ChaoticArmcandy

  Roxa’s pace quickened abruptly as she turned the corner, out of sight of Aralia’s office door, though she resisted the urge to break into a full run. It was just past dawn and the vacant corridors of the vast alchemy complex echoed eerily with her footfalls as she rushed down the stairs.

  The emptiness of this pce put her in mind of that fateful morning she had distracted and bribed Ellie, all while Mi snuck into the stockrooms to steal precursors. How long had it really been since she’d abandoned the seduction angle on a hunch, reached over that counter in a fsh of smirking impulse and seized a handful of the wide-eyed girl’s shirtfront, then reeled her in, smirking as she whimpered? It felt like years…

  Roxa shook her head free of the memory, cursing long and hard under her breath. She had been braced for several possible outcomes of her confrontation with Aralia, but the news that she and Ellie had somehow headed off the coming kuffa hunt, and at such cost, wasn’t one of them.

  Did she make you do it, Ellie? Or did you actually, really turn yourself in?

  Roxa recalled with a lurch of sympathy the look of sick despair in the girl’s hazel eyes as Mi shoved her out the door of their room yesterday. She could absolutely see Ellie doing something that insane out of some desperate lunge towards loyalty.

  We made a mistake, throwing you away like that, Ellie. And then–you went and did it to yourself. Roxa swallowed hard. Were you really just trying to protect us?...Even worse–have I just gone and squandered your gift?

  There were still so many unanswered questions. She’d almost ordered Aralia to ungag Ellie, but she honestly hadn’t been sure if she could maintain her face if the girl began tearfully trying to make amends with her right then.

  No, she needed a chance to interrogate Ellie alone–doing it in front of Aralia was too risky. Roxa’s whole gambit depended above all else upon Aralia believing that she could not be swayed by threats to either of her tea girl assets. If Cordivar realized Roxa’s coldness was all a facade, she would cut Mi and Ellie apart piece by piece to gain her autonomy back and upend the threat of Roxa’s bckmail.

  Roxa reached the main entrance, barged her way out of the double doors, and flung herself full tilt down the steps. The Harmine campus sloped away before her, frosty and quiet, still sleeping. A sharp line of freshly born sunlight bzed against the gables of the graystone buildings rearing in the distance.

  The Allegiance court, where the loyalist rallies took pce, would be the first pce for a mob to gather, and Roxa could see from here that it was still empty as a hope. And there had been no torches st night, at least that she had seen. All of which meant that what Cordivar had told her might well be true.

  If Ellie had temporarily or permanently averted the mobs and interrogations and public burnings of a state-sanctioned kuffa hunt, this was a mercy that Roxa’s heart didn’t know what to do with. She’d made her move on Aralia with the understanding that Mi was in danger of a full-blown Ministry inquisitioning, even if Penelope’s loyalist bootlickers didn’t take advantage of the general state of exception to get to her first.

  Now panic was flooding her breast, for if she had misjudged the threat–if Ellie’s sacrifice had indeed chocked the boulder before it could roll far enough to start an avanche, then Roxa’s gamble to save Mi’s life had just nded her friend in far more danger. And for no good reason.

  Despite all her attempts not to, Roxa had just pyed right into her mother’s hands. Could she still redeem her mistake? There wasn’t much time, but perhaps, if she hurried back–

  Don’t be a fool. Roxa winced, slowing her pace. She knew she was already too te. Yet what else could she do but try? Even as the thought crossed her mind, she knew any bid to extract Mi so abruptly and so soon would certainly fail.

  She recalled the Countess Monir’s makeshift office at Tintagel, the way those emerald eyes–so familiar they could be her own reflection in the mirror–had narrowed in measurement, her mother’s voice growing insistent as she described the mission parameters. “I want you to identify potential assets, gain a hold over them, and recruit them to serve our ends.”

  And Roxa finally had.

  But at what cost? She felt suddenly nauseous. Have I become the part I just pyed to Aralia? she thought numbly. Are the consequences of my choices any less harmful because I was pretending? Are the means I used redeemed at all by the ends that I thought I was walking towards?

  Roxa bit her lip until she tasted blood.

  My ends, she thought harshly, are warping outside of my will, without my permission, to match their bankrupt means. Another wave of nausea surged through her, and she paused in the blue-gray shadow of a stone archway to catch her breath.

  She had made a py in the game of masks and knives, using all the training and guile her mother had instilled in her. Against Cordivar, she had won a battle, and found that she had somehow lost a more important one still.

  Roxa leaned against the archway and squeezed her eyes tightly shut, trying to think. What would Mi say, if she were here? What would she do, in such a fix? Roxa could almost hear her–

  ~ ~ ~

  ….sigh of frustration. In her mind’s eye, Roxa sees her friend’s serious eyes, dark and liquid…sees the slight furrow between her brows.

  “Remember what we’ve learned together, and how. Trust will live and grow and die back and recover and grow and live again in the soil of our friendship for as long as we water it with shared risk. Remember and look to those who have bled for you, and you for them.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Roxa exhaled. She knew what Mi would have her do.

  She pushed herself off the wall and veered towards the vast gray bulk of the Harmine Archives, looming above the smaller buildings around it.

  It was time to ask for help, and there was only one pce to go.