17

Ryska wanted to return the embrace, she wanted to lean into Erynae and let herself be held; to surrender the weight she had carried alone for sixty-two days but she could not, her arms remained at her sides. “I’m fine,” she whispered instead.

Erynae knew the words were not entirely true but choose not to challenge them, she slowly pulled back and lifted a hand, giving Ryska's cheek one gentle pat. “All right.”

Ryska lowered her gaze, crossed to her bedside and knelt to pray to Shalve, keeper of what the soul was and what it might yet become.

"Let the souls that remain stay true to themselves, unbent by the world's wanting, and find their salvation whole and for the souls that lost themselves to grief or war or the slow erosion of years, grant them, if it may be granted, one more chance at it."

Erynae sat quietly while Ryska bowed her head, allowing her the silence she needed and when Ryska finally finished, together, they gathered what they needed and left for the bathhouse and by the time they returned to the room was in disarray, Nehara and Cyren's clothes were strewn across both unclaimed beds and onto the floor, a trunk left half-open with things hanging out of it.

Erynae stopped in the doorway, it wasn't her mess to fix, she told herself. They'd barely been roommates a day, and it felt presumptuous to start rearranging someone else's things but her eyes kept snagging on the disorder anyway.

Ryska felt the same pull and didn't move either, for a breath. It wasn't her place but her mind wouldn't let it go, the sleeve trailing off the bed, small things, but they sat wrong in her the longer she looked at them.

They simply gave in at nearly the same moment, set their baskets down and started to fold.

Nehara looked up first and saw them already at it. "Oh, bless you both," she said, grabbing her basket. "We'll be quick, promise we'll help after."

They left it to the two of them entirely and disappeared down the corridor toward the baths.

Erynae picked up a shirt, folded it properly, and set it on the bed. Ryska did the same with a stray wrap a moment later, and by the time the room was half-tidied they caught each other's eye over, Erynae smiled and Ryska almost did.

If anything, the tidying had settled something in both of them that the morning hadn't.

The breakfast bell rang before they'd finished putting the last of it away and the two of them headed out together, down and right then right again toward the bridge.

Faelen saw Ryska when she got down the stairs and called. "Ryska!"

Ryska stopped where she was and turned toward the sound. Erynae kept walking until she reached the hall and spotted Rhovyn at an empty table.

Daevosky saw her again, she was in a fitted shirt and laced corset now but the one who'd smile in undone hair, who was half-asleep in the grey morning light wasn't leaving his mind.

He tracked her the whole way across the hall, she moved like she already knew exactly where she was headed and of course, she went straight for the far table where Rhovyn sat, the same man whose company she'd kept all through yesterday's assessment, and Daevosky found he disliked that far more now than he had at the time.

He didn't understand it, that pull she seemed to have toward that particular company. He found he disliked Rhovyn rather intensely all of a sudden, disliked the easy way he leaned in to say something to her, disliked that he got morning like this one without ever having to work for them.

Then Ryska arrived and settled onto the bench beside Erynae as though the seat had been saved for her.

This is going to be a problem, he thought. Fucking hell, why is Ryska with Erynae? Why is my girl sitting beside my enemy?

His girl, the words echoed through his mind with a weight they had no right to carry, he had no claim upon her. No promise had passed between them, no oath bound her to him.

Erynae could sit beside whomever she wished, speak to whomever she pleased, and give her smile to any man who managed to earn it. He knew all of that but knowing it changed nothing, the sight of the man beside her seemed like an offense written across the morning itself.

Gods, Daevosky drew a slow breath, when had she become important enough that seeing her beside another man felt like a wound?

Ryska felt it before she understood it, a weight settled across her shoulders from more directions than she could count at once. She had grown used to being watched, but this was different, more eyes than the usual handful, and she couldn't place where half of them were coming from or why they'd chosen this particular morning to find her.

Valere came rushing, stopped at gate and slowly walked to the table while rehearsing the words in his mind.

How do I tell her, he thought. How do I say it, so it lands like truth and not like accusation. He turned it over and found no version of the sentence that didn't risk being the very thing he was trying to spare her from becoming.

"Ryska..." he started, but her glance at him told him she’d already suspected something was wrong, and his heart sank when he realized she was accepting it without even knowing what it was.

He'd heard it at the gate before the breakfast bell, four boys found dead in the sewer at dawn, and he knew they will say it was her. He'd watched the words move through the courtyard faster than the bodies had been found and he understood, that she likely didn't know yet, that she was sitting here eating her breakfast while half the hall had already decided who she was.

“You heard?” Nehara asked, sitting beside her with dismay. “Four boys were found dead in the sewer,” she murmured.

Ryska's hand stopped on the bowl's edge she was circling with finger, the eyes she'd felt without naming, dozens of them. So that was the weight she'd been carrying since she sat down, the thing she hadn't been able to place. She left her tray where it sat and walked out of the hall.

"Ryska..." Nehara rose half out of her seat.

"Stop it," Valere’s hand struck the edge of the table, and his voice carried farther than he intended. “You’ve done enough.”

Nehara froze halfway to her feet and lot of eyes looked at him. Kohl lowered his gaze from the doorway through which Ryska had disappeared. Rhovyn stared at Valere and his jaw tightened as the meaning behind those words began to take shape.

Valere dragged a hand through his hair, he knew how easily a stranger became a convenient answer when no one wanted to admit they did not understand what had happened and now she had walked away beneath the weight of all those eyes.

He pushed himself to his feet, he left his untouched meal behind and walked from the hall without another word.

The hall continued around them after she left and after he followed, hundreds of voices rose and fell, cutlery struck bowls. Students laughed somewhere beyond them, unaware or unwilling to care about what had just happened at their table.

Yet the five of them sat within a silence of their own, they tried to eat, to pretend and then one by one, they abandoned their meals.