Warmth, I think quickly.Just warmth.
“Even if you had managed to beguile a warlock, they wouldn’t have told you anything. The Warlock Trials are, first and foremost, a secret. That’s partly how the elders separate the weak from the strong. We don’t know what’s ahead until it’s too late. And then—” His eyes close as if he has to force the words out. “They start with discipline. Teach us how to brawl, how to exercise, how to be perfect. A rigid schedule they only disrupt once we’ve mastered it. Then they move on to the torture. They tear us from our beds. They isolate us. Slice us. Hang us. Set us on fire. Less than five percent survive.” A shudder racks him, and I reach forward instinctively. Take his hand and squeeze once for reassurance. “The cult comes next, after we explore the first tendrils of our magic. At that point, the transition has begun, and the cult teaches us resolve.”
Anger flares hot in my chest. They didn’tteach himshit. “They hurt you.”
“Yes.” His gaze flashes with an indecipherable streak of emotion, even as his voice remains controlled. “And we are meant to thank them for it. Once we withstand the cult’s torment without hurting or reacting, the elders gift the few remaining warlock-hopefuls our wings. They install them. Far more painful than any of the previous Trials. It takes days of surgery, of lying on a bare cot in the Surgical Chamber while they bleed us dry and dig through our bones. The process consumes the rest of our human blood. It condenses the magic in our veins until we’re brimming with power. Only power. Nothing else. We aren’t meant to be anything else.”
Arion’s grasp hardens in mine, and I know I can’t let go. I don’twantto let go. His wings undulate slowly, beautiful as ever, white and gold and radiant as the sun, and I—I never anticipated this being the reason for them. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not telling you so you’ll pity me, Zephyra. I want you to understand.”
I hear the word he doesn’t add: I want you to understandme. My stomach flips.
“All these Trials pale in comparison with the last.” He exhales once, soft but terse, before he says, “The elders need to be certain we no longer feel anything. Not pain, not weakness, not fear, not even humanity.”
My gut clenches at his words. At the way he says them as if he’s setting a satchel of gunpowder between us and holding a lit match. “What is the last Trial?”
His molten gaze seeks mine. “Murder.”
“Oh,” I say, though I can’t feel my lips or his hand or even the floor beneath us. “Who—”
“I don’t know.” He laughs suddenly, bitterly, and pulls his hand from mine. “Isn’t that horrible? I don’t even remember their name. By all accounts, they were nobody. Just some criminal the elders caught stealing from the market. I can’t even rememberwhatthe man was stealing. The elders brought him to Tower Arcana, and then they asked me to kill him.”
I want this story to have a different ending. The impossible ending. Not for me, but for him. Arion doesn’t sound as apathetic as he claims; he sounds destroyed. But we both know the truth, and he wants me to hear this. I breathe, “So you did.”
A brusque nod. “So I did.” He sits back, leaning against his wings and the wall. “I wasn’t to use my magic. It needed to be a death at my own hands. The elders needed to know we could do the job—anyjob our kingdom required of us. I had to wrap my hands around the man’s throat. I had to kill him slow. He cried. He begged. He soiled himself. I can’t remember his name or his crime, but I… I remember his mustache. I remember it kepttwitching, and the more he sobbed, the more snot drenched the scraggly gray hairs. It disgusted me. I didn’t care about him dying. I cared that he was repulsive. He told me he had two daughters, and I choked the life from him without another thought.”
“You remember that too,” I say.
He shakes his head in confusion. “What?”
“That he had two daughters.”
Arion snorts. “Some paragon of virtue.”
I stare at him. This doesn’t sound like Arion. At least, it doesn’t sound like the Arion I tried to drown in the Sel all those days ago, or the Arion who fought me in the streets of Crestfall. “Do you ever regret it?”
Ripping a hand through his hair, knocking his head back against the wall, he takes a few seconds to answer. “I don’t know. I didn’t. I always thought I was doing the right thing. I thought warlocks were good, and criminals were bad, and the world was painted in stark shades of black and white. Right and wrong. Warlocks are supposed to be the heroes. Everything we do is supposed to be for the betterment of humankind.”
I hesitate to ask, “And now what do you think?”
His gaze sears through mine. “I don’t know, Zephyra. Maybe it was almost dying, maybe it was committing treason against my kingdom, or maybe—maybe it’s you. But the world doesn’t seem so stark anymore, and I’m no longer certain if I’m the hero or the villain.”
Maybe it’s you.
I swallow hard as he glances down at my tail. My scales. He continues grimly, “They tell us merrow eat children. I haveseenmerrow enchant and slaughter their way through a palace. I have fought merrow armies on the coast. But I’ve also—” He growls. A low rumble of frustration. “I’ve seen the same depravity in humankind. I’ve fought men, their armies, their murderers. Just as I’ve felt your emotions. Every hour of every day, you feelso much. It’s seeping into me. Plaguing me.” He looks at me, and it’s as if he’s seeing me for the first time. As if he’s no longer afraid to keep looking. “You’ve cracked me open, Zephyra. Whatever the Trials did to me, you’ve undone it. You have undone me.”
Heat blooms across my cheeks, and I don’t know what to say. How to say it. Not when so much of me is irreparably broken.
“Don’t respond,” he hastens to say. “That’s not why I said it. I just wanted you to know, even though I’ve seen the darkest parts of your soul, I’ve also seen the light. I’ve admired your light.” He cups my cheek, and his thumb traces my lips almost reverently. “Something in the Syl terrifies you, and if you want to talk about it—I’m here. We’re in this together. My darkness can be your darkness. Your light can be my light.”
For some reason,we’re in this togethershatters me. It cradles my secrets in tender hands before hurling them against the wall. Obliterating them into a million wretched pieces. Arion moves to pull away, but I clutch his wrist, and he stills. Helistens.
So I tell him. About all of it.
I tell him about the boy named Jacin. I tell him about the deal I made with a wicked sorcerer. I tell him how it ended: with shackles on my wrists, the sorcerer dragging me through the deepest part of the ocean before locking me up behind his castle walls. I tell him about the pitch darkness that lasted for days,months, and about starving, crying, banging on that amber window and pleading for help.
I tell him everything—excepthow I escaped. Because I’m not ready. Not yet.
