Page 89 of Stormvein
His gaze drops to my arms, where the light flows in erratic patterns. “Your control is still inconsistent.”
“You said it responds to my emotions, and right now I’m not exactly calm.” I gesture around the room. “We’re lying toeveryone. People who trust you, who woulddiefor you. And we’re doing it because one of them has betrayed you. How am I supposed to be calm about any of this?”
He studies me for a moment longer, eyes softening. “It’s become easy to forget you haven’t lived through this. You no longer look like the same creature who arrived in the tower.” His hand reaches out, fingers stroking along my jaw, then drops away when someone knocks at the door. “That will be your water.” He walks to the door leading into his bedchamber, then turns, lips tilting into that half smile that makes my stomach flip. “Try to appear suitably distraught by my upcoming death.”
The light tone doesn’t stop the sharp stab of pain that goes through me when his words bring back how badly he was hurt. For a heartbeat, I’m back at River Crossing, watching as Authority soldiers surround him. The moment when I thought he was gone forever. These memories haven’t faded. They’rebeneath the surface, waiting to ambush me when I least expect it.
By the time I pull my mind back, he’s gone, the door closing quietly behind him.
There’s another knock at the door. Shaking my head, trying to recenter myself, I pull it open.
The delivery proves Sacha’s prediction correct. Several women enter carrying steaming buckets that soon fill a copper tub placed in my bedchamber. Other women bring extra bandages, healing supplies, even food—bread, dried meat, fruit, and two pitchers. One contains fresh water, the other has steam rising from it and the familiar scent of the herbal drink that reminds me of tea.
“The kitchen sent these,” says a woman with close-cropped gray hair, setting down a covered basket. “You must be starving.” She glances toward Sacha’s closed door, and her voice drops to a whisper. “How is he, really?”
I think about how he was when we first found him, and it adds the wobble to my voice that I need. The memory of him almost dying in my arms is still too vivid for it not to affect me. “Fighting to stay alive.”
She gives my arm a gentle squeeze. “If anyone can survive what they did to him, it’s the Vareth’el. He came back from the dead, after all. You must be his luck-bringer. Twice you have brought him back to us. I have confidence he will come through this.” Her faith would be touching if I didn’t know it was based on a deception. “If you need anything, send someone. Day or night.”
“Thank you.”
When everyone has left, I stand in the center of the room. The kindness of these people I’m actively lying to sits like a stone in my stomach. The woman’s gentle touch, her faith that I’ve somehow saved Sacha twice, the way she looked at me like Iwas something precious … it makes the charade feel worse, more personal.
It shouldn’t matter that there’s a solid reason behind our lies. It still makes me question everything about who I’m becoming in this world. In Chicago, I wouldn’t have been capable of this level of deception. Here, it seems I’m learning to lie quicker than I’m learning to call storms.
Sacha returning from his room, interrupts my spiral of guilt.
“Go and make use of the water before it cools.” He opens the basket and takes out a still-warm roll, steam curling up from the top of it. Setting it on a plate, he adds cheese and a rolled-up meat that resembles sliced ham. “Or would you prefer to eat first?”
“You should do the same.” I point to the extra water that has been left against the wall next to the door leading to his room. “I couldn’t ask for two bathtubs. It would have raised questions.”
I retreat to my chamber, making sure the door is firmly closed behind me. The tub isn’t large, but the steaming water looks like salvation after days of minimal access to water to clean with. I strip out of my filthy clothes, screwing my nose up at the smell, and drop them to the floor. A month ago, I’d have been embarrassed by how bad they are, now I’m just relieved to get out of them.
I sink into the water with a sigh that comes from somewhere deep inside my soul.
The heat seeps into muscles that have been tense for way too long, drawing out all the aches I’ve been ignoring since we fled the ambush. I scrub away layers of dirt, watching the water darken around me, and finally feel my shoulders begin to relax for the first time in what seems like forever.
But even though my body relaxes, my mind won’t stop racing. The hot water should be washing away more than dirt and sweat. It should be washing away the fear, the constantvigilance, the weight of everything we’ve been through. Instead, all I can think about is how we’re playing a dangerous game, hunting for a traitor who has betrayed everything they claim to believe in.
I duck my head under the water, letting it cover my face, and hold my breath until my lungs burn. When I surface, gasping, I’m no closer to understanding how I got here. How I went from being a woman who couldn’t even lie convincingly about being sick to get out of work, to someone who can deceive an entire fortress of people.
My mind drifts to Chicago, but not with the wistful nostalgia and homesickness I expect. Instead, it feels like a half-remembered dream now. A life I left behind when I stumbled upon the tower in the desert. I have no idea what the date is or how many months have passed. Christmas and New Year must have come and gone without me. I wonder if it’s snowing. Has Lake Michigan frozen over?
It’s strange how memory works. I can recall the exact smell of coffee from my favorite shop near the lake, but I can barely remember what my apartment looked like. The mundane routines of life—alarm clocks, subway commutes—seems like distant memories, belonging to someone else entirely. Someone who never had silver light crackling beneath her skin or controlled storms with her emotions.
That woman feels like a stranger now. Someone I played at being rather than someone I actually was. She worked a job that paid the bills but meant nothing. She dated men who saw her but didn’t really know her.
Has my disappearance been noticed? A few days on the local news, maybe?‘Local Woman Missing, Foul Play Suspected’reported before I became another statistic, another face on a flyer slowly being weathered away by rain and snow.
I think my friends would look for me. They are the closest thing to family I have. We swore to always have each other’s backs after aging out of the system together. Somehow, I doubt they’ll have given up hope. I wish there was some way to let them know I’m alive and well, for the most part. That I’m finding a purpose I never had before. What would they say about Meridian? About Sacha?
Is my apartment still there, my possessions gathering dust, waiting for a return that seems increasingly unlikely with each passing day? Or has everything been boxed up, my existence packed away?
How long will it be until my name joins the long list of unsolved disappearances … another mystery Chicago will absorb into its history.
The contrast between that life and this one strikes me hard. A woman who worked in a dead-end job, who lived paycheck to paycheck, whose greatest worries were making rent and swiping right on dating apps, has somehow transformed into'Stormvein.’
My former self would be terrified of the woman I’m becoming. She’d never recognize this version of me who immersed herself in a war, who healed a man tortured beyond recognition through magic and will. That old Ellie would run from this reality. This new Ellie runs toward it.
