to, and she was starting to think he wouldn’t come. By allowing him to see her like that, even if it hadn’t been intentional at first, she had given him an opportunity, a chance to reach out a hand and wipe away their beginning, to grow together instead of apart. If he had started to trust her, if he believed she wasn’t Vera’s pawn, he would come.
“What do you think?” she asked the cub.
The cub shook what she could see of his furred head, pointed ears twitching. His hawklike face was still soft and downy, his adolescent fur half grown. She had to admit he was kind of cute, with his one big burnt-gold eye and fleecy mane, and then she nearly laughed. How had she gone from hunting beasts to trying to befriend one?
Why did I ever stop?she thought, though she knew the reason. So much of her life had been a battle. She had worn herself down to nothing to survive, rewritten herself over and over again until the words bled together, and she could no longer recognize the truth.
You did what you had to, consoled Loraya’s voice. She had always been the first to defend Kasira. Had always tried to shelter her from the worst of the world, as if Kasira hadn’t lived it alongside her. But for once, her best friend’s words were not a comfort. Sitting before the Alkatir cub whose mother she had killed, she admitted to herself that everything she had done, the choices she had made, she hadn’t just made them to survive.
She had made them because they were easier.
There was a comfort in knowing your place in the world, in knowing what you believed, and the Library was stripping that away fromher. It was forcing her to ask the sorts of questions that had seen her condemned, and each day it grew harder to swallow them back. And now, for the first time in a long time, she didn’t want to.
Closing her eyes, Kasira focused on the feed shed to her left. She sensed the objects inside, though they were fuzzy and indistinct. Was that one strips of dried meat? With a wave of her hand, she summoned … a trowel. Scowling, she tossed it aside. It took several more tries, in which she received a water bowl, a leather lead, and a rusty nail, before a small container of dried meat appeared in her hand.
Standing, she approached the pen. The cub cowered into a tighter ball, but she only held out a piece of meat. “Hungry?” she asked. The cub hissed. Kasira tossed the meat to the ground beside his paws, but the beast didn’t move. What exactly was she doing? Hoping he would accept her after what she had done?
Worse, she thought.I want him to forgive me.
The thought sat with her strangely. It would change nothing. It would prove nothing. She had killed this cub’s mother. She had been the cause of the cub’s capture and so its wounds. Because of her, it would live forever in captivity. A prisoner, condemned to a fate worse than death—ah, she thought.There it is.
She knew what that was like, and she would not wish it upon anyone.
The cub drew its wings closer to its head, so only its one golden eye and the tip of its beak showed through. She felt something though. A flicker, or a pulse, and she remembered that moment in the village when Allaster had said so certainly that there was a beast in town, though they’d seen no sign of one yet.
Curious, she reached for the magic and sought the Alkatir cub. What came flooding back was so fast and uncontrolled that she pulled back with a gasp. The Alkatir stared at her with one wide, fear-blown eye, its furred chest puffing erratically.
“You felt that too,” she said, breathless. She dropped to her knees, inching closer, and the cub trembled. “It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.” As she reached for the magic again, sliding along it in search of the cub, she focused on those words, on that feeling of safety and comfort she’d once had with Loraya.
The cub’s breathing slowed, and with it, the rampant hail of emotions pulsing through the magic. They settled into a familiar rhythm. Fear. Pain. Exhaustion. He was so, so very tired. He was alone.
“I know how you feel,” she said softly and wondered if he could sense her the same way she could him. The cub stepped back, and a memory flooded her mind: his mother’s limp body pressed against his, the sharp tang of blood in the air. Something wrenched in Kasira’s chest, and she tore away from the magic, her gut churning. In the orphanage, there had been so many who had lost their parents to beasts, but how many beasts had the Malikinar left orphaned?
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, two words she had never been very good at saying. They always came too late.
Hesitantly, she waded back into the magic, reopening the connection between them. The emotions funneling along the link redoubled, and she felt his fear and pain and confusion as surely as he felt her guilt and regret.
“I can’t bring her back,” she whispered. “But I can take care of you for her.”
What was she saying? She wouldn’t be here any longer than it took to complete her job. This beast would be here forever. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to turn away from it.
The cub’s current of emotions calmed a little. She focused harder on that feeling of safety, trying to share it with him. “My name—” She stopped, but she couldn’t sense anyone else nearby. They were alone. “My name is Kasira. What should I call you?”
It felt at once a foolish question and the right one. Little was documented about Alkatir, but she had read that one of the reasons people feared them was because of their ability to adapt to human speech. To learn and understand it at a level that made people uncomfortable, because if this creature could think and change andfeelthe same way they did, what did that mean?
Kasira felt something along the connection between them. A pulse, a sound—she couldn’t tell. It just formed in her mind, and she said aloud, “Gievra.”
