Liora's POV
Another mess. Another body count. Another breakdown was swept away to clean.
Botched his ascension trial--gateway rupture, civilian dead, noble dead--some lowlife. Typical. Our attack was dispatched by the academy to close the gap, save the lives and annihilate the rest. Efficient. Necessary.
And now this.
A street rat who ought to have perished during the trial. Somehow alive. Somehow breathing.
Unlisted. Ungifted. Guilty.
Nobles perished at his hands. That alone earned execution. No debate. No delay. A cut across the neck would have been pity to what they most deserved.
I left Sai handling the cell. Interrogation was too lowly. I had somewhere else to be.
The trial of Erupha was over--successful. Two days until academy entry. She was smart, she was terrifyingly smart. But genius turned her into a victim. Her parents, lost on expedition, supposedly dead, had been already started round by her uncle, who smiled more than was right, and asked the wrong questions.
I was indebted to her parents.
It is they who dragged me out of my world when it ended.
I could still recall that day too clearly. Coming home on patrol at sixteen. Expecting noise. Life. My small brother who was running after me around the house pulling my sleeve, wanting stories. Bright with wonder eyes.
Instead--silence.
Blood. Burn marks. The reeking of an unsuccessful gateway.
They told me no one survived. My brother-ten years old--had been swallowed by the break or burned with the rest. I cried out till I was torn inside the throat. I smashed stuff up till I got the blood on my hands.
Month later Erufa parents spotted me on the streets where I was feral. Took me in. Fed me. Gave me purpose.
I grew powerful since nothing was left to me by weakness.
It was my time now to defend what was left.
I would kill without a second thought Erupha in case her uncle overstepped a boundary.
But first--this.
I forced the cell door open and knocked it against the rock. Sai was still talking. Still wasting
The inmate was chained to the chair, sweating, wild-eyed, clutching himself together with great difficulty. A trial survivor.
Rare.
Irrelevant.
Sai, I said, coldly, and with one motion of my blade, pulled it in, and then why waste words on this trash?
Steel kissed flesh. Blood welled at his throat.
In the trial he was destined to be killed. Survived by luck. Killed a noble--poor quality, yet a noble. Unregistered scum. People like him die every day."
I spoke, calm, educative.
Observe the way we handle criminals. Quick. Clean."
I swung round, and raised the sword--
And froze.
Because I finally saw him.
Not the grime. Not the fear. Not the sunken visage of a human being who had enough.
The structure.
The eyes.
No longer bright red of a child--but gold-glowing, smoked, rubbed away in years of savagery. The same shape. The same bone through and through familiarity no time can blot.
The world tilted.
ASHER POV
I woke up entombed with fatigue so great that it was structural- as though my bones were made of iron.
My body momentarily softened. Warm. Weightless.
Then I opened my eyes.
Stone ceiling. Dark. Wet with age. The air was of metal and stale water. My wrists and ankles were bound up to cold cuffs on a chair hewn of black iron. The response of each movement was the squeak of fetters, such as were not created to be broken--but to last.
"Where am I?" My voice was scraped and empty and destroyed.
An existence unfolded within my mind.
Congratulations, my chosen.
Nyx.
You survived.
The chains were nothing compared to the word hit.
Stillnesses hit me back, fire, pressure, repetition of pain, and no context, no mercy. My chest seized. And breath was sharp and shallow.
"The trial," I said. "I passed?"
You endured.
"I don't remember finishing it." My jaw clenched. "I remember screaming. Then--nothing."
Silence stretched.
Nyx said finally, your mind folded up to live. The memories were sealed. Attempt by no means to recover them.
I was saying when there was a groan of a door.
A lady came in, wearing academy black and silver. She looked... bored. Calm. It was an extravagance of lectures to chew a half-baked meat pie like this. I was looked at by her eyes--not with hatred or pity.
She came up beside and touched my head.
"You stable?"
When she touched me the moment she did, something broke.
Air fled my lungs. My vision tunneled. I tore with the restraints, a gross noise tearing out of my throat.
"Don't touch me!"
Cold detonated outward.
Ice swept out of me--icy, reactionary, murderous. Frost raced toward the cuffs--
--and vanished.
Absorbed.
The metal didn't even frost.
It was colder in my blood than the ice itself.
Nyx exhaled in my skull. Residual trauma. Your instincts have been changed by the trial.
Woman drawn up and hands erect. "Noted."
Her voice hardened.
You had been convicted, she said. "Sentence: execution. Nevertheless--penalties are mitigated by full cooperation. Names. Locations. Associates."
My stomach sank.
I had not time to reply when the door was opened once more.
She made her entrance like winter itself.
Liora.
Silver hair bound tight. Uniform immaculate. Presence stinging enough to hurt. The blade of the academy--incontrovertible.
In a moment her sword was at my throat.
Blood was an international kiss.
Why are you fooling with this thing, sai, Liora said coldly? He was a survivor of the trial by chance. Murdered a noble. Unregistered. Disposable."
She leaned closer.
"Watch how--"
Her eyes met mine.
The sword faltered.
Her breath hitched.
"Asher."
Her name came out of her mouth against her will.
The blade lowered a fraction. Her calmness broke not violently, not melodramatically, but sufficiently. One of them dropped on the light, and a tear came.
"Asher..."
The room froze.
Sai stood between us gaping.
And then--
Some inner part within me had burst.
Not memory. Not images.
Recognition.
My breath caught.
There was a bang--a bang--a sure bang--of my heart.
"...Liora?"
The name tasted real.
Too real.
The silence that succeeded was complete.