Chapter 6: The Waking vol 2

Hallah woke surprised she was still alive.

That was the first thought—distant, confused, wrapped in cotton. ‘I’m alive.’ Which was wrong. She remembered the burning. The glass vision. The way her heart had stuttered, stopped, tried to beat again and found nothing but ash.

She opened her eyes.

Grey ceiling. Six-pointed star windows letting in light the color of old bruises. The smell of Sylvareth honey and willow-bark—her mother’s craft, Eira’s glades distilled into healing.

Two Royal Guards in Valerian blue stood at the door, hands on sword-hilts, eyes scanning the ward with the flat patience of men who expected more assassins. Their breastplates caught the light, six-pointed stars polished bright.

Nurses moved between beds with porcelain bowls and linen compresses, treating something the head healer called ‘the sweats’—a fever that had jumped from patient to patient since the attack. Hallah counted seven beds. Two held third-years with bandaged ribs. One held a girl from Class C with a burned hand, crying softly while a nurse applied salve.

Hallah turned her head.

Lucan Verdantis lay in the bed beside hers.

He was mostly uninjured—the healers had said so, she’d heard them in the grey space between waking and sleeping—but bandages wrapped his hands to the wrist. Second-degree burns. New glasses sat crooked on his nose, gold-rimmed. He was reading, or pretending to, his thin shoulders hunched in that way he had when he was trying to be small.

The thrum in her chest warmed.

It happened whenever he did something foolish. Something brave. The resonance had started the day she swore the Oath—recognizing his bloodline. Or recognizing her idiot.

‘Brave,’ she thought. ‘Stupid brave. Probably sat there the whole five days.’

She tried to sit up. Her body didn’t cooperate. She was wearing a hospital gown—white cotton, thin, open at the back—and the realization hit her suddenly, embarrassingly. She was undressed. He was undressed. Two children in matching shifts, separated by three feet of gap and a lifetime of noble propriety that Bear Norcofski had never given a single shit about but Hallah Sovringard suddenly did.

Heat rose to her cheeks. She pulled the blanket higher, glad he wasn’t looking.

‘’Bout time you looked awake, princess,’ she croaked, her voice like gravel in a forge. She stared at the ceiling, studying the cracks. ‘Wasn’t worried. Just... bored. Hospital’s boring.’

He flinched when she spoke—old trauma, Aldric’s voice—then his book hit the floor.

‘H-Hallah?’

She glanced back. His pale blue eyes with their strange gold flecks were wide, wet, terrified and hopeful. He’d been crying. Recently.

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Still here. Unfortunately.’

Lucan moved—too fast, knocking his water cup. He didn’t seem to notice. He was leaning over the gap between their beds, his bandaged hands hovering near her face like he wanted to touch her but was afraid she’d break.

‘You’re—’ His voice cracked. ‘You’re okay? You’re okay?’

‘Fine,’ she lied. Her head felt stuffed with wool. Her mouth tasted like copper and ashes—that metallic tang of reserve depletion, of burning past empty. Every muscle ached with the weakness of lying still too long, of a heart that had stopped and started, stopped and started. ‘Overdid it. Obviously.’

‘Five days.’ Strangled. ‘You’ve been asleep five days. Your heart stopped. Twice. The healers—they restarted it. Twice, Hallah. They said—you weren’t—’

He stopped. His jaw worked. He was breathing too fast, the panic attack breaking through.

‘Hey.’ She reached out—slow, her arm like lead—and caught his wrist above the bandages. His skin was hot. ‘Breathe, idiot. I’m not dead. See? Breathing. Annoying you. It’s my specialty.’

He laughed, or tried to, and it came out a sob. He let her hold his wrist, let her anchor him.

‘I thought—’ he whispered. ‘When you fell, when you hit the floor—’

‘Didn’t fall. Took a nap.’

‘You died.’

‘Only a little.’

‘Don’t.’ Sharp, fierce—the steel underneath the stutter. ‘Don’t joke. Don’t—you don’t get to—don’t.’

The thrum pulsed warm. There you are, it seemed to say. There’s the prince who’ll burn the world.

‘Okay,’ she said quietly. ‘Not joking.’

He held her gaze, searching, then nodded—sharp, jerky. ‘Okay.’

‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘What happened. After.’

Lucan sat back, running his hand through unwashed hair. ‘The Judgment took one. Withered him where he stood.’

‘Remember that.’

‘The armored one—he was still there when I got in. Raising his blade.’ Lucan’s jaw tightened. ‘Guards were coming. He shadow-stepped for the window before I could—’ He stopped. ‘He got away. Wounded. Left blood on the sill. Guards found a trail, but he made the city.’

‘And the other two?’

‘Gone. Fled when the Judgment hit.’ He met her eyes. ‘Four came for you. One’s a husk. One’s running. Two are in the wind.’

‘Not forever.’

‘No.’ His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Not forever. Next time, we finish it. Together.’

Hallah nodded. ‘Together.’

She let her eyes close, and the darkness brought the memory—unwanted, clear as yesterday.

‘Anchorage. Winter. Fifteen below.’

Gold Dust’s engine ticked as it cooled. Bear Norcofski watched the bastard dig.

He’d been handsome once. Charming. The kind of man who bought flowers after breaking ribs. The fourth woman had come to the club showing bruises that matched fingerprints.

‘Faster,’ Bear called out. ‘Ground’s frozen. Dig deep.’

The husband looked up, hands bleeding, eyes wild. ‘Please. I loved her—’

‘You loved hitting her.’ Bear walked closer. ‘You loved the power. Loved making her small.’ He crouched at the grave’s edge. ‘I’m gonna give you a chance to be big, sweetheart. Real big.’

He’d brought rope. Good hemp. And a knife—hunting steel, sharp enough to shave with.

He begged. They always begged.

He didn’t listen.

When it was done—when he hung from the tree branch, his own grave gaping beneath him—he’d felt nothing. No satisfaction. No guilt. Just the cold Anchorage wind and the certainty that some men only stopped hurting others when they stopped breathing.

He’d made him dig it first. Made him understand what he was digging. Then the knife, and the rope, and the silence after.

Three days later, a semi-truck ran a red light on Dimond Boulevard.

Now, in a hospital bed, Hallah opened her eyes and looked at the boy beside her.

‘Same math,’ she thought. ‘Different grave.’

‘Lucan.’

He looked up from his bandages.

‘The one who escaped,’ she said, voice steady as that Anchorage wind. ‘When we find him. No mercy. No prison. We finish it.’

Lucan met her eyes. Young and old. Beaten and fighting.

‘No mercy,’ he agreed.

The thrum sang.

They sat in silence—the nurses, the guards, the world that had tried to kill them and failed.

Hallah let her hand fall from his wrist to the gap between their beds.

After a moment, Lucan’s bandaged hand covered hers.

‘Don’t die again,’ he whispered.

‘Don’t get yourself killed protecting me,’ she countered.

‘Can’t promise that.’

‘Then we’re both idiots.’

‘Yeah.’ She heard the smile. ‘Yeah. We are.’

She didn’t pull her hand away.

Outside the six-pointed windows, evening came, and two children who’d faced death together held on tight, waiting for the next battle.