Page 15 of This Monster of Mine

“You’ll always have me.” Cisuré grinned. “Here we are. Lisran Tower.”

Northwest.Sarai’s steps slowed.North.

Slowly, her gaze slid to the right, to the spire-topped column miles away glowering down in recognition. For a moment, she was fourteen again, lying in her own blood, rain pounding from above. Her eyes lifted to the balcony at the top.A hundred-and eighty-seven-foot drop.She shouldn’t have survived. She shouldn’t remember any of it.

But she remembered enough. Agony as healers knit her back together. Despair when the vigiles had ended their investigation after three days, sealed her case records, and tossed her out of Edessa.

Resolve burned in her chest. Four years ago, someone in this city had wanted her dead.

And by all the gods, she was going to make him pay.

CHAPTER THREE

A dry chuckle. The scrape of boots against stone. “If only that were true.” The man with the beautiful voice stepped away from her.

Don’t go. Her lips soundlessly shaped the words. She didn’t know why she was begging, only that she believed he would listen.

She willed her fingers to move from where they rested inches from his boots. Her knuckles twitched, and pain ignited along her hand, shooting up to her skull. Her functioning eye rolled back as blood filled her nostrils, seeped from her open mouth—

Sarai’s eyes flew open. Stumbling off the bed, she grasped the vanity, breathing hard until her vision cleared. The face in the mirror was gaunt, eyes feverish, thin, brown scars standing out in relief, as if someone had glued together a thousand pieces and hadn’t bothered to hide the seams. She numbly traced features that still felt unfamiliar. The healer who’d reconstructed her face hadn’t bothered with faithfulness to the original—a fact that had given Arsamea much fodder for abuse. Even her eyes were an unnatural gold from their original black.

It could have been worse. Scarring aside, her face was normal enough. But she’d endured enough flinches in Cretus’s tavern to prove that most people saw only the scars.

If only that were true. Her teeth ground together at the memory of that beautiful voice. The outline of Sidran Tower peered through the dirt-flecked window, a ghost at the edge of her vision. She averted her gaze and cursedbefore forcing herself to look back at it. From now on, she had to act the part of a normal person. And normal people did not panic at the sight of Sidran Tower.

Morning air teased her hair as she stepped onto the balcony. Ironically, she’d been given the highest room in Lisran Tower. Sarai gripped the railing as the tiles seemed to sway beneath her feet. Heights. The first fear she’d gained after the Fall.

Pulling her gaze up, she drank in the Academiae’s sun-drenched halls, stone walkways, and green courtyards that spoke to talented agromagi working around the clock to keep the grounds thriving. Fifty-foot walls separated the central citadel from Edessa, punctuated by the Tower Gates. Below them lay wide central roads, weaving through the city’s four Quarters, each named for the Tetrarch who governed them: Aelius, Tullus, Cassandane, and Kadra. Sarai couldn’t believe she’d be meeting them soon.

She poured power intonihumb, scars vanishing as a thread of red entering the gleaming rune. The illusion would hold until the rune went fully crimson, warning her that she’d depleted herself of magic. Sloughing off layers of travel dust and what felt like a good amount of skin in the bathing room, she donned the genderless uniform worn by Candidates over which her Tetrarch’s robes would go after the Robing: inky black and starkly cut, with buttons that extended from the uniform’s collar to her waist where the skirt flared out to brush her trousered ankles. Weaving her hair into a braid, she stared at the unrecognizable figure in the mirror. Hollow-eyed, yet dignified.Not a barmaid. Not a victim. A Petitor.

A lump built in her throat. “Petitor Sarai,” she whispered, and her reflection stood taller.

She descended Lisran Tower’s spiral staircase, firmly ignoring the wretched tower to the north. Cisuré had said that a raeda would take her to the Aequitas. She’d also mentioned something about breakfast in the Academiae’s dining hall, but Sarai knew her nervous stomach would do worse with ammunition.

Outside, the raeda waited by the Lisran Tower Gate as promised along with a few magi who looked relieved that she hadn’t run away.

“Petitor Candidate Sarai.” The coachman bowed. “An honor to escort you.”

A month ago, no one would have said that.She wondered if he was pulling her leg, but his weather-beaten face held only curiosity.

“Thank you,” she said and paused at the narrow-eyed look a passing magus shot her.

She stifled a sigh. Right. No “commoner speech” from Petitors.And the south wondered why northerners found them pretentious.

Climbing in, she gaped. All burnished oak and violet cushions, the carriage would have made Cretus weep. She sat gingerly, half expecting it to turn to smoke. The gate opened, and the carriage started forward, cobblestone blurring as it sped onto the road leading down the citadel.

Edessa lay below, resplendent under the sun, its sprawling streets lined with shops, bare patches denoting public squares, and the oblong domii of the wealthy. Years ago, atop a tall snowgrape vine, she’d looked down at Arsamea and spanned it with a hand, an uncaring fist in the distance. But Edessa could swallow her.

They joined a many-laned road, competing with other raeda heading to the Aequitas in the south. The coachman called back to her, pointing out various landmarks: domii of famous people she’d never heard of, Guilds, the Grand Elsarian Temple.

“The Hall of Records,” he said, and she nearly pulled a muscle twisting to spot a series of marble structures.Soon, she vowed.

Like the Academiae, Edessa’s major establishments were situated at the center of the city. Neutral territory.

“Best that no one Tetrarch controls it all,” the coachman confided. “Imagine if a Tetrarch could halt access to a Guild during a feud!”

“Do they feud often?” Four heads probably didn’t agree on everything.

---