Veronyka couldn’t figure out if he’d chosen to be there during her questioning or if he was being made to stay now as punishment. Maybe he wanted to make sure she was proven guilty to redeem himself in some way. The result of this interrogation would affect him almost as much as her, after all. If she truly was a threat, his apparent disobedience from earlier would be forgiven. If she turned out to be harmless—which she was—he’d look all the more foolish. Her success would mean his failure, and the dichotomy left her feeling like there was no way to really win.
Veronyka was oddly relieved when the woman named Morra arrived. She wasn’t what Veronyka was expecting—some wealthy lady with fine clothes and a noble look, like the commander. Instead she was short and stocky, with strong arms and a plain, no-nonsense kind of face, and she brought with her the warm, comforting scent of fried bread and spices. Her hands were calloused and blistered, and her forearms bore scars that certainly hadn’t come from the kitchens. She was Pyraean, her braided hair tied into a knot at the back of her head, the strands thick with adornments that clinked and jingled as she limped into the room. There were feathers there too, more than one, along with several gleaming chunks of obsidian.
A warrior. A Phoenix Rider.
Veronyka’s heart swelled at the sight of her—of a woman—at last.
Then Veronyka noticed that Morra leaned heavily on a wooden crutch to support her left leg, which had been cut off from the knee down. And as the woman moved past, Veronyka saw that Morra’s phoenix feathers were black on the ends—dipped in ink and ash, to honor a fallen bondmate.
Her stomach clenched. She’d had Xephyra too briefly to gather a feather, and with her braids gone, there was no evidence that she’d ever had a phoenix at all—no way to openly respect Xephyra’s memory or commemorate their time together.
Even with her short height, Morra somehow managed to look down her nose at Veronyka, surveying her from head to toe. Despite the woman’s humble appearance, when she edged around the table, Commander Cassian hastened to give up his seat to her and took a position standing in the corner next to the boy.
Morra indicated that Veronyka should take the chair opposite, and she did, perching on the edge and gripping her hands tightly together under the table.
They sat in silence for a moment. Who was this woman, and why did she do the commander’s questioning?
A heartbeat later she had her answer.
A finger of magic prodded against the natural barriers of Veronyka’s mind, testing the strength of her defenses. Fear sluiced through Veronyka’s body.
Morra was a shadowmage.
They called me the Feather-Crowned Queen, my brow decorated with phoenix quills, my right to rule written across the stars in fire. They called my sister the Council’s Queen, for she was nothing more than their puppet.
- CHAPTER 14 -
VERONYKA
VERONYKA CLAMPED DOWN ON her panic and schooled her features into her best impression of Val’s emotionless mask. Of all the things she didn’t want to reveal about herself, her possession of shadow magic was high on the list. If they didn’t trust her now, how would they react knowing she had the ability to see into and manipulate minds?
Morra wasn’t inside Veronyka’s head—not yet, anyway. She’d merely taken a cursory glance, and already she was receding, drawing her magic back in as she contemplated her next move. Her magical pressure was nothing like what Val was capable of, which probably meant her ability wasn’t as strong—or not as well honed. It was such a rare skill that even in the Phoenix Rider glory days they hadn’t tested people for it or educated them in its use. Val must have gotten so good because she used it constantly and because it was in her nature to want to control. Luckily, Val’s expertise had trained Veronyka well in how to defend against it.
If she was very careful, she could show Morra enough to prove her answers truthful without opening her mind entirely. Everything she didn’t want Morra to see, she’d lock up in her safe house. If it worked on herself and on Val, it would work on Morra.
With a soft exhalation of breath, Veronyka relaxed her mind. She often pictured her mental defenses as a wall of stones in the middle of a swirling river, the water surrounding her on all sides.
Veronyka stood inside that wall, and within it she was protected from outside influence. Whenever Val would tell her to guard her mind, Veronyka would imagine strengthening the wall, filling in the gaps with small rocks and pebbles, until nothing could get in or out.
When Veronyka’s defenses were at their strongest, the wall was watertight, but she couldn’t show Morra a mind as well protected as that, or she’d become suspicious. Veronyka had to loosen the stones, allowing cracks and crevices between them. This was her mind’s natural state, and as Veronyka opened herself up to external influence, she felt water streaming in through the openings—the thoughts and emotions of the humans and animals nearby.
Veronyka had to ignore the influx of information—the commander’s cold indifference and the boy’s resentful impatience, not to mention the fiery haze in the distance that was surely the phoenixes.
Focusing on herself, Veronyka let her head fill with safe, harmless thoughts, the half-truths that would confirm her answers.
She allowed them to float to the surface of her consciousness, easy for the picking, before turning her attention to that dark corner where her safe house lived, solid and impenetrable. There, with her memories of Xephyra, she could hide the truth of her gender, her own shadow magic, and the source of the dagger. After burying every compromising memory, she reinforced the barriers, walling it off from the rest of her mind, hiding it in plain sight.
“I’m Morra, and I run the kitchens here,” the woman said, drawing Veronyka back to the world around her. “What’s your name?”
As she spoke, Morra’s magic came back—harder and more insistent than before. Veronyka fought her instinct to draw herself inward and trusted that her safe house would hold.
Shadow magic only revealed active thoughts and feelings. . . . Morra couldn’t find what Veronyka refused to think about. All a shadowmage could see was the surface of a person’s mind—their current preoccupations. That was why Morra was questioning her rather than just taking what she wished from her mind.
“Nyk,” Veronyka whispered, pushing the word through her tense lips.
As long as Morra found the truths she sought, she’d have no reason to suspect deception. She was Nyk. She let the truth of it fill her up—and the fact that Nyk was short for Veronyka was unimportant.
Seeming satisfied, Morra pulled back. “How old are you? Twelve, thirteen?” she asked.
“Sixteen,” Veronyka corrected indignantly. She was used to people thinking she was younger than she was, and it was automatic to quickly—and somewhat defensively—set the record straight. In this instance, though, she wished she hadn’t been so rash. Surely it would have been easier pretending to be a young boy than a young man.
The apprentice in the corner snorted in disbelief at her response, further proving Veronyka’s theory.