Page 81 of To No End

“Deny it all you want, Cress. I saw it… We all saw it, what you mean to him.”

I wanted to sink below the waters and drown. My chest already felt like my lungs were filled with water. I didn’t know what more to say. I didn’t want to sit here and keep lying to Varro, not after he’d been so honest, not after he’d made it abundantly clear that he knew I was full of it. But I also wasn’t keen to divulge or admit anything about mine and Trace’s past.

The only thing I could offer was this promise: “It won’t happen again.”

CHAPTER

24

After weeks of training and evaluations, it was abundantly clear how worthless I remained. Compared to everyone else, I didn’t bring anything I found particularly special to the group’s arsenal of magical abilities. Even Nori had proven to be more valuable, and she didn’t even want to be here.

Yes, I spoke the old tongue, but Varro did as well, and he’d improve with help from me. But what good was that when no one else here spoke it? I put it extremely low on the list of things we’d need to survive.

Cairis knew how to track animals, but it was Trace who had helped teach him to track people by scent. To practice, Cairis constantly enlisted Nori’s help, forcing her to participate in his never-ending game of hide and seek. He’d instruct her to hide somewhere in Basdie until he found her based on scent alone. I hadn’t even known Trace was capable of this until we started training here. Just one more thing I didn’t know about him.

Like the others, Trace was good at lots of things. He arrived here with more skills than most of us, and I hated leaning onhim for anything. Ever since he ousted us with his altercation, I’d been cordial but distant with him. No one other than Varro made mention of it, but I could tell the others were suspicious, and I hated how I felt their eyes on us anytime we spoke to one another or trained together.

Trace never spoke a word of it to me, but he had to know why I was always treating our interactions like they were strictly business.

He was the most skilled with a blade. The memory of him holding one against the gambler at the tavern seemed lifetimes ago, and yet not much time had passed at all. Sometimes his demonstrations with Theory put even her skills to the test. Watching his swift and intentional movements was like witnessing someone dance in between flickers of silver reflections.

Varro was by far the best of us in any sort of hand-to-hand combat, a fact I knew all too well. At first, I had found myself jealous when I’d witness Trace tumbling and rolling on the ground to pin Gia or Nori.

But the feeling waned, and I grew numb to it. I stopped witnessing the closeness as intimacy and instead recognized it as survival. But when he was the one pinning me, I just felt angry, trapped, and worried that everyone’s eyes were on us. Questioning our connection, questioning if we were still something, nothing more than liars bound to put them at risk. Varro watched us the closest. Holding me accountable to my promise.

Theory pushed us hard. Every day it was a routine of sleep, eat, sweat, fly, focus, heal, sleep. It could have felt monotonous, but it didn’t. There was too much to learn, too much to master before we’d amount to anything. I liked routine and staying busy. It brought me some sense of normalcy.

Many nights ended with a visit to the healing pools. Sometimes in groups, other times alone. Cairis was the only one who never made an appearance, and my arrangement with Nori was one he’d come to take full advantage of. But Nori was more than glad to be useful, and dare I say she’d made a friend in Cairis. Warmth finally returned to her cheeks, diminishing the ashen color that befell her during our early days at Basdie.

He treated her like a little sister; they certainly argued like siblings. Each day she got better under his guidance and Theory only pushed enough to give her more encouragement. As I expected, she was quick and nimble. Extremely difficult to keep up with when Cairis tripled her size.

She took longer to gain comfort with a blade, but Trace was patient with her. Given he was the last to offer her forgiveness, I was shocked to see the level of attention he gave her. He always made sure to select weapons that were more appropriate for her size.

Not surprisingly, Trace was also the best flier of the group, with Gia being a close second. Out on the flight deck, they worked our wings to the bone. Trace insisted we all practice flying with weights in our arms, forcing our wings to grow stronger against the resistance. I hated those days, as they were guaranteed to land me in the bowels of Basdie. No attempt at self-healing would cure my back from that kind of pain.

I imagined Trace and his brothers when they were little and their cruel father forcing them to leap from the edge with heavy stones in their arms until their wings were stronger than anything required to carry their own small bodies.

I may not have improved when it came to in-flight combat, but I was quickly becoming the standout when it came to flight agility. My evasion technique was superior to all but Trace and Gia. I still considered it a small victory since I always felt like I was the one lacking.

I couldn’t imagine a life before this when I never showed my wings and rarely used them. They felt like such a natural part of me now, and when I called upon them, they answered every time, without hesitation. I loved the feeling of wind on my face, the free falls and dives, staring at the sun cresting the mountains. They ached for me to fly farther, beyond the boundaries of the valley in the Elorns.

One evening, after everyone had gone inside from flight training, I found Gia sitting on the stone wall, her legs dangling over the ledge. Interested in the sunset, I made my way to the spot next to her.

“Want some company?” I inquired.

“Sure, why not?”

“The view is incredible,” I said, noticing how the orange and yellow hues of the setting sun rippled across the forest below. Reds, burgundies, and browns all melted into each other as the autumn leaves turned, beckoning the frost of winter.

“He used to watch the sunset with me, even though he preferred sunrise,” she said somberly, looking into the distance.

“Who…?” I asked, feigning ignorance of her former mate.

Maybe she wanted to keep forgetting him, like we were all expected to forget everyone we ever loved. But to forget the bond of a mate? Was that even possible? She remained quiet, and I feared I’d overstayed my welcome.

“My mate. He was, by all accounts, wrong for me. Wrong for me in that he was not wealthy, not a Royal, not even an Honored. He was just a commoner. He managed our family’s growing collection of prized horses.”

I thought about what she’d said when we first arrived and how she didn’t care if anyone was Royal, half-blood, or otherwise.

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