Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Vale

"I love the skirts you wear," Cypherion told me, his hands drifting over the chiffon falling around my thighs as I perched on the railing of his balcony. Damenal unspooled across the mountains below.

"Why is that?" I asked with a teasing tilt of my head.

I expected a crude joke. Something about slipping his hands beneath them so easily as he had for the first time last night, which I would have agreed with, but it wasn't what he said.

"They suit you," he said with a shrug. "You'd look devastating in Mystique leathers, but something about the skirts embodies your spirit. They feel free, like you."

After nearly a month in Damenal, I was learning how insightful Cypherion was. In the hours we'd spent training and touring the city, he'd shared a number of musings that made me think in turn. Things about life and our purpose, questions about the Fates and how Starsearcher magic worked.

Nearly every time, his words were something slightly different than what I expected. It made me hungry for whatever he would say next. To be near him was to think, to grow, to see the world in a series of questions and steps and causes—and I was becoming dangerously entangled in how those truths made me feel about this Mystique Warrior.

Especially after how he'd kissed me last night. His hands in my hair, body pinning mine against the wall in my bedchamber, somehow sweet and dominating all at once.

This time, though, what he'd said was not entirely correct. Nor did it make me think as I hoped. Instead, a chill wormed along my spine.

"I'm not free." My voice was small. "Not in the slightest."

"What do you mean?" His brows pulled together as he took a step closer, protective and confused all at once, and I almost told him. Almost let slip how being here in Damenal—being here and not in Valyn, being here breathing fresh mountain air without eyes burrowing into my back and beckoning my sessions—was the freest I'd ever felt, and still chains remained around my wrists.

Not literally—that hadn't happened since I was young.

But I could feel them.

And I couldn't tell him.

"Are any of us truly free?" I joked, but it didn't work. Cypherion kept searching my gaze.

So, I found what I was able to share and told him of that wretched day. "I was born in a small town near Lumin Lake. Just along the southern shores, not too far from the mountains." I could see the cottage as I spoke, hear the echoes of the family's voices I barely remembered. "When I was four, I was taken from my family by the City Council. I was raised at Lumin Temple until Titus found me—a prisoner, in a sense."

I couldn't find it in me to speak of the rest of it right now. Of what happened during those years. The brand on my shoulder flamed.

Cypherion's hand gently nudged my chin. I hadn't realized I'd dropped my gaze. Or that I was nearly crying.

"I was ripped from my home"—I took a huge breath—"and indebted to the temple."

And while Titus had rescued me, being here in Damenal was the first time I'd felt free. I didn't understand what that meant.

Cypherion's arms folded around me as I slowly unraveled more pieces of the story.

"Why, though?" he asked when we both grew quiet, my head resting on his chest as he stood between my legs, his hand gently stroking my back.

"Magic." I shrugged. The words were on the tip of my tongue. To explain it all to him. Instead, I said, "People fear power they don't understand. Instead of learning it, they seek to control it."

I didn't offer up any more. I couldn't, and he understood.

Still, as we watched the stars and whispered promises to them from our broken childhood selves, all I could imagine was a temple overlooking a lake, and the secrets lurking beneath the stone.

Cypherion barely looked at me the entire ride to Lumin. If I hadn't been so preoccupied repairing the pieces of myself this city had shattered nearly two decades ago, I may have minded.

My resolve to crack his icy exterior slipped a bit more with each step, but I clung to it tighter than the reins of the dappled gray warrior horse beneath me, Marage.

The cloak Cypherion had given me was soft against my skin, a reminder of the gentle side of him I wanted to win back. It slid over Marage's hide as she ambled along the path, and each time the deep blues caught the light peeking through the high branches, Cypherion's eyes flashed through my mind, the precise shade of his intent stare I'd often been on the receiving end of.

We were traveling through the jungle rather than the mountains. Damenal and the surrounding peaks ignited a sense of freedom in me, but the trees stretching to the heavens were branches of my soul sprouted in the soil.

Each frond carving our path and vine tangled overhead nourished those pieces of myself. They rooted me to the magic of the earth, calling out to my own wary gifts, and that was the familiarity I needed if I was going to survive this.

The jungle cats, the primates, even the snakes and buzzing insects…The monotony of them all soothed a bit of the lost thread my sessions had torn up within me. I burrowed into that comfort, trying to chase off the worry of what waited.

"How long did you live there again?" Cypherion finally asked. The deep tone of his voice nearly shocked me from the saddle, and I clenched my legs tighter against my mare to stay seated. He didn't specify where, and the consideration in that choice was so cautious, attentive to the details I'd given him months ago that made it clear it was difficult to speak of this city.

"Only about four years," I answered without thinking. And immediately after saying it, memories of those days came pouring back. Every anguished one, every star-blessed one. All through the eyes of a child who didn't know any better, now through the eyes of an adult who was still trying to figure them out.

"Four years," Cypherion mused. His horse was behind mine, but without turning, I could picture his thoughtful expression. The determined set of his jaw. Why was he suddenly making conversation? "Tell me something good. Something you liked about living there."

Something I liked? I'd spent so much time shrouding my memories of Lumin after I went to live with Titus. So many long nights convincing myself those years—the events I'd endured before moving to the capital—had been nothing more than nightmares.

But something good… There were a few moments that had not become horrors. A few that were dazed dreams of the sweetest sun-kissed memories.

"The trees have the best fruit. It bursts on your tongue, and the colors are so rich."

"What were your favorites?" he prompted, voice melting into the hum of the jungle. Though it was winter, the trees held a warmth that his presence tangled with, wrapping around me.

"Blood oranges." And the words tumbled from me without my control. "Their juice is sweet with a hint of tart. There was one tree that hung over the lake right outside my balcony. I would climb on the railing, though I was told not to—Spirits, my tutor told me not to each day. I was given extra studies to try to discourage me when I was caught. Had to write the histories of the Fates repeatedly, but it only became a challenge, then. They didn't understand that I always enjoyed lessons."

And they didn't punish us for trivial childhood games. Only for failures in our magic.

"Because your power is important to you," Cypherion interjected quietly. Like that statement was repairing pieces of me that he'd jumbled up.

"It is," I agreed. That importance was why I was going back to Lumin at all. If I could sew up the holes in my magic, it would be worth it. "So, the chores didn't deter me."

I flashed Cypherion a smile over my shoulder, finding his eyes trained on me, blues burning like the heart of a fire. The horses continued through the jungle as our stares caught, and I said, "When I was first assigned my room, I couldn't reach the tree, no matter how hard I tried." Though I had been branded, we were each given a room as students. Fooled into thinking we were cherished guests. "By the time I was seven, though—my last summer there—I was able to stand on the railing, on my toes, and stretch so my fingertips brushed the branches. I only fell in the water once, and H?—"

I cleared my throat and faced forward, hands tightening on the reins as I took a shaking breath.

"My friend laughed about it for weeks."

Cypherion wanted to ask; I knew him well enough to know he was trying to reassemble my past to make sense of me now. The questions burned into my spine as his eyes stayed locked there.

"When I moved to Palerman," he began, and I froze, "I didn't know what to make of those kinds of friendships."

I nearly balked at him offering up a piece of himself, something he hadn't done in months, but I didn't want to scare him into silence again. So, I kept my eyes on the gaps in the trees, the lake sparkling crystal blue in the distance, and I remained the judgment-free, silently attentive audience he needed.

"They—Tolek and Malakai, Ophelia and Santorina—basically forced their company on me. I waited for them to stop." He'd told me a bit about those early days in Palerman when he was twelve, but mainly about his mother. Cypherion's friends were…well, they were something even more special to him. Something that brought about a weakness he didn't often show.

I'd seen it once.

"They didn't give up," he continued, a quiet laugh. "I shouldn't be surprised. They dragged me into their games, trainings, and formal dinners practically the first day we met. I think they recognized something in me that I didn't even see. Something I still don't know how to name."

"It's almost like they always knew what you were destined for."

Cypherion grunted in response.

I pressed on. "I mean it. You were destined to be a part of their group. It's clear to anyone who sees you all."

"A part of a group, maybe," he said.

And I corrected, "A leader among the great warriors of our generation."

Another grunt. He was tending toward the abrasive quiet he'd adopted for the first few weeks of our journey, and already I missed the sound of his voice.

"You don't believe in destiny? The Fates?" I asked. There. A question he must answer.

"It's not that," Cypherion said.

"Then, what?"

"I don't believe in a title being my fate, no."

"I've never known you to be so wrong, Cypherion Kastroff." When I used his full name, something like lightning buzzed between us.

He might have felt it, too, because his voice was gravelly as he said, "I haven't earned it. The title."

Spirits, he was so wrong.

"One day, you'll see that you have" was all I said, because he'd given me more conversation than he had in weeks, and I was afraid of forcing him away again so soon.

Cypherion cleared his throat. "The memories I have from those early years in Palerman, that security from when my friends took me in, really helps with"—he paused; I peeked over my shoulder, and he waved a hand around the jungle—"all of this we're facing."

My heart tugged, and elation swirled through me, knowing he'd retained that sort of love and acceptance in his life. But it combined with sadness that I hadn't. And a bit of fear that we were heading right back into all of those memories, rocking the unsteady foundation of myself.

"That's beautiful," I said quietly. "You're lucky to have them."

I wasn't sure what part of my comment did it, but Cypherion's shields snapped back up so quickly, I practically heard the metal doors of his mind slam.

"We're almost there," he said. "We'll eat, and I'll head out soon, but you can remain hidden if you'd like."

Hidden? I may be afraid, but I would not cower.

"I'll be fine," I said, lifting my chin though my form fought to crumble.

Cypherion opened his mouth to argue but snapped it shut again. Swallowed. "Right. You'll take care of yourself. I'll just…do what I have to."

Shocked, I nearly pulled my horse to a stop to ask what he meant, but spires pierced the azure sky up ahead, and my remaining strength was punctured by each gleaming point.

So I whispered, "As you must."

As the trees broke, and Lumin came into view below vine-covered cliffs, Cypherion took the lead on the path, allowing me a moment of reprieve. A moment to breathe in a city I hadn't seen in sixteen years and exhale all the poison it left in my veins.

And though neither of us said anything, I followed as he led us the long way around the city toward the location of the fighting rings, on a path that avoided the temple.