Nightfire | The Whispering Wall #1

Seventy Four: Vigil

"Where are you going?" Grace hissed.

Jordan paused with his feet over the side of the bed, then sighed and rolled over to the other side. Grace's eyes glittered at him from her pallet on the floor.

"Piss," he said. "Have you slept at all?"

"Have you?" she shot back, sitting up. Her hair had grown past her shoulders in the time they'd spent in Nictaven. She looked gaunter, more adult than back then. The stare she levelled at him reminded him strongly of their mother, and the memory it sparked made him wince.

He dreaded to think what he looked like to her.

"Course not," he muttered. "Back in a minute."

He got out of bed. He should have been thrilled that Grace was staying with him until the castle repairs were done – something Harkenn had agreed to, he suspected, purely to shut him up – but all he felt was faint annoyance most days. He was glad she was safe, but he couldn't look her in the eye anymore, and she'd taken to snapping at him more often since he'd refused to tell her about his discussion with Harkenn. She also, he guessed, missed Nova more than she wanted to admit, and found the number of Unspoken in the house unsettling. He didn't blame her, exactly, but it was hard not to acknowledge the resentment smouldering in the pit of his stomach whenever she flinched at someone addressing her, or spent too long getting dressed with his bedroom door closed.

And it was also because she would be able to leave in a week or two, and he would still be here, suffocating in the collective grief of the Guild and trying not to crack from the nerves he felt, waiting for the moment Arlen sent for him.

The house was quiet, buzzing gently with magic. Several more Unspoken were staying with Yddris now; there wasn't room to get between the bedrolls in the attic. He knew he wasn't the only one awake; he could sense that nobody was finding sleep easy to come by tonight.

The breeze hit him like a cold slap as he stepped into the courtyard. Yddris smoked on the bench under the eaves; they said nothing to each other by way of greeting. In the aftermath of the siege, the need for it seemed to have dissipated.

"Is Nika back yet?" Jordan asked.

"Aye." Something about Yddris's tone was off, but Jordan didn't press. "Is your sister coming today?"

"I haven't asked," Jordan said. "Is she allowed to?"

"Anyone who wants to pay tribute can come," Yddris said through another cloud of smoke. "She just can't lay a flame on the pyre. That's guild only."

Jordan's throat tightened, and he croaked, "I'll ask." A silence passed between them, and then he said, "What happened to you that day?"

Yddris grunted. "Is that why you've been funny with me, boy?"

Jordan shrugged and joined his tutor on the bench. He absently touched the bandages at his shoulder as the wound prickled, like it always did when he thought about the attack. It had been very slow to heal; sometimes it still bled when he washed, though it had been days. Nika had stitched it up, but it had a habit of unravelling or coming loose. No one said it, but Jordan knew it wasn't normal. There was no better medic in the Guild; Nika's stitching wouldn't unravel by itself. But his magic had returned to normal, and that was good enough for him for the time being.

"Everyone has limits when it comes to magic," Yddris said suddenly, surprising him. "We've gone over it briefly before, I believe."

Jordan nodded, suppressing a shudder. The night in the slum quarter weeks before didn't seem as traumatic anymore through the lens of his recent experiences, but the eyeless, soulless victims still regularly visited his dreams. Yddris had taken him then, he remembered, because Jordan had been trying to find a way out of training. He was feeling stupid for it now.