Imprisoned in the Orinovan priori labs, Ainreth undergoes torturous treatments daily in an attempt to crack the code to lightweaver creation. Things seem hopeless, until unlikely allies join his side to help him.
Meanwhile back home in Lys-Akkaria...
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Yarima couldn't believe what she was seeing. Who she was looking at.
Her childhood best friend, the one she'd taken her first priori power from, the one she'd hurt without meaning to.
It had been so long ago, and yet she remembered with such clarity. The look of betrayal on Katya's face when she realized what Yarima had done to her. She must have realized it before Yarima even, feeling her power drain out of Katya and into her.
Yarima didn't know what had happened after that. She'd just run because it was the only way to save herself. Nothing else mattered in that moment but self-preservation. Yarima barely remembered the rest of it. But that look on Katya's face....
And now she was staring into her face again, but she was an adult now. Yarima could still recognize her by her freckles and blue eyes, but Katya looked so different on every other level.
Yarima remembered her being a cheerful girl, who wore her hair in braids and always smiled, even though she was at the priori laboratories with her father who worked there as a cleaner and she had to help out. She'd always managed to cheer Yarima up, despite her isolation, despite her tortures.
The person she was looking at now was nothing like that. The current Katya was staring back at her with interest, but her gaze was too clinical to be warm, her eyes having a slightly mad glint to them.
"Princess Yarima, so we meet again," Katya said, circling Yarima as she studied her, as if she was a predator and Yarima prey. "It's so wonderful to see the first success these laboratories produced."
"Excuse me?" Yarima finally managed to speak, staring at Katya with disgust. She was a person, not some messed up achievement for Katya to gawk at.
She looked back at Oretski who was here with her, hoping that he would provide some context for what had happened to Katya since he'd gone through this experimentation much more recently than Yarima. But Oretski was staring off into space.
After bringing the Daybreaker here, Yarima got her mother's trust and Oretski his position back. And yet he looked as if he had been told he was going to be hanged instead.
Yarima would need to talk to him later. They couldn't let Svytlani get whatever she wanted from Ainreth. But Oretski hadn't listened to her when she'd said as much after the damned Daybreaker burned most of their forces to ash. He'd just blankly taken his unconscious body and flown away.
"We've come far since you," Katya continued, grinning, that spark of madness only intensifying.
"Katya, what happened to you?" Yarima asked, shaking her head.
She hadn't known that Katya was still in the palace, but if she'd known, she would have imagined their meeting very differently. Shouldn't Katya be mad at her? She had been meant to be a soundsmith.
"Oh, I found my calling," she said, chuckling. Then she dramatically turned to the underground laboratory they were standing in.
Yarima grimaced when she looked around. The brick walls were very familiar. It threatened to bring repressed memories back to the surface, made Yarima's throat close up, her heart clenching. She felt like she might vomit too, but she didn't let any of that show on her face.
