Why that fact hurt deep down in Lory’s chest was something to be examined on another day.
“Now get ready. You’re Khay’s responsibility now, and as far as the Triad is concerned, everything you do reflects on him, and he’s already in enough trouble for insisting they let you live, no offense.”
“None taken.” With a sigh, Lory grabbed the clothes and started peeling her nightgown off while Anees pulleda stack of books from the second drawer. “These are yours, too,” she announced, setting down the leather-bound tomes on the desk.
Glad to be back in her uniform, Lory ran her fingers over the brown square on her bicep.Thornling, she mouthed, her inner clock telling her to run to the mess hall and check if Tabi, Thal, and Jarek had made it on time. If that morning would be one of bloodshed and horror once more, or if, for once, no one would need to die on the dais. Maybe Jarek had managed to get more information from his sister about who else might have been sympathizing with the rebels.
Khayrivven’s words of how the Triad didn’t truly care about people’s tardiness as long as they weren’t rebels or sympathizers hadn’t left her since those dark moments in the crematorium beneath the academy.
“How does he choose?”
Anees lifted her gaze from where she’d been studying the book she’d kept in her hands—a familiar tome that Lory had last seen in Aiden’s hands. “Who?”
Lory swallowed the lump in her throat. “Khayrivven. How does he choose who kills those ashlings each morning?”
With a sad expression on her face, Anees set down the book, resting it atop the stack, right where Lory had been studying the intricate embossing on the leather. “He chooses people he trusts when he believes there’s something to save.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Then he randomly picks a thornling or tested to divert attention from the ones working with him.”
How Anees could so easily speak about matters of life and death when Khayrivven barely dared open his mouth inside Ashthorn’s walls was beyond her.
“He said the Triad has eyes everywhere?—”
As if reading the thoughts right from Lory’s head, Anees smiled with understanding. “I’ve known Khay for a few years now, and many missions together have allowed us time to communicate. While Khayrivven always needs to worry about Lenya’s spies waiting for him, Hadrian and I don’t. Neither did Aiden. As far as it concerned leadership, Aiden was a done deal for the academy.”
“What do you mean?”
Anees merely pointed at a familiar paragraph in the book that had once belonged to the ice wielder.
The Great Purge is a great lie.
Lory remembered reading the words scribbled under the printed text the day Dunveil had explained why fire magic wasn’t considerednaturemagic or matter manipulation. She hadn’t given it another thought with the Knowledge Hand’s attention.
“You have never read the whole history of Brestolya, have you?”
Lory wasn’t sure she imagined the pity in Anees’s emerald eyes as she shook her head in answer.
“Perhaps you should start. I promised Khay I wouldn’t repeat what I learned to anyone, but you’re smart, Lory. Despite your lack of early education, you’re quick at tying information together. You’ll figure it out.” With those words, Anees closed the tome, waving Lory along as she walked toward the door. “Time for breakfast. “We don’t want to draw any attention to us, do we?”
Eighteen
Lory
They headeddown the stairs into the main hallway, where a constant stream of Ashthorn students with colorful squares on their shoulders was pushing toward the blackened door that would be locked soon. Some thornlings and tested with brown and silver squares on their shoulders walked between them, their features relaxed as they wove through the crowd.
“This way.” Halfway down the hall, Anees pulled Lory to the side by her sleeve, guiding her away from the ashlings and into a dark corridor that Lory had never noticed to continue behind the alcove. She’d alwaysthought the older students standing guard there were to make sure none of the ashlings tried to bail.
The voices and thudding of boots ebbed away after the first turn, leaving only the soft footfalls of the few thornlings and tested that had taken the same route.
“Ashlings don’t know about this shortcut,” Anees said as they turned a steep corner, filing into a narrow corridor that couldn’t have been wider than the limestone walls separating the rooms.
Lory’s shoulders didn’t brush the smooth rock, but in front of Anees, Hadrian Bleek’s familiar form came into view, and he had to angle his torso in order to keep his broad shoulders from bumping into the walls.
“Even when they lock the main mess hall door, we can always get in unnoticed,” Anees narrated. “Now that you’re officially a thornling, this privilege belongs to you, too.”
Lory didn’t respond, already pondering how she could use that knowledge to help her friends survive until the day of their last trials as ashlings.
