I shoved them in my pockets and walked into the light.
CHAPTER 5
THE FESTIVAL OF LIGHT
Ada
Asu told me while lacing my festival gown.
"Everyone's talking about it," she said, her fingers working the silk ties with steady hands. "How Ferit was set up. How someone got him spectacularly drunk and aimed him at High Lord Volkan like a loaded crossbow." She paused, met my eyes in the mirror. "They're saying it was Hakan. Him and Sarp. Because of what Ferit said about you in the gardens."
I went very still. "What did Ferit say about me?"
Asu looked away. "It doesn't matter."
"Asu."
"He called you a border-born whore." Her voice was flat. Careful. "Said your friendship with Hakan made you look like a plisk-lover. Said worse things I won't repeat because they make me want to set him on fire myself, and I actually liked the man."
My reflection stared back at me — white gown, dark hair, golden light from the window catching the fabric and making me glow like something divine. The perfect image of the Light Princess.. The girl who sat in Selim's class and watched them drag a student to her death and did nothing. The girl who burned Hakan's face in a corridor and couldn't decide if she was sorry or satisfied.
"Ada?" Asu's hands had stopped. "You've gone pale."
"I'm fine. Finish the laces."
I wasn't fine. My hands were shaking beneath the folds of my skirt, and the scar on my memory — Hakan's face when my light struck his jaw, the shock and then something worse, something that looked like he'd been waiting for it — wouldn't stop burning.
He'd risked everything. His scholarship, his position, his life. For what Ferit said about me. And I couldn't decide if I wanted to scream at him or —
"There." Asu stepped back. "You look beautiful. Try not to commit any treason before the second course."
The Moon Crowning festival was already in full swing when I reached the grounds. Gold everywhere — gilded columns, glowing fountains, lanterns like captured stars. The colors of my father's divine light, the same colors that girl in Selim's class had been kneeling on when they tore the shadow from her blood.
I still didn't know her name. I'd tried to find out. Nobody would tell me.
I was contemplating whether I could disappear into the servant passages and skip the ceremony entirely when a familiar voice cut through my thoughts.
"You look like a woman plotting an escape."
Sarp. I stiffened, bracing for the usual cruelty — the cutting remark, the smirk, the casual devastation he and Hakan had perfected over three years of making my life miserable.
But the face that greeted me when I turned wasn't wearing its usual sharp-edged smile. Sarp stood a few feet away in festival clothes — dark blue, well-cut, his hair actually combed for once — and the expression on his face was something I'd never seen directed at me before.
He looked almost nervous.
"Sarp." I kept my voice flat. Guarded. The last time we'd been alone, he'd told me the Academy rooftop was open to students, knowing full well the night patrol would catch me there. I'd spent two days in disciplinary review while he collected his winnings from whatever bet he'd made. "Come to tell me the festival's been cancelled? That the fountains are poisoned? What's the trick this time?"
Something flickered across his face. Guilt, maybe. Or the ghost of it.
"No trick." He held up both hands — empty, palms out. "Just thought you might like company that isn't trying to marry you off or lecture you about divine duty."
I stared at him. "You're not serious."
"Deadly serious. I even bathed." He gestured at himself with exaggerated formality. "Combed my hair. Left my collection of cruel remarks in my other coat. I'm practically a gentleman."
Against every instinct, something tugged at the corner of my mouth. I killed it immediately. "Why are you being nice to me? You haven't been nice to me since we were children."
He held my gaze. "Maybe I'm tired of being an asshole." A beat. "Or maybe the festival wine is exceptional this year and I need someone intelligent to drink it with. Take your pick."
