An Ember in the Ashes

Except the Darin I knew wasn’t interested in rebellion.

Or was he? Memories cascade through my head: Darin’s silence when Pop told us of how he set the bones of a child beaten by auxes. Darin excusing himself when Nan and Pop discussed the most recent Martials raids, fists clenched. Darin ignoring us to draw Scholar women flinching from Masks and children fighting over a rotted apple in the gutter.
I thought my brother’s silence meant he was pulling away from us. But maybe silence was his solace. Maybe it was the only way he could fight his outrage at what was happening to his people.
When I do fall asleep, Cook’s warning about the Resistance burrows its way into my dreams. I see the Commandant cut me over and over. Each time, her face changes from Mazen’s to Keenan’s to Teluman’s to Cook’s.
I wake to choking darkness and gasp for breath, trying to push away the walls of my quarters. I scramble out of my bed, through the open-air corridor, and into the back courtyard, guzzling the cool night breezes.
It’s past midnight, and clouds scud over a nearly full moon. In a few days, it will be time for the Moon Festival, the Scholars’ midsummer celebration of the largest moon of the year. Nan and I were supposed to sell cakes and pastries this year. Darin was supposed to dance until his feet fell off.
In the moonlight, the forbidding buildings of Blackcliff are almost beautiful, the sable granite softened to blue. The school is, as always, eerily hushed.
I never feared the night, not even as a child, but Blackcliff’s night is different, heavy with a silence that makes you look over your shoulder, a silence that feels like a living thing.
I look up at the stars hanging low in a sky that makes me think I’m seeing the infinite. But beneath their cold gaze, I feel small. All the beauty of the stars means nothing when life here on earth is so ugly.
I didn’t used to think so. Darin and I spent countless nights on the roof of our grandparents’ house tracing the path of the Great River, the Archer, the Swordsman. We’d watch for falling stars, and whoever saw one first would issue a dare. Since Darin’s eyes were sharp as a cat’s, I was always the one stuck stealing apricots from the neighbors, or pouring cold water down the back of Nan’s shirt.
Darin can’t see the stars now. He’s stuck in a cellblock, lost in the labyrinth of Serra’s prisons. He’ll never see the stars again, unless I get the Resistance what they want.
A light flares in the Commandant’s study, and I start, surprised she’s still awake. Her curtains flutter, and voices drift down through the open window.
She’s not alone.
Teluman’s words come back to me. I never saw your brother afraid. He never seemed to focus on what could turn out wrong. He only ever thought about how things could turn out right.
A worn trellis runs up alongside the Commandant’s window, covered in summer-dead vines. I give the trellis a shake—it’s rickety, but not unclimbable.
She’s probably not saying anything useful anyway. She’s probably talking to a student.
But why would she meet a student at midnight? Why not during the day?
She’ll whip you. My fear pleads with me. She’ll take an eye. A hand.
But I’ve been whipped and beaten and strangled, and I’ve survived. I’ve been carved up with a hot knife, and I’ve survived.
Darin didn’t let fear control him. If I want to save him, I can’t let fear control me either.
Knowing my courage will diminish the longer I think about it, I grab the trellis and climb. Keenan’s advice pops into my head. Always have an exit plan.
I grimace. Too late for that now.
Every scrape of my sandals sounds to me like a detonation. A loud creak makes my heart stutter, but after a minute of paralysis, I realize the sound is just the trellis groaning under my weight.
When I reach the top, I still can’t hear the Commandant. The windowsill is a foot to my left. Three feet below the sill, a section of stone has crumbled, leaving a small foothold. I take a breath, grab the sill, and swing from the trellis to the window. My feet scrape against the sheer wall for a terrifying moment before I find the foothold.
Don’t collapse, I beg the stone beneath my feet. Don’t break.
My chest wound has opened again, and I try to ignore the blood dripping down my front. My head is even with the Commandant’s window. If she leans out, I’m dead.
Forget that, Darin tells me. Listen. The clipped tones of the Commandant’s voice float through the window, and I lean forward.
“—be arriving with his entire retinue, my Lord Nightbringer. Everyone—his councilors, the Blood Shrike, the Black Guard—as well as most of Gens Taia.” The subdued nature of the Commandant’s voice is a revelation.
“Make sure of it, Keris. Taius must arrive after the Third Trial, or our plan is for naught.”
At the sound of the second voice, I gasp and nearly fall. The voice is deep and soft, not a sound so much as a feeling. It is storm and wind and leaves twisting in the night. It is roots sucking deep at the earth, and the pale, sightless creatures that live below the ground. But there’s something wrong with this voice, something diseased at its core.
Though I’ve never heard the voice before, I find myself trembling, tempted for a second to drop to the ground just to get away from it.
Laia. I hear Darin. Be brave.
I risk a peek through the curtains and catch a glimpse of a figure standing in the corner of the room, swathed in darkness. He looks to be nothing more than a medium-sized man in a cloak. But I know in my bones that this is no normal man. Shadows pool near his feet, writhing, as if trying to get the figure’s attention. Ghuls. When the thing turns toward the Commandant, I flinch, for the darkness beneath his hood has no place in the human world.
His eyes glow, slitted suns filled with ancient malevolence.
The figure moves, and I jerk away from the window.