An Ember in the Ashes

“And the students too. I wonder why.” When she doesn’t respond, I shift my sitting position, and she glances over her shoulder at me.

“It’s the Trials.” She stops her folding for a moment. “The Farrar brothers came back this morning. Aquilla and Veturius barely made it on time. They’d have been killed if they’d showed up even seconds later.”
This is the most she’s said to me at once, and I have to remind myself not to stare. “How do you know all this?” I ask.
“The entire school’s talking about it.” Izzi lowers her voice, and I inch closer. “Even the slaves. Not much else to talk about around here, unless you want to sit around comparing bruises.”
I chuckle, and it feels strange, almost wrong, like making a joke at a funeral. But Izzi smiles, and I don’t feel as bad. The drums start up again, and though Izzi doesn’t halt her work, I can tell she’s listening.
“You understand the drums.”
“They mostly give orders. Blue platoon report for watch. All cadets to the armory. That sort of thing. Right now they’re ordering a sweep of the eastern tunnels.” She looks down at the neat stack of towels. A strand of blonde hair falls into her face, making her appear especially young. “When you’ve been here for a while, you’ll learn to understand them.”
As I take in that disturbing fact, the front door slams shut. Izzi and I both jump.
“Slave-Girl.” It’s the Commandant. “Upstairs.”
Izzi and I exchange a glance, and I’m surprised to find my heart thudding uncomfortably fast. A slow dread sinks into my bones with every step up the stairs. I don’t know why. The Commandant calls me up every evening to take her clothes for washing and braid her hair for the night. It’s no different today, Laia.
When I enter her room, she stands at her dresser, idly passing a dagger through a candle flame.
“Did you bring back an answer from the swordsmith?”
I relay Teluman’s reply, and the Commandant turns to regard me with cool interest. It’s the most emotion I’ve seen from her.
“Spiro hasn’t accepted a new commission in years. He must have taken a liking to you.” The way she says it makes my skin crawl. She tests the edge of her knife on her forefinger, then wipes away the drop of blood that beads there.
“Why did you open it?”
“Sir?”
“The letter,” she says. “You opened it. Why?” She stands before me, and if running would have done me any good, I’d have been out the door in a second. I twist the cloth of my shirt in my hands. The Commandant tilts her head, awaiting my answer as if genuinely curious, as if I might somehow say something that will satisfy her.
“It was an accident. My hand slipped and...and broke the seal.”
“You can’t read,” she says. “So I don’t see why you would bother to open it purposefully. Unless you’re a spy planning to give over my secrets to the Resistance.” Her mouth twists into what might be a smile if it didn’t appear so joyless.
“I’m not—I’m...” How did she find out about the letter? I think of the scrape I heard in the hallway after I left her rooms this morning. Did she see me tamper with it? Had the couriers’ office noticed a flaw in the seal? It doesn’t matter. I think of Izzi’s warning when I first got here. The Commandant sees things. Knows things she shouldn’t.
A knock comes at the door, and on the Commandant’s command, two legionnaires enter and salute.
“Hold her down,” the Commandant says.
The legionnaires grab me, and the presence of the Commandant’s knife is suddenly, sickeningly clear. “No—please, no—”
“Silence.” She draws the word out softly, like the name of a lover. The soldiers pin me to a chair, their armored hands as heavy as manacles around my arms, their knees coming down on my feet. Their faces give nothing away.
“Normally, I’d take an eye for such insolence,” the Commandant muses.
“Or a hand. But I don’t think Spiro Teluman will be so interested in you if you’re marred. You’re lucky I want a Teluman blade, girl. You’re lucky he wants a taste of you.”
Her eyes fall on my chest, on the smooth skin above my heart.
“Please,” I say. “It was a mistake.”
She leans in close, her lips inches from mine, those dead eyes lit, for just a moment, with terrifying fury.
“Stupid girl,” she whispers. “Haven’t you learned? I don’t abide mistakes.”
She shoves a gag in my mouth, and then the knife is burning, searing, carving a path through my skin. She works slowly, so slowly. The smell of singed flesh fills my nostrils, and I hear myself begging for mercy, then sobbing, then screaming.
Darin. Darin. Think of Darin.
But I can’t think of my brother. Lost in the pain, I can’t even remember his face.
XVIII: Elias
Helene’s not dead. She can’t be. She survived initiation, the wilds, border skirmishes, whippings. That she’d die now, at the hands of someone as vile as Marcus, is unthinkable. The part of me that is still a child, the part of me that I didn’t know still existed until this moment, howls in rage.
The crowd in the courtyard pushes forward. Students crane their necks, trying to get a look at Helene. My mother’s ice-chiseled face disappears from view.
“Wake up, Helene,” I yell at her, ignoring the pressing crowd. “Come on.”
She’s gone. It was too much for her. For a second that never seems to end, I hold her, numb as the realization sinks in. She’s dead.