An Ember in the Ashes

“Your mother—isn’t—worth your words.” Cook’s voice drops into a snarl.

“Never—never listened to anything but her own selfishness. The Lioness.”
Her mouth twists around the name. “She’s the reason—the reason—I’m here.” Her breath heaves now, as if she’s having some sort of fit, but she barrels on, determined to get out whatever it is she wishes to say. “The Lioness, the Resistance, and their grand plans. Traitors. Liars. F-fools.” She stands and reaches for her cleaver. “Don’t trust them.”
“I don’t have a choice,” I say. “I have to.”
“They’ll use you.” Her hands shake, and she grips the counter. She gasps out the last few words. “They take—take—take. And then—then—they’ll throw you to the wolves. I warned you. Remember. I warned you.”
XXII: Elias
At exactly midnight, I return to Blackcliff in full battle armor, dripping with weaponry. After the Trial of Courage, I’m not about to be caught shoeless with only a dagger for defense.
Though I’m desperate to know if Hel is all right, I resist the urge to go to the infirmary. Cain’s orders to stay away didn’t leave room for argument.
As I stalk past the gate guards, I fervently hope not to run into my mother. I think I’d snap at the sight of her, especially knowing that her scheming nearly killed Helene. And especially after seeing what she’d done to the slave-girl this morning.
When I’d seen the K carved into the girl—Laia—I’d flexed my fists, imagining, for one glorious moment, the feel of inflicting such pain on the Commandant. See how she likes it, the hag. At the same time, I wanted to back away from Laia in shame. Because the woman who’d done such evil shares my blood. She is half of me. My own reaction—that ravenous lust for violence—is proof.
I’m not like her.
Or am I? I think back to the nightmare battlefield. Five hundred thirty-nine bodies. Even the Commandant would be hard-pressed to take so many lives. If the Augurs are right, I’m not like my mother. I’m worse.
You will become everything you hate, Cain had said when I’d considered deserting. But how could leaving my mask behind make me any worse of a person than the one I saw on that battlefield?
Lost in my thoughts, I don’t notice anything unusual about Skulls’ quarters when I arrive at my room. But after a moment, it sinks in. Leander’s not snoring, and Demetrius isn’t mumbling his brother’s name. Faris’s door isn’t open, as it almost always is.
The barracks are abandoned.
I draw my scims. The only sound is the occasional pop of the oil lamps flickering against the black brick.
Then, one by one, the lamps go out. Gray smoke seeps beneath the door at one end of the hall, expanding like a roiling bank of storm cloud. In an instant, I realize what’s happening.
The Second Trial, the Trial of Cunning, has begun.
“Watch out!” a voice shouts from behind me. Helene—alive—shoves through the doors at my back, fully armed and without a hair out of place. I want to tackle her in a hug, but instead I drop to the floor as a volley of razor-edged throwing stars hurtles through the space where my neck was.
The stars are followed by a trio of attackers who spring from the smoke like coiled snakes. They are lithe and quick, their bodies and faces wrapped in funereal strips of black cloth. Almost before I’m on my feet, one of the assassins has a scim at my throat. I spin back and kick his feet out from under him, but my leg meets only air.
Strange, he was there—just now—At my side, Helene’s scim flashes swift as quicksilver as an assassin presses her toward the smoke. “Evening, Elias,” she calls over the clash of scims. She catches my eye, an irrepressible grin spreading across her face. “Miss me?”
I don’t have the breath to answer. The other two assassins come at me fast, and though I fight with both scims, I can’t get the upper hand. My left scim finally hits its mark, sinking into the chest of my opponent. Bloodthirsty triumph surges through me.
Then the attacker flickers and disappears.
I freeze, doubting what I’ve seen. The other assassin takes advantage of my hesitation and shoves me back into the smoke.
It’s as if I’ve been dropped into the darkest, blackest cave in the Empire.
I try to feel my way forward, but my limbs are leaden, and in moments I slip to the floor, my body a deadweight. A throwing star cuts through the air, and I barely register the fact that it has grazed my arm. My scims hit the stone of the hallway, and Helene screams. The sounds are muted, as if I’m hearing them through water.
Poison. The word brings me out of my senselessness. The smoke is poisonous.
With my last shreds of consciousness, I scour the ground for my scims and crawl out of the darkness. A few breaths of clean air help me reclaim my wits, and I notice that Helene has disappeared. As I search the smoke for any sign of her, an assassin emerges.
I duck beneath his scim, intending to wrap my arms around his chest and slam him to the floor. But when my skin meets his, cold lances through me, and I gasp and jerk away. It feels as if I’ve dipped my arm into a bucket of snow. The assassin flickers and disappears, reappearing a few yards away.
They’re not human, I realize. Zak’s warning echoes in my head. The old creatures are real. They’re coming for us. Ten burning hells. And I thought he had cracked. How is it possible? How could the Augurs have—
The assassin circles me, and I shelve my questions. How this thing got here doesn’t matter. How to kill it—that’s a question worth answering.
A flash of silver catches my eye—Helene’s gauntleted hand, clawing the floor as she tries to pull herself out of the smoke. I drag her out, but she’s too bleary to stand, so I throw her over my shoulder and flee down the hall.
When I’m well away, I dump her to the ground and turn to face the enemy.
The three of them are on me at once, moving too fast for me to counter.