He scowls at me as I sit down. “You couldn’t have covered that up?”
At first I think he means my knife, which I did cover up, but his eyes are on the tattoo at my wrist, not quite hidden by my sleeve. It’s hot in here, and I’m already sweating, but I have no intentions of taking off my jacket. I place my palm on the table. My fingers curl into a fist. “No one will see.”
He looks skeptical, but he picks up his half-finished drink and doesn’t argue with me. I look him over, noting the five symbols sewn in gold along the collar of his robe. They’re a mixture of dots and half circles, all tilted different directions. They must mean something, but I have no idea what.
I jump as someone accidentally backs into me, their beer sloshing to the floor. Every nerve in my body flares to life, my muscles tense. This place is so busy, even the corner table isn’t secluded. My back is to the rest of the room, and I feel like I’m out in the open. Vulnerable. Maybe they don’t know it, but everyone here should want to kill me. I glance at the wizard and nod at his seat. “Trade me places.”
“Some things never change,” he mutters, but he gets up and switches with me.
I feel better with my back to the wall. Not a lot, but enough.
“I suppose I shouldn’t complain,” he says, so quietly I almost don’t catch it. “It’s my fault, after all.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” He shakes his head. “You know, Azeril, for what it’s worth, it’s good to see you again.” He sighs. “Despite everything that’s happened between us, you could have come to me, you know. I realize I’m probably the last person you’d think that of, but I would have taken care of you.”
He doesn’t know that I don’t remember anything. I swallow and try to look like I know what he’s talking about. “Like you did the other night?” I hold up my left arm. Something bubbles up inside of me, a feeling of actual gratitude, for a wizard. Father Moors would flay me alive if he knew and tell me how foolish it was for me to come here tonight. How I’m risking both of our necks. “Thanks,” I say, not looking at him and not liking the sincerity in my voice.
The wizard frowns at me, his forehead wrinkling in an unasked question. I get the impression that this was the wrong thing to say, but I don’t know why, and I can’t ask without raising his suspicions even more.
“You should have come to me, instead of taking it upon yourself to . . .” He lets his words trail off, remembering where we are.
I fidget with the edge of my sleeve, peering at the tattoo on my wrist. I said I’d keep it covered, but I can’t help tracing the spiral shape with my finger. “And what would you have done if I had?” I sound nervous. Great killer, terrible liar, that’s me. I feel like I have the words “doesn’t know anything” scrawled across my forehead.
But if it’s obvious I’m fishing for information, he doesn’t notice. Yet. “What would I have done?” He clenches his fist, slamming it on the table. “For one thing,” he growls, “I would have kept you from acting like an idiot. You think I don’t know what you’ve been up to? That you’ve been parading yourself around town, practically begging to get caught? You did get caught, and if it had been anyone else—anyone else besides me—where in the Chasm do you think you’d be right now?!” His voice rises and his face reddens. I’ve never seen someone so angry—at least, not with me. “Well?! Answer me!”
My mouth slips open, not expecting this. Sweat drips down my back, soaking into my shirt. It’s too hot in here, way too hot, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. “I had to do something. People were getting hurt.”
Rage flares in his eyes, but it’s the silent calm that comes over him—the fact that he stops yelling and sits unmoving, his nostrils flaring in and out—that unnerves me. I feel small, like the time Father Gratch said I cheated on a test and told me I was going to get kicked out and be back on the street. I didn’t cheat. It was a history test, and I knew the answers—they just came to me, like the way I knew my name even when I didn’t know anything else about myself. I was new. I had no idea that wasn’t how it was supposed to work. Father Moors convinced him I didn’t know any better and not to say anything to the Academic Council. But Father Moors still believed I’d cheated, even if he thought I didn’t know better, and that made me feel like my insides were shriveling.
The way this wizard looks at me now, like I’ve done something unimaginably wrong, I feel like that again.
“Don’t lie to me,” he says, leaning across the table, keeping his voice low. “You liked killing them. You knew they were looking for you, and you knew what would happen if they found you, but you liked watching their faces twist in horror as you ended their lives. And don’t look at me like that, like you’re surprised. I know you, Azeril. So don’t sit there and lie to me.”
My stomach plummets. They were looking for me. All those wizards I killed, all those people they hurt . . .
The wizards were searching for me. And I realize that paper he wrote the note to me on . . . it was the same paper he showed those people, asking if they recognized the symbol. The same symbol I have on my wrist.
I’m no one. A boy without a past who’s good with a knife. But wizards don’t need knives. That’s what spells are for. So why would they have cared about me? All this time, I thought no one was looking for me.
I was dead wrong.
But why drag people out of their homes? Why the interrogations? They always asked them about stolen property. Maybe that’s their way of saying kidnapped.
I think of my first memory, of the wizards lying dead around me, the knife bloody and burning in my hand. Father Moors said it was self-defense. I remember the fear I felt, the overwhelming terror over what I’d done, and I’d wanted to believe him. But I remember the giddy satisfaction over killing them, too, and that doesn’t exactly scream innocence.
My arms start shaking. I sit on my hands, trying to keep still, or at least to keep the wizard from seeing. This wizard who knows my darkest secret—that I kill people. That I like it.
This was a bad idea.
I think about bolting and getting out of here. But I glare at him instead. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“Oh, please,” the wizard says, rolling his eyes. “It’s only been three years. Did you really think I wouldn’t remember? Who do you think made you? I might be getting older, but I’m not senile.”
Made me? “You brought me home the other night. If you were really searching for me, why did you let me go?” If he knows I’m a monster, if he knows who I am inside, why am I still here?
“My dear boy, I did not bring you home. Though,” he adds, giving me a stern look, “perhaps I should have. Perhaps it was foolish of me to leave you on your own. But you insisted, and the bleeding had stopped, so I slipped you that note and left.”
There’s an edge of concern buried under his sarcasm. “You healed me, and then you let me go . . .”
He scowls. “Who do you think I am?”
I have no idea.
“I’m no miracle worker.” He snorts, shaking his head. “And I didn’t invite you here to be mocked.”
So he didn’t heal me. But if he didn’t, then who did? “But you let me go. And then what, you told the wizards that the Church is responsible for killing them? You didn’t tell them my name. You could have, but—”
“That wasn’t me.” He clears his throat, his lip curling a little as he says, “I didn’t even know you were with the Church. But I suppose I should have. After everything that’s happened . . . Of course that’s where you were. If any one of us stepped foot on the grounds, they’d raise the alarm. It must have seemed like the safer of two evils.”
I ignore that last remark. I pull my hands out from under me, too fidgety to keep still. “If it wasn’t you who told, then who was it?”
“I didn’t see the message myself—it arrived while I was here—but an anonymous letter showed up at headquarters in Newhaven. Anonymous, but sealed with the Church’s very own i
nsignia.” He pauses, leaving his silent implication hanging in the air. It was an inside job.
Someone betrayed us.
I don’t know if I should believe him. Even if he didn’t turn me in, that doesn’t mean I trust him. And he just said he didn’t even see this supposed letter sealed with the Church insignia. It could have been a fake. It might not exist at all—just something the wizards made up to discredit the Church even more. And why would anyone in red robes sell out our order to the wizards? And to do it anonymously, without even asking for anything in return? It doesn’t add up.
But I believe it wasn’t him, so I let it go. “If you were looking for me, why didn’t you . . .?”
“Why didn’t I what? Capture you? Turn you in to them?” Hurt flashes across his face. “Maybe for the same reason you didn’t kill me. You swore once that you would, but you didn’t. Not then and not now.”
“Maybe next time.”
He smirks, a grim smile tugging on one side of his mouth. “She would like you, I think.”
“Who?”
“No one.”
“My mother?”
“For the Fire’s sake . . .” He leans forward, peering into my eyes. “Well, your pupils aren’t dilated.” He glances down at the table, like he can’t remember what I was drinking. He seems surprised to find that the only glass there is his.
“I’m not on anything.”
“You could have fooled me. Your mother. Honestly.”
My mouth feels dry. I lick my lips, terrified to ask my next question. “Knowing who I am—who I really am—how could you let me go?”
“Ah.” He picks up his glass, even though it was empty a long time ago, and drains the last few drops. He holds it over his mouth, waiting for them to fall. It takes impossibly long.
“While I’m around . . . people are in danger.” It hurts to say the words, and yet I’m relieved to finally admit it.
“Yes, well. Call it arrogance. Call it sentimentality.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We grow attached to our creations, our projects, our legacies. Especially as we get older. Maybe someday that will make sense to you.”
Creations. Projects. Legacies. Which one am I? “I’m dangerous.” I trace a knothole in the wood with my finger, pretending to be fascinated by it so I don’t have to look at him. “I hurt people, and you know I like it.”
“But that was always the point, wasn’t it?” He says it like he’s talking to someone else, someone who’s not in the room. He rubs his forehead. Then his eyes flick to mine. “It’s my fault. It’s my fault you turned out how you did, and who would I be if I condemned you for it? How could I, when I’m the one who made you that way?”
I could have been normal. Innocent. Who knows who I was before he . . . before he did whatever he did. “Who was I before that?” The questions burn in my throat, as if my body, my flesh, is telling me not to ask them. “Who was I before I was a killer?”
He laughs. The most serious question I’ve ever asked anyone, and he laughs in my face. “You were no one.”
My insides feel like they’re being torn apart. He thinks this is some kind of joke. “Being a killer makes me someone, is that it?” I spit the words out, the edges of my fingernails digging into my palms.
“We both know it’s what you live for.”
That’s it. I’m out of here. I can’t process this—all I can do is escape. I push away from the table. My chair tips over and clatters to the floor, and then I’m pushing through the crowd, searching for an easy way out. There isn’t one. This place is packed.
“Azeril, wait!” the wizard calls out. He sounds desperate, pleading.
I barely hear him. The room spins, full of wizards. Laughing, talking, plotting. I feel like I’m drowning, like there isn’t any air in here and I’m going to suffocate if I don’t get out.
My elbow collides with someone to my right, and I hear a waitress cry out in surprise and then the crash and slosh of full glasses hitting the floor. The smell of spilled alcohol fills the room, adding to the salty stench of so many bodies in one place. I keep my arms in front of me, shoving people out of the way, because it’s the only thing I can do to keep my hands off the knife.
A tall wizard grabs my wrist, wrenching me from my path to the door. “Watch it, kid! You think you can push me around?”
“Don’t. Touch. Me.” My voice shakes from the effort of holding still, of not reaching for my obsidian. If I do, he’ll be dead, but in a room full of wizards, so will I. And yet it’s like I can’t stop. Fear floods my veins and fights all my rational thoughts. Fear and addiction and something else, urging me to strike.
The tall wizard tightens his grip, his fingers pressing into my wrist so hard, there’s going to be a bruise. His thumb digs into my tattoo, the one no one here is supposed to see.
“You think you’re something, don’t you? Coming in here, where you don’t belong.” He wrenches my arm and shoves me in the chest with his other hand. “Don’t touch you?” A cruel grin creeps across his face. “Make me.”
Something inside me snaps. My mind flashes to the image of that dark room. I’m in the chair this time. Leather straps bite into my ankles and my wrists, holding me down. Breaking me. I’m screaming, my throat raw and torn, but no one cares. I’m drowning in waves of fear, in a horror so strong, it stabs through my chest, threatening to stop my heart. I blink and the image is gone, but the mind-numbing terror isn’t. I can’t fight it, I’m going to kill him.
Words I don’t know come out of my mouth. They sound like wizard words, like a spell. I’m suddenly aware of everyone in the room, of all these bright sources of energy I could draw from. And I don’t know what any of it means or where it’s coming from, but I know without a doubt that the tall wizard with his hand on my wrist is going to hurt. He’s going to be desiccated from the inside out, the water evaporating from his vital organs first, then the rest of him, until he doesn’t know anything except pain. Until he’s nothing but a dried-up husk.
Then a hand clamps over my mouth. The wizard who brought me here, who knows too much about me. He pushes the other wizard away, breaking our contact and startling me into silence. He lets his hand slide down to grip my shoulder. “He’s with me,” he says to the tall wizard, his voice icy and not expecting any argument. He tugs on his collar, emphasizing the gold symbols sewn there.
And they must mean something, because the tall wizard’s eyes go wide and he takes a step back. “I—I didn’t know, sir. I wouldn’t have—”
The other wizard holds up a hand, silencing him, and drags me outside.
As soon as we’re out the door I suck in air as fast as I can, like I’ve never breathed before, like I might never get to again. I twist away from the wizard who just saved me, not caring that I knock him back a step.
I fall to my knees on the cobblestones. My eyes water, maybe from gasping for air, maybe from something else.
I feel a hand on my back. Just for a second, and then he pulls it away again. “I’m sorry,” the wizard says, sighing. It’s a wistful sigh, full of layers of deep regret.
Hadrin. That’s his name. It floats to the surface of my mind, instantly familiar, like I’ve heard it a thousand times. “Hadrin,” I whisper, my throat raw, as if I really was screaming.
In a dark room, screaming. Terrified. Losing myself to them.
“I’m here,” he says, confirming what I already know.
“You saved my life.”
“Yes, well, like last time, I had my reasons.”
Last time?
He takes a step back, giving me room to get to my feet, and smooths a few wrinkles from his robes. “Never trust anyone who wants something from you.”
“I don’t.”
“Smart, but I was actually hoping you’d make an exception. Just this once.”
“Who do you think you are to me?” I ask, looking him in the eyes and hoping his answer will tell me what I need to know, what I can’t ask without
giving too much away.
“Someone who desperately needs your help,” he says. “Even if he doesn’t deserve it.”
My fingertips graze the knife.
Heat sparks against my skin and races through my veins. Fire burns my palm as I grab the hilt. It shoots up my arm and spreads through my shoulders, turning my blood to liquid embers. A euphoric fever consumes all my thoughts, turning them to ash and letting them fall away, and for the first time tonight I feel like I’m finally thinking clearly. I didn’t come here to kill him. I didn’t. But I didn’t come here for any of the things that happened tonight.
Hadrin’s eyes dart down to the knife, then back up to meet mine. Otherwise he stands perfectly still. This is something he’s seen before. Enough to know to be afraid. “Azeril . . .”
The obsidian burns so bad, but it’s the best feeling in the world. My thoughts flick to High Priest Endeil and his offer. Maybe I should let him use the Fire on me. Would it be so different?
“There are people here,” Hadrin whispers, his voice much calmer than I would have thought possible. “If you use that, someone will see.”
“If I kill you, you mean.”
“If you use that, they’ll know everything about you. You’ll go back—”
“No.” I cross the distance between us in one quick step. I don’t know where “back” is, but I know it involves the dark room and the chair and the straps. Terror eats at my chest like acid, and I know I’ll never go back there. Not alive. “You want my help. Tell me why you don’t deserve it.”
He can’t look me in the eyes. He tries, but he flinches and has to glance away, and I don’t know if it’s because of what I’ve asked him, or because of the heat from the obsidian coursing through my veins, making me look crazed.
“Please,” he whispers. “You know why. Don’t make me say it.”
The door to the Silver Hound opens, and a small group of wizards stumbles into the night. Out of habit, I take a silent step back into the shadows. Hadrin has his chance. He could call to them. He could join them and walk away. But he doesn’t. Something holds him back, and I don’t know if it’s guilt or fear, but I have my suspicions. He doesn’t seem like the type to give in to fear.
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