“How?” Kip’s voice sounded small and hollow in his own ears.
“You just do.”
Kip looked at the commander. That was it? The answer was no answer? He felt his heart drop.
Teia looked from one to the other, mystified, but said nothing, asked nothing. Kip wished he could thank her for that.
The lift came to a stop at their floor.
Ironfist handed Teia the key. His voice was gruff, but not yet back to its old timbre. “Every night. I won’t always be able to make it, but I’ll be there as often as I can. Kip, I’ve heard you’ve been barred from practicum, and Teia, you need to work on your abilities, too, even though I can’t help you much with your type of drafting. Tomorrow you both start practicing magic.”
“Yes, sir.”
Kip and Adrasteia went their separate ways, not sure what to say to each other. Kip washed up and went to bed. His body ached; his mind was numb, crying out for sleep, but every time he closed his eyes he saw blood, brains, the bullet blessing.
Dawn was a relief of the only kind he now knew: a move from one kind of fight to another. He got up to fill another day. If he was busy enough, he wouldn’t have time to think.
Chapter 40
“She’s a beautiful woman,” Karris said.
Gavin said nothing. They were hiking back through the jungle to their own camp. This was the first thing Karris had said since exclaiming over the blue snow—which Gavin had claimed to know nothing about.
“She likes you,” Karris said.
Gavin said nothing.
“You can spend the night with her, you know,” Karris said.
Now she was starting to infuriate him.
“You’ve been edgy,” Karris said. “Maybe it’ll help calm you down if you go get it out of your system.”
Gavin stopped. “You’re saying this to me. Really. You?”
Karris gave a tiny shrug. “What I asked earlier… it wasn’t fair. I’ve got no claim on you. You and I don’t have anything that should keep you from… cavorting as you please. You’re the Prism, there ought to be some benefits, right?”
“Please don’t say stupid things to me, Karris.” Cavorting?
“I was just—”
“I’ve made my decision.” And it’s you.
“And I’m telling you—”
“Shut the fuck up.”
Usually, that would have made her explode. This time, she said nothing. They walked in silence. Made camp in silence. Slept in silence.
Somehow, he did sleep, but he dreamed of colored hells and his brothers. The dread inside him kept that sleep from leaving him rested. By the time Karris woke him for his watch, hours before dawn, the snow was gone. While Karris slept, Gavin sat up. For some reason, he was haunted by his dead little brother Sevastian. Little Sevastian, the good-hearted brother. The peacemaker between his constantly feuding older siblings.
Who would Sevastian have sided with in the Prisms’ War?
In this insane world where Gavin was supposed to have some sort of holy link directly to a deity who didn’t exist or didn’t care, instead, he cared only about what his dead little brother would have thought of him. Who would you have been, Sevastian? Could I have killed Gavin and then handed over the reins to you and the world now know peace? What sort of world would this be, if that damned wight hadn’t murdered you?
A blue wight, too. What did that mean? The very color Gavin had lost control of now was the color that had murdered Sevastian. It was the very color that Dazen had broken out of. Coincidence?
Yes, Gavin, that’s what a coincidence is.
The sun rose, but there was only darkness in Gavin’s heart.
Chapter 41
Dazen Guile stared at the dead man in the wall of the green prison. He and the dead man were picking scabs from their knees. They’d been in the green hell for days, a week? Surely not two weeks yet. They’d been quietly falling unconscious for unknown periods, quietly licking water off the wall, quietly starving. Maybe two weeks, from the scabs.
At some point before falling unconscious, he’d drafted tiny slivers of green. Whatever else it was, luxin was clean. Dazen had pushed luxin out—not out of his palms or under his fingernails, but out of his cuts. First he’d done the cuts on his hands and knees, then finally the inflamed, infected cut on his chest. The pain had been horrific. Yellow pus had preceded the luxin. When he woke, he’d licked the wall for moisture for an hour, then did it again, and passed out again. After a third time, only plasma and blood leaked from the wound.
Eventually, the fever had passed, leaving him passionless, empty, but finally aware again. Somewhat himself. A weaker self.
Like the blue prison, this green one was shaped like a squashed ball, a narrow chute above, a trickle of water down one wall, and a narrow drain below for the water and his waste.