CHAPTER 26

Six years ago

The master of history’s office was a flamboyant and chaotic place, and some part of Vax knew this was both irresponsible and ridiculous. He also knew neither of those things would stop him. He could lie to himself and say he wasn’t entirely sure what brought him to be in this situation, but he knew exactly what it was. He’d been dared by some of the boys to find a map of the Gladepools, and the only master who might have a copy was the master of history, so Vax had sneaked in here during their lunch break. He’d paid one of the boys—a shy elf called Siren—to stand on watch for him, and while none of the full-blooded elves actually liked him, he gambled on the fact that they wanted to see this dare through. Because that was the only way to ensure that there would be another. And another.

While Vex was studying as hard as she could, he was becoming quite proficient in taking unnecessary risks. They were good distractions. They made the long days more bearable.

He tiptoed around the desk, careful to stay away from the windows, and shuffled through the papers on top of it. Alongside countless books, the shelves on the walls all contained colorful keepsakes from far-off cities and distant places, like pieces of research into strange cultures. A miniature skysail. A bracelet with three eyes woven into silver filigree. A necklace with fragments of a golden amulet attached to it. A doll made from fine threads and fabrics sat on the topmost shelf, where it stared down at him and constantly made him feel watched.

There were no maps visible anywhere. Vax knelt in front of the desk and counted three locked drawers and two locked doors. He took a set of crudely crafted lockpicks out of his pocket. It was an old set that Cyriel had given to him for Winter’s Crest, but she never held her promise to teach him how to use them. Her work began to take up more of her time, and so did one of the goldsmith’s apprentices. When he showed up at the weaver’s shop two nights ago, Lathra had refused to tell him where Cyriel was. So Vax had taught himself how to use the picks, and while they still occasionally ran together, most nights, like last night, he visited the thoroughfare on his own. It was easier that way. The distraction and the company were still very welcome, but in this hated city he could only—truly—rely on his sister.

Vax took out the wrench from his lockpicks and settled next to the first drawer.

There was a fair chance, of course, that the master’s desk was warded with magic as well, but that was yet another risk he’d have to take. To prove to the other boys that he and his sister had a home. That they hadn’t simply been found along the side of the road somewhere, and that they’d every right to be here instead of being shipped off to some distant city or other.

They’d spent five years in this place, and still the narrow-minded comments kept coming. Aside from Cyriel and Tharyn, whom they saw on duty on occasion, no one had made an effort to get to know them. No one had warmed to them. Five years, and they were still as insistent on looking down their noses at the twins as they had been on that first day. No matter how hard Vex worked. No matter how wise and cultured the elves claimed to be.

Vax drew a deep breath, braced himself for some form of magical retribution, and inserted the wrench into the lock.

And that’s when the door to the study was flung open.

“I TRULY BELIEVED THAT WITH the right guidance, you might become something more than what you were destined to be,” Syldor said. For the past fifteen minutes, he’d been pacing around the twins, his usually pale visage red and his usually measured voice on the verge of cracking. “You might have been able to reach higher than the low life that you were destined for. It appears that all good intentions aside, I was a fool.”

Vax kept his eyes locked on the painting hanging on the far wall of the office, and willed his face emotionless. For the masters to send him home under guard instead of punishing him at school seemed unnecessarily cruel, but he didn’t understand why his sister needed to be here too. She’d been pulled from class despite having done nothing wrong.

On the contrary, she did everything right. She didn’t deserve this.

“I tried to do my best by you,” Syldor continued, his voice a notch softer. “I hired the very best tutors in town for you. I let you stay here and learn in peace, away from the cruelty of others your age, for as long as possible. I provided you with clothes you might never have dreamed of wearing had you stayed in that village. The finest martial training in Syngorn. I even overlooked some of your”—his eyes found Vax’s—“transgressions, believing it might be educational for you to explore the city on your own time, in your own way.

“Was that not enough?” The volume rose again, and a vein near Syldor’s temple throbbed. He was fighting a losing battle between embarrassment and anger on the one hand, and his normally cold and distant demeanor on the other. “Do you know the shame you bring to my name when you are found breaking into your masters’ offices like a common thief? Can you imagine my having to explain to the Dreamweavers why my ill-born son not only carried lockpicks but apparently knew how to use them?”

Vax opened his mouth to reply, his own temper rising. Syldor hushed him with a gesture. “I am not done yet.”

He picked up a piece of paper with neat handwriting on it. He read it over, and the paper trembled in his grasp. “I have here a letter from the Verdant Lord, detailing a number of incidents in the thoroughfare of late, where merchants and customers alike tell of a cloaked figure behaving quite suspiciously around them. A number of incidents where later they were found to be missing coin or jewelry. Can you explain that to me?”

Vex fidgeted nervously. Vax’s heart sank at the report, but he squared his jaw. “I don’t know. Perhaps you should ask them what happened. It sounds like they were careless.”

“Insolent boy!” Syldor slammed the report on the table. “Do you not think the Verdant Guard has means of investigating such claims beyond the mundane? Did you not consider there are eyes on you the entire time? Do you think me so ignorant that I wouldn’t notice you buy expensive gifts for your sister?”

He gestured to the corner behind them, where the hazelwood longbow that Vex normally kept in their room leaned against the wall. Neither of them had realized it was there when they’d been marched in by the guards.

Vax grew cold inside. “I didn’t think you’d noticed us at all, Father.”

Syldor didn’t respond to his comment. He turned on Vex instead. “And you, did you know about this? Have you been covering for your brother all this time? I thought you were smarter than that. I thought you might in time be able to convince the masters of your intelligence and usefulness. If you cannot see the difference between what is good and proper and what is wrong, then perhaps I was mistaken.”

Vex flinched, the words hitting her like punches, but she didn’t dignify the accusations with a response, so Syldor continued, “Perhaps I thought too highly of you.”

“She didn’t have anything to do with it, so lay off her,” Vax snapped. He took a step forward and placed himself between his sister and their father.

Syldor snarled and got to his feet. He leaned forward on his desk and spoke solely to Vax. “Do not press your luck, or I’ll …”

When he didn’t finish that sentence, Vax sniffed. “You’ll do what, Father? Make life miserable for us? I can’t imagine what that would look like.”

His bitterness was obvious, and Syldor’s shoulders hunched. He paced back and forth through the room and aggressively rubbed at his face. “Gods, this was folly. This is what I get for trying to do good by you. I should’ve let wiser voices prevail. You could’ve been sent to one of the outposts to be educated, like other—” He stopped abruptly once more.

And like before, Vax pushed. “Like other what?”

Syldor tilted his chin and didn’t flinch when he looked at him. “Like other undesired children.”

The words packed a punch, but it was nothing compared with what Vax felt when he heard the soft catch in Vex’s breathing. The pure, unadulterated rage that filtered through him left him nearly breathless too, and it took everything he had not to pick up one of the paperweights and hurl it across the room. “You could’ve left us at home, where we belonged!”

“You were wasted there.”

“We were happy.” Vax glanced at his sister, and his heart sank at the tears in her eyes. He kept shielding her as he rounded on his father. “If you want to lay into me, have at it. She has nothing to do with this. Give her the bow back, and let her go.”

“This bow?” Syldor took Vex’s prize bow and turned it around in his hands. “No, I don’t think so. This is a piece of art, and better than you deserve.”

With that, he placed his hands on the ends of the bow and brought them down hard, pushing against the grain. The supple wood gave, at first, used to the strain of shooting and cared for gently by Vex. But it couldn’t withstand Syldor’s abuse, and with a soft cry, the wood snapped.

And Vax felt something break inside of him too.

VEX FELT EMPTY. THEY’D BEEN sent back to their room, and the only thing she knew how to do was sit on her bed and stare at the wall. She’d tried to count the wooden paneling. She’d wrapped a strand of hair around her finger and twisted it, only to forget what she was doing halfway through. Somewhere deep inside, she knew that she should rage or cry or hurt, but she couldn’t. She felt empty.

Vax paced through the room, all hard lines and anger and tension. He would wear a hole in the floor like this, and it wouldn’t help anyone.

She made a sound in the back of her throat, and he immediately focused on her. His face fell. He crossed the room, and sat down next to her. “I’m so sorry, Vex’ahlia.”

She swallowed hard before she found her voice. “It’s not your fault.” The words stuck in her throat, and she knew she sounded rough and broken.

“If I hadn’t taken that ridiculous dare, if I hadn’t sneaked out all those times, none of this would’ve happened.”

She didn’t point out the obvious. If he hadn’t, she’d never have had the bow in the first place. Though right now, she didn’t know if that was better or worse. She couldn’t even be mad it had been a dare that set this chain of events in motion. It was always going to be something like that. It had been inevitable. “He hates us, doesn’t he?”

If she could hate him too, that would be so much easier.

In her periphery, Vax darkened, and his anger cut through her. They’d spent years here. They’d both grown into their own, taller, stronger, and arguably wiser, but when her brother hurt, he looked just like that ten-year-old boy who’d first arrived here, wide-eyed and angry and lost. “I don’t ever want him to hurt you again.”

“I’m all right. I’ll be fine,” she said, though she didn’t feel it.

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her against him, and she could feel the tension course through him. “Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not,” she protested, then hesitated. “Well, maybe a little.”

“You’re not all right, but you will be fine.” He said it like a promise, like a threat, and with so much intensity that the only thing she could do was nod. And he held her, as a shield against the void. “This place doesn’t deserve you. It doesn’t deserve either one of us, and I never wanted it to change us. I refuse to let it break us.”

She clenched her fists, desperately reaching for a place of solid ground. “So what do we do? We go back to school like nothing happened? And we pretend that we’re okay?”

“Unless you want to leave,” he said softly, “we do exactly that. We hold our heads high. We keep going. Or we get out of here and go home. We leave and never look back.”

It had been so long, she fought to remember what home looked like.

Another thought struck her. Something jaded and colder. She angled away from her brother so she could look at him. “Vax … do you think your friend … do you think Cyriel is a part of it? Father said you were being watched.”

He flinched like she’d punched him, but his answer came immediately and full of cold determination. “No. There are countless others who could’ve seen me. She isn’t one of them, I’m sure.”

She wanted to be so sure too. Sure that she could find a way back to attempting to belong here. Sure that she would stop feeling like it wasn’t just her bow but a part of her that was broken. Sure that some elves did care. She didn’t want to feel loyal to a city that gave her nothing, and still she did.

She wrapped the stray strand of hair around her fingers again. This time, her brother reached out and plucked it out of her grasp. He held a shadow in his eyes, but smiled at her. “Let me.”

He unwound her hair, and it unwound something inside her. With slender fingers, he combed through her hair and his own breathing eased too, like he needed this as much as she did. And she remembered: this was what home felt like.

“Wait.” He climbed off her bed and jostled the mattress, almost making her smile. He crossed to his own side of the room and took something out of his coat, hiding it up a sleeve, away from her prying eyes.

She leaned forward. “What is it?”

“No peeking.”

He sat down beside her and went back to his braiding, working in comfortable silence. He worked slowly, untangling her hair and braiding it ever so carefully. As time passed, she felt her shoulders loosen and her clenched hands settle. The slight pull of the braids helped her ground herself.

Vax tugged at the braid, and she felt something scrape gently against her skin.

“There,” he said. “Take a look.”

She pushed herself off the bed, feeling ever so slightly dizzy, and made her way to the gold-framed mirror on the wall above the dressing table. The dressing table itself was covered in all sorts of odds and ends, including trinkets Vax carried in after long nights out. A handful of coppers. A carved wooden flower. A small pouch that at one point had held a dark-blue dust, though aside from a few stains on the linings, it was empty now. A knife. A whetting stone. Wax for her bowstrings. A handful of books that she used for her studies.

She moved in front of the mirror, and when she looked at herself, she gasped. She was pale and tired, and she felt like she might break. But her hair was braided back carefully, and behind her ear, Vax had braided in a pair of vibrant blue feathers.

She reached out to touch them gently. They were perfect highlights in her dark-brown hair. They matched her cloak. They matched the trimmings of many of her dresses.

“I got them for you as fletching,” Vax admitted. “But I like this better.”

“They’re beautiful.”

“You’re beautiful,” he corrected.

“Saving graces?” she asked, remembering what he said that day on the lake.

He shook his head. “Byroden pride. A reminder that Elaina’s children are not to be trifled with.”

She gave him a firm nod, her fists clenched. And she cried.