22. Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Two

T he farther away they got from the throne room, the better Zylah felt. By the time Holt reached the crypt, she was confident enough to stand on her own.

“Thank you,” she murmured as he lowered her to her feet. She wished she could see his face, the effects of the vanquicite and his magic still meddling with hers. They shouldn’t have stopped. There was every chance still of being discovered, but she could feel his concern as thick in the air as the dust covering the graves around them.

“Did we just almost break our rule?” he asked quietly, one hand still resting on her hip. She heard the remorse laced with his words, felt the tension rippling through him that he’d hurt her with his magic.

Zylah swallowed. Squeezed his hand to reassure him she was fine. “You still need to work on your apologies,” she said, willing a teasing edge into her voice.

Another explosion rattled the earth, dirt and dust and debris billowing around them and urging them to keep moving, Holt’s hand warm over hers as he led the way.

Whispered voices carried to them, and though Zylah couldn’t see, she could still feel. “Humans.”

“Black Veil?” Holt asked.

“I think so.”

They moved silently, putting distance between them and the palace, the thrum of the vanquicite, the voices getting closer.

“This way,” a human called out to them. “We almost sealed you in.” Into the palace, Zylah suspected, and she couldn’t suppress the shudder that shook through her at the thought.

A strange smell lingered in the air, whatever explosives the humans possessed reminding her of being inside the vanquicite mine outside the city.

“Take the tunnel on the right,” another human instructed, the sound of glass clinking accompanying his words. Powder for the explosives, no doubt.

Zylah didn’t question Holt’s judgement as he kept going, steadying her with a gentle touch whenever she stumbled. A third explosion shook the tunnel; the humans hadn’t been exaggerating about having almost sealed them in. She knew from her time living in Virian that the tunnels stretched far across the city, had evanesced around them for countless nights alone—the tunnel system was vast. Still, no amount of distance between them and Aurelia and Ranon was enough, not when they had an army of vampires at their disposal with an inclination for Fae blood. They rounded a corner, more humans up ahead of them, only this time Zylah heard their heartbeats first.

“Holt, what are you doing here?” a familiar voice asked. “We thought you were dead.”

“Zack?” Zylah choked out, tearing the fabric from her eyes so that her brother might recognise her better.

“Zylah? Is that you?” Arms came around her in a tight embrace, lifting her off her feet and holding her close. “In Pallia’s name,” Zack murmured into her hair. “I thought I’d never see you again… Your ears…” He pulled back, hands firm but gentle on her shoulders. “What happened to you?”

“Surprise, I guess,” Zylah said with a shrug, a nervous smile tugging at her lips that he wouldn’t want to know her now that she was Fae, now that she was even less like him than she had been before. “You’re not really my sister,” he’d told her after their father died. She knew he hadn’t meant it, but they’d barely had any time together since, and now she was different… everything was different.

“And your eyes?” he asked, his voice thick with concern.

Relief washed over her at those three simple words, that only her wellbeing was what mattered to him, and Zylah shoved aside all her other worries. “It’s a long story.”

Another explosion shook the tunnel, a few humans crying out in surprise.

“They wouldn’t fucking wait,” Zack breathed. “This way.” He barked commands at the remaining humans, leading Zylah and Holt through tunnels and doors, turning left and right more than once, until at last, they came to a stop in a section filled with dozens of quiet voices. “Nye told me you’d be coming with the army three days from now, Zylah. What are you doing here alone?”

“She came for me,” Holt said quietly, something heavy in his tone.

Zack huffed a laugh. “I guess she owed you one.” He had no idea of knowing the truth to those words, how many times Holt had saved her life over and over again.

“Holt,” another male voice said before he had the chance to reply, the two breaking away in what Zylah assumed was another reunion.

“Aurelia tampered with his memories. Tortured him,” Zylah murmured quietly to her brother. “He doesn’t remember me.”

Zack tensed beside her, his concern palpable. “I’ll follow your lead, Zy,” he reassured her with a squeeze to her shoulder. Since she still couldn’t see anything with her magic, all she could make of him was his shadow, light spilling through from behind and beside him every now and then as people moved about them.

It was the first time they’d been together since Jesper attacked Raif, since Holt had helped her flee the city. How much did he know of everything that had followed? When they’d said goodbye that night, she believed it would be the last time she’d ever see him.

“I want to hear everything,” Zack told her, as if he’d had the same thought. “But I need to postpone our catch-up whilst I go and find the idiots who set off those explosions three days early.” He ushered her into a room, the voices quieting with the distance between them. “These are my quarters, use them as your own. There’s a medical bag over there.” That last part he’d said to Holt, Zylah realised as his familiar presence washed over her and a door clicked shut, leaving them alone together.

Absent the hum of voices, she focused on the sound of Holt’s heartbeat, her throat tight. So many nights in Ranon’s maze she’d lain awake, wishing more than anything she could hear that sound, put her head to his chest and breathe him in. One out of three was something, she told herself. Zylah still couldn’t see anything more than light and shadow, but even with her other sight failing her, she still had a much better sense of her surroundings somehow, knew that a chair sat before a table to her right. She slid into it, palms on the table to steady herself as she willed her breaths to remain even.

A bag hit the table beside her, another chair scraped along the stone floor. A cork popped, the scent of celandia filling the air, Holt’s fingers closing around hers as he took her hand. Zylah hissed at the sudden sting of the liquid, the injury on her hand from where she’d nicked it on her blade long forgotten.

“I lost your spear.” Holt cleaned her wound with careful movements, and she wondered if it bothered him that he couldn’t heal her with magic as he once had.

The two versions of her sight warred with each other, and Zylah scrunched her eyes shut. “I stole it,” she admitted. Though she doubted the skeleton she’d taken it from had missed it.

His next movement was gentler, as if he’d mistaken her actions for him being too rough with his treatment, and Zylah remained quiet, so many emotions running through her she didn’t know whether to sit or stand. He wound a bandage around her hand with the same measured, tender movements, the air thick between them. “Thank you. For coming for me. For keeping your promise,” he said almost reverently.

Words lodged in Zylah’s throat. Nothing would keep me from you, she wanted to say. But instead, Zylah wondered how much she should tell him, whether the pieces she’d given him so far had hurt him in any way. What Aurelia had said about minds and tapestries was so similar to her new magic, it felt like too much of a coincidence not to be. She’d been able to pull apart certain types of magic before Aurelia had taken her, to see through deceits and to dismantle Jesper’s compulsion over Holt.

Before she’d been thrown into the vanquicite cell her new magic had felt like weaving it all back together again, threads and strands spreading out around her. Even now, no matter how weak, those threads allowed her to feel the room around them, the humans out in the tunnels, their excitement and fear; it was that magic that allowed her to ‘see’.

“You heal fast,” Holt told her when she said nothing, tying the bandage in a knot.

“He says, after a vanquicite sword to the chest and three months in a cage of the same damned stuff.” Not to mention everything Aurelia and Ranon had done to him, Thallan too.

Holt’s hand lingered on hers for a moment before he rested it on the table, his shadow moving as he tidied the space. “It should have killed me.” There was a question there, Zylah thought, but he didn’t voice it. And she’d already let too many pieces of nothing fill her with hope for one night, wasn’t sure she could bring herself to ask him about what happened after Raif had driven that sword through his chest just yet, though she feared she already had a fairly clear picture.

She pulled her bandaged hand over her face, her head pounding. “I need to cover my eyes,” she murmured against it. It was the same as it had been before back in the throne room, the two different versions of her vision fighting with each other and playing havoc with her head. Holt moved behind her, pressing a loose piece of bandage into her fingers and guiding her hand to her eyes. Zylah held her breath at the intimacy of it. “Why didn’t Ranon just have his vampires kill the Fae? Why you?” she forced herself to ask as he helped her wrap the bandage around her head, his movements slow and steady.

“I asked the same question. Ranon told me he needed powerful magic to generate a stronger transference.” His warmth and his scent wrapped around her, every nerve in her body aware of his proximity.

Zylah swallowed down the lump in her throat. “To his orb?” The red glow had been one of the only details she’d been able to make out from her cage.

Holt hummed in acknowledgement as he eased her hands away, fastening the bandage behind her head gently. “My magic bolstered whatever was in the Fae blood.”

Zylah turned to face him, even though she couldn’t see him. “Do you know why the blood moon is so important to him?”

“No,” Holt admitted, and she knew from his stillness that he was studying her face. “How do you know Zack?”

She wanted to believe it was their bond sparking possessive feelings in him, that part of him remembered her no matter what Aurelia had done to him, but she also accepted that it was a logical question to ask if he couldn’t piece the two of them together. “He’s my brother.”

He took a step back, his shadow and his scent moving away, followed by the sounds of him pouring liquid into cups, sliding one onto the table in front of her. Imprisoned in vanquicite and tortured for months, and he was still taking care of her. Some things hadn’t changed.

“You must be exhausted,” Zylah added when he didn’t say anything. She could only begin to imagine how he felt, parts of his memory stripped away, the way he’d been forced to use his magic over and over, the deaths he would have felt responsible for, the vanquicite exposure, the pieces of himself he was trying to hold onto. It was a wonder he was still standing. “Why don’t you get some rest?” she added gently.

“Every time I close my eyes, I see them,” he said roughly. The Fae he’d been forced to kill. He took the seat opposite her again, a little of his silhouette more obvious now that they’d put distance between them and the vanquicite, now that her eyes were covered again. “How did we meet?”

Zylah chewed her lip. “I don’t—”

“I know you don’t want to tell me. What I don’t understand is why?”

“Rule number two,” Zylah whispered. “No hurting each other.” The urge to reach for him was so overpowering Zylah had to twist her fingers together to stop herself. Time, she reminded herself. She could give him time while they worked this out, while they found answers. No matter how much she hated every second of it. And perhaps if she told him the truth, slowly and from the beginning, it might help him make sense of everything, help him piece together what was left. “But I’ll make you a deal. I’ll tell you how we met if you lie down on that cot.” She flicked her chin to the bed in the corner.

A huff of air escaped him. “Your other sight is improving. I want to hear all about that, too.”

“Demanding, aren’t you?”

Holt’s quiet chuckle was barely a puff of air. He tapped his knuckles against the table before moving to the cot, the wood groaning under the size of him. She imagined him sliding one arm under his head in the way she’d watched him rest so many times before, eyes staring up at the ceiling. “No leaving out any details. I want the whole thing or nothing at all. In fact…” The cot shifted, and she knew he’d held up a hand. “Rule number three: no lies.”

Zylah couldn’t help her smile, resting her chin on her hands as she began their story.