Page 100 of Daughter of the Drowned Empire
During our training session, he was practically barking orders, demanding I stretch, run, and jump on command. Again and again, he worked me through the training protocol, not asking if I was all right, if I needed a break. And unless he needed to check me for posture or body alignment, he refused to look in my direction. Any semblance of the rapport and friendship we’d developed was gone. He looked and acted every bit the cold high lord accused of murder.
I’d had my reasons, and I’d been half mad with pain from the clinic and my blood oaths acting up. But I knew I’d broken something between us, and perhaps there was no way to repair it.
The moment the final bells of the day rang, he stepped off the mat, grabbed his bag, and walked out the door, not even bothering to close it behind him.
I dragged myself back to my apartment where I collapsed on my bed. I couldn’t sleep, but I couldn’t move either, so I lay there staring at the ceiling as the lights began to fade.
I came to when the bells shouted the new hour. If I got myself up now, I could bathe, eat dinner, and then read through the multiple chapters of homework I’d been assigned in lecture on weapons. But it had been days since I’d seen my sisters.
It had been two weeks since Meera’s last vision, so we still had another two or three weeks before the next one was likely. But Morgana was most likely in need of my oils and brews. Plus, we needed to discuss the threat of the Emartis and what it meant that Markan had killed the vendor.
Aemon had gotten me alone in the hall earlier, giving me a long, hard look.
“You survived clinic,” he said.
I could only nod. Rhyan’s explanation for why I’d been thrown to the wolves so early in the year had made sense, and I knew Aemon would do all he could to protect me. But I was still furious. Aemon had known I’d skipped the first clinic, and he’d neglected to warn me when I was at his house.
It was his own form of punishment. He was sending me a message: I couldn’t mess up again, not if I wanted to keep my bargain.
“No more veering off course during city outings,” he said. “Your escorts already have their hands full.”
“Who was he?” I asked. I could still see the vendor’s lifeless face in my mind. “Who was he connected to?”
“A threat we stopped.”
“He could have been more than that. If Markan hadn’t—”
“Markan has done his job exactly as he is supposed to ever since he came into your father’s service. Now do well to remember as a novice soturion, you’re under mine. No more looking into this, no more rogue hunting trips or going after the very same rebels who want to kill you. Your job is to survive training. Not walk straight to your death. Go.”
Aemon had dried up as an information source, but I still had Morgana.
“Gods, Lyr,” Morgana said when I stumbled through the doors of Cresthaven. Euston and Rhodes eyed me carefully. “You look like shit.”
“Hello to you, too,” I said.
“Upstairs,” she said, already dragging me along. “Meera’s waiting.”
I spent the evening filling them in on everything that had happened that week and everything I’d learned. Neither of them had any more information or insight though. We eventually made our way to the kitchens, devouring a cake we found and brewing extra moon oil. Morgana convinced me to take my own supply for pain relief after training. When I got back to my room, I mixed it with some sweetened wine and drank it all in one sip.
Tristan arrived for a late-night visit, but I was so far gone, he simply put me to bed. I woke up alone, my vision blurry and my body still aching. I had completed my first week of soturion training. I was alive. I supposed that was its own type of victory.
But it wasn’t enough.
Before I knew it, the days began to blur together. I’d wake up at dawn, slog through a small breakfast and coffee, run for an hour, sit through five hours of lessons, eat lunch, and train with a sour Rhyan who, since our fight after the clinic, refused to say one single word to me beyond his teaching and training instructions. I’d leave the Katurium, watching an ever-darkening sky promise the shorter days of fall and winter, and somehow make my way back to my apartment to shower and find dinner. By the time I finished eating, it was time for combat clinic or to force myself to focus on texts and homework assignments.
Most nights ended with me writhing against Tristan late at night, hoping to keep him happy, though since the dinner at his grandmother’s, there’d been no further talk of our engagement. And if I wasn’t with Tristan, I was sleeping on flights back and forth from Cresthaven.
A month of training had officially passed, which meant over a month had passed since Meera’s last vision. There was never any rhyme or reason to when she had them. Sometimes three months passed with nothing. Sometimes we only made it four weeks. In the two years she’d had the visions, I’d learned that four weeks was the only amount of time we could count on to be safe—after that, a vision could come any day.
Being so far from her and from Cresthaven left me uneasy, and Morgana was little help. Her own vorakh was worsening, and she was using more and more of the moon oil I brewed, drinking more wine, and smoking more moonleaves than I’d ever seen. I wanted to be able to get to her and Meera if needed, especially now that we were in Meera’s danger zone.
At least the Emartis seemed to have gone silent—for the moment. Either the killing of the vendor had left them spooked and they had less support than they’d anticipated, or if Lady Romula was right, they were biding their time, growing more powerful, and setting more plans into action. The last option seemed the most likely and left my stomach turning every time I considered it.
Another week passed, and I stumbled into the Katurium. Rhyan had included a particularly brutal training session the Friday before full of squats and weights. Even though it was Monday, I was still completely sore and wrecked. I had managed to land a kick to his chest and finally mastered the punch he’d been teaching me since my stay in the Shadow Stronghold, but knowing that I’d be going up against soturi who’d mastered that punch weeks ago was quickly dimming my victory.
Plus, today marked six weeks since Meera’s last vision. I was going to be on edge until it happened.
Haleika gave me an odd look at breakfast as I sleep-drank my coffee. “Lyr, the circles under your eyes have circles. Were you up really late last night?”
