Beneath the Citadel

by Destiny Soria

  Evander could hear his heartbeat again, strumming steadily. He slid his hand over Newt’s. Newt jerked at his touch, and Evander yanked his hand away. The coins fell to the grass.

  “Sorry,” Newt said breathlessly. “I didn’t—I wasn’t—”

  He swallowed his words and fell silent. Evander stared at the sky without seeing it. He wiped his hand across his damp face and sat up. His common sense told him to leave before he made things worse, but he didn’t move. On the horizon, the trees of Eldrin Wood were a blur of emerald and shadow. A hawk soared from the east, its silhouette black against the sky.

  “You don’t remember, do you,” he said softly.

  Newt sat up too. He’d taken one of the coins and was fiddling with it.

  “Remember what?”

  Evander shook his head. Suddenly he was in that courtyard in the Central Keep again. He couldn’t stop thinking about the feel of wet cobblestones under his knees. The weight of iron on his wrists. The sound of the pistol hammer clicking just behind his head. The memory of their kiss outside the Blacksmith’s cottage was the only memory he’d wanted to relive as he died. He didn’t know how he could explain that to Newt. He wasn’t even sure he understood it himself.

  Not that it mattered anyway. If Newt didn’t remember it, then it might as well have not happened. Evander closed his eyes. A breeze had picked up but did nothing to relieve the summer heat. He was just about to listen to his common sense and stand when Newt’s fingers slid under his hand, interlacing with his. His eyes sprang open, and for a second all he could do was stare at their hands together in the grass. Newt’s was much paler and much more calloused than his. He could feel the silver of the coin pressed between their palms.

  “You could remind me, if you want,” Newt said.

  Evander met his eyes. Newt was biting his lip, and the tousled curls across his forehead ruffled in the breeze. He looked so sincere and so golden that Evander’s heart somersaulted. He was certain now that Newt could hear his heartbeat as he leaned in slowly. Their lips brushed, hesitantly at first, but then Newt leaned in, and Evander lost himself in the breathless sensation of it, the tangle of Newt’s tongue with his, the weight of him as he pressed closer and closer.

  Suddenly Newt pulled away. Evander’s head spun with the abruptness of it, and he sucked in a short breath. Newt was staring at the ground, panting.

  “I’m sorry.” He slid his hand free from Evander’s. The coin dropped into the grass again. “It’s just—Cassa.”

  He spoke her name with visible effort and scrubbed his hands across his face. Evander closed his eyes, trying to bring himself back from the mindless bliss of seconds before. It wasn’t as if he’d forgotten about her. Cassa had meant too much to him for too long for that to ever be possible. He knew that even when the devastation eventually faded, his memories of her—every wonderful, irritating, eye-rolling, impossible, legendary memory—would remain.

  He lay back down in the grass and opened his eyes to the sky. The first time Cassa had kissed him had been on a dare from Vesper. He’d even known it at the time, but he hadn’t cared. The last time they’d kissed was the night before they decided they each wanted something different. He still remembered the way the cloudy morning had cast his bedroom in a sleepy gray. They’d stayed up the whole night talking. He remembered the way she’d rested her hand on his chest before she said good-bye, like she was trying to connect to his heartbeat one last time.

  “I love her,” Evander said. “I always have and I always will. But it’s different now. After we split up, I never felt that way about her again.”

  “What way?” Newt was on his side, his head propped on his hand.

  Evander looked at him.

  “The way I feel about you.”

  He watched his words sink in. A new light flickered in Newt’s eyes, and Evander’s breath caught in his throat, when suddenly their lips were locked again. The kiss was slower this time, savoring and deliberate. Every inch of his body was alive with it. He could feel each blade of grass that scraped against his skin. The ripple of the breeze through his hair. The pressure of Newt’s fingers splayed across his rib cage.

  This time when Newt broke away, he stayed close, his arm resting on Evander’s chest, his lips close enough that Evander could reach them again if he pushed himself up just slightly. He was considering it, but Newt was wearing a strange expression that gave him pause.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Nothing.” Newt’s breath tickled his cheek. “I just . . . never expected this to be real.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When we first met, you were with Cassa,” he said, a thin frown creasing his forehead. “And then even after it ended—I don’t know. She was the Cassa Valera. And I’m just . . . me.”

  Evander frowned too. He’d never considered how Newt might have felt about him when they first met. He felt oddly guilty, though he knew he hadn’t done anything wrong. He also felt fidgety again, but he didn’t want Newt to move. He flicked his fingers, and all three coins shot into the air, wheeling freely above them.

  “She was never the Cassa Valera to me. She was just Cassa,” Evander said, struggling to focus as Newt’s index finger traced absently along Evander’s collarbone. “And I like that you’re just you. I wouldn’t want you to be anyone else.”

  He’d barely gotten the words out when Newt moved to capture his mouth again. The coins plummeted onto them. Newt gave a surprised laugh that vibrated in Evander’s chest. And all around them the grass swayed and the valley hummed, a symphony of motion and life.

  FIFTY-THREE

  ALYS

  Alys wasn’t sure how long Vesper had been hovering in the doorway when she startled Alys with a pointed cough. Alys had been hunched over her father’s workbench grinding some garlic powder with a mortar and pestle.

  “Your parents said I could come back.” Vesper still lingered uncertainly on the threshold as if she were afraid Alys would deny her entry. She was in her black, silver-stitched clerk’s uniform. Alys couldn’t understand how Vesper still lived and worked in the citadel, how she walked those streets knowing that beneath her feet were a maze of silent crypts, a fathomless lake, a chamber guarded by stone seers, and the centuries-old prison where Cassa had died to save them.

  “I wasn’t expecting you,” Alys said, cutting off that line of thought.

  “I need your help.” There was a gravity in Vesper’s tone that made Alys nervous.

  “With what?”

  “Something that’s probably impossible, but I have to at least try.” Vesper moved closer until she was right across the workbench from Alys. In this room cluttered with books and tools of the trade, where Alys had spent so much of her life hiding, Vesper was a stark intrusion, a ghost from a life that Alys had never expected to live. “I think there might be a way to reverse the loss of memories. I think we might be able to bring back at least some of what Solan stole from people like the Blacksmith.”

  Alys frowned, thinking through everything she knew about rooks.

  “How? When a rook takes a memory, it becomes theirs, unless they give it back or give it to someone else.”

  “But rooks don’t forget.” Vesper tapped her temple with an ink-stained finger. “That’s why mirasma was created in the first place. Rooks don’t forget memories they give away. I’ve been thinking about it a lot. What if that ability—that imprinting of memories—could be re-created somehow in other people? Or what if people already have that ability, and they just need a way to strengthen it? The alchemists made a substance that can suppress a rook’s memories, so why not this?”

  Vesper was pacing now, talking with her hands, talking so fast that she had to gulp down a breath with the last word. Alys stared down at the workbench, mentally tracing the logic.

  “You want to formulate something that has the opposite effect of mirasma.”

  “Basically, yes.” Vesper paused and studied her reaction. “I told you it was probably impo
ssible.”

  Alys tightened her grip on her pestle as the rush of a new challenge washed over her, leaving the familiar barbs of panic in its wake. It would mean going back into the citadel. They would need an alchemist’s help—or at least an understanding of the mirasma process. Staying here, in the seclusion of her parents’ workroom, would be easier and safer.

  Is that what she wanted?

  “We’ve managed the impossible before.” Alys took a deep breath. She pressed her hands into the tabletop like an anchor. The maelstrom still churned at the back of her mind, but it was gradually slowing.

  A grin spread across Vesper’s face.

  “I was hoping you’d say that. I think between the two of us, we might just stand a chance.”

  We meant together. We meant friends. A phantom ache resounded in Alys’s chest. She doubted Vesper realized the parallel to her words four years ago, on the day they’d first met. Between the two of us, we might just manage to keep Cassa alive. A bitter laugh rose in her throat but stuck there. Vesper must have seen something shift in Alys’s expression, because her grin faded.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Alys shook her head.

  “Nothing, just . . . Cassa.” She didn’t think she could explain it. She didn’t think she would have to.

  A shadow passed over Vesper’s face, and she sighed.

  “I think about her a lot too. She’s—” Vesper cut short, rubbing the back of her neck. She swallowed hard and began again. “There’s still a part of her in my head. I guess it will always be there. The memory I took, when she poisoned the mirasma.”

  Alys set down the pestle, untied her apron, and rounded the table. She pulled herself up to sit on the edge, and Vesper followed suit. For a long while they just sat there, shoulder to shoulder, feet dangling.

  “What’s it like?” Alys asked.

  Vesper stared into the middle distance. The sunlight streaming in through the windows behind them warmed Alys’s back and burnished Vesper’s hair a brilliant copper.

  “It depends on the day,” Vesper replied softly. “Most of the time I like it. I like knowing that even such a small part of her lives on. She told me that all she wanted was for the things she’d done, and the things her parents and all the rebels before them had done, to matter. I think I understand that better now. I never cared much about the prophecies, but now that there aren’t any more . . . I don’t know. I guess I always felt like the prophecies meant we mattered somehow. Like everyone in Eldra was born to see them fulfilled. Like the future belonged to us.”

  Alys wasn’t sure what to say. She looked at the floor, thinking that it needed to be swept—a strange thing to notice at a time like this.

  “I suppose eventually there won’t be any more rooks or sentients or diviners either,” Vesper said into the silence. “One day we’ll all just be an obscure metaphor in poetry and songs, and then the world will forget about us completely.”

  A flash of a memory. Blue light, rippling water, and the unknown waiting for them on a distant shore.

  “Auspicious stars,” Alys said musingly.

  “What?”

  “Cassa didn’t think we needed auspicious stars or seers for our lives to matter. What we do is what we’ll be remembered for.”

  Vesper considered for a second. Her lips twitched.

  “I know.” Alys hopped down from the table. “It’s a load of sentimental tripe, but it’ll sound very poetic in a song one day.”

  Vesper laughed and jumped down beside Alys.

  “Let’s go confound some alchemists then,” she said.

  “Seems like a good start.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I owe the existence of this book and everything else I’ve ever written to my mom and dad, who have always believed in me, trusted me, and encouraged me. Without you, I never would’ve had the audacity to think that someone else might want to read my words, and I love you both more than words could ever capture.

  My whole family has been incredibly supportive throughout this journey. I know you may not support everything in these pages, but I do know that you’ll always be there for me. Thank you.

  A million thanks to Mark O’Brien, Quincy Drinker, and all of my other sensitivity readers for their thoughtful insight and critique. My eternal gratitude to Taylor, my superstar agent, and Anne, my amazing editor. And thank you to Siobhán Gallagher, Josh Berlowitz, and everyone else at Amulet Books for all your hard work. Special thanks to Erin Radziwon and Logan Jones for your generous help.

  Puffin, I’m glad that we’re sisters-in-arms in the publishing trenches. Remember to stay sexy and don’t get murdered. Badger, thank you for continuing to be my number one fangirl, even when you can’t make it out of the tunnels. Soup, thank you for continuing to answer all my creepy late-night questions and for being there whenever I need to nerd out about something. Mackenzi, without our regular venting sessions, I don’t think I ever would have survived the dreaded sophomore slump. We hate Richard Peele.

  Lots of love to my majaoes, the best critique group (and friends) a writer could ask for. Katie, Kara, Clare, Emily, Jesi, and Nöel: You’re all goddesses. And shout-out to Lana, who wrote the music of my heart.

  Cleh, your DM magic is both inspiration and much-needed stress relief. Thank you for keeping all my secrets.

  Emily, I can’t thank you enough for all the time and energy you put into this one. You guided me through revision hell, and I still can’t believe you aren’t sick of me yet.

  Kara, you dragged me through the slump and dealt with all my whining, self-doubt, and complete breakdowns. Thanks for sticking with me through the highs and the lows and everything in between. Don’t tell anyone, but you’re my favorite.

  Hope you enjoyed Beneath the Citadel by Destiny Soria! Keep reading for a preview of her debut novel Iron Cast—available now!

  CHAPTER ONE

  Corinne’s first day as a nurse at the Haversham Asylum for Afflictions of the Blood was a frosty Thursday. It had been a little over a week since the start of the New Year, and so far 1919 was not showing signs of promise—at least according to the head nurse. Corinne smoothed out her white starched uniform as the pale, hawkish woman clucked her tongue at the state of the world.

  “Mark my words, this is the year when the Bolsheviks make themselves known,” said the head nurse. “America is under siege from within.”

  “No doubt,” Corinne said vaguely. She wasn’t really paying attention. She couldn’t even remember the head nurse’s name, though she supposed it would come to her eventually. The corridors they walked were all the same hideous taupe, from floor to ceiling. It gave Corinne a headache, though that might have been due to the comically large ring of keys that clinked and clanked with the head nurse’s every step. Over the PA system, a dreary voice told Dr. Knox that he had a visitor, and to please report to the front desk.

  The buckle of Corinne’s left shoe had loosened, and she hopped on one foot to fix it while the head nurse unlocked the door marked 205 in shiny black paint.

  “You’ll start your rounds every morning at precisely seven a.m.,” she told Corinne. “Structure and punctuality are very important here. You’ll have a chart that explains which patients are confined to their rooms and which are permitted to take breakfast in the dining hall.”

  The lock gave way with a groan, and the head nurse returned her key ring to her belt.

  “Ada,” she said into the dark room. “Ada, I know you’re awake.”

  “Morning, Molls,” came a voice from the corner opposite the bed. A small, barred window let in enough light for Corinne to make out the girl’s warm, sepia skin and high, jutting cheekbones. She was sitting on the floor, wedged into the corner with one knee clutched to her chest. Her eyes glinted in the dim daylight as she tilted her chin upward.

  “You’ll address me as Nurse Heller,” said the head nurse. Then she turned to Corinne. “This is Ada Navarra. She arrived here only recently and is still adjusting. There was an
. . . incident when she first came, so she’s confined to her room until Dr. Knox clears her.”

  “What sort of incident?” Corinne asked, fiddling with a strand of yellow hair that had fallen from her neat braid.

  “Some lunatic tried to jab metal into me, and I politely refused,” said Ada, eyeing Corinne. Her lips twitched slightly, and although her voice was weak, it held an edge. “You don’t look half old enough to be playing nurse, Goldilocks. Tell ’em you were eighteen, did you?”

  “Dr. Knox was trying to perform a routine examination, and Miss Navarra flipped a table on top of him,” Nurse Heller said. “Ada, this is Nurse Salem. She will be assisting me on this ward.”

  Ada chuckled and shook her head. Her scarf was coming loose, and tight ebony coils sprang free across her smooth skin.

  “I fail to see what’s funny about that,” said Corinne.

  “Salem? You gotta be pulling my leg,” Ada said, squinting at her.

  “That’s enough, Ada,” said Nurse Heller. She rapped her knuckles against the doorframe. “You’ll show Nurse Salem respect or Dr. Knox will hear of it. And cover your hair—you’re indecent.”

  Ada tugged at the gray scarf. Her lips were still twisted into a smirk, though the lines of weariness were unmistakable in her features.

  “Say, Nurse Salem, you come from a family of witches?” she asked. “Because I have this awful pain in my rear and could sure use a touch of dark magic.”

  “Salem is a Hellenization of the Hebrew shalom, which means peace,” said Corinne.

  “Pardon me,” said Ada, retying the scarf with exaggerated gusto. “I did not know I was in the presence of a scholar. You can teach me some Latin while you scrub the latrine.”