“Eira!” Alyss planted her feet and stood firm as Eira crashed into her. Their arms wrapped around each other in crushing grips. “Thank the Mother you were finally cleared. I prayed every night. I heard they had you in a cell. How bad was it?”
Alyss had believed the lies spread by the emperor and empress: that Eira had been held as a suspect but declared innocent on investigation. She opened her mouth and shut it before she could tell Alyss everything. She might, eventually, but now wasn’t the time.
“It was…very lonely.” Eira continued to hold her friend, inhaling deeply the familiar and comforting scent of the lotions and perfumes Alyss used.
“I can imagine… Marcus, he… I went to the Rite of Sunset for him.”
“You did?” Eira yanked herself away to meet Alyss’s dark eyes.
“Yes. I would’ve regardless, but when I found out they weren’t letting you attend, I had to go.” Alyss smiled sadly. “I said a prayer on your behalf.”
“Alyss, I do not deserve you.” Eira pulled her friend close once more.
“After all you’ve been through, you deserve someone far better.” Alyss gave her a final squeeze but Eira was reluctant to let her go. “I saw your parents there.”
“My parents?” News had certainly traveled quickly. “Did they…did you speak to them?” Eira asked awkwardly. Hope tightened her chest. Though she didn’t know what she was hoping for.
“I didn’t. It…didn’t seem like the time.” Alyss frowned.
“Right, of course,” Eira mumbled. Fritz, Grahm, and Gwen had visited with her, briefly. Couldn’t her parents have come? Had they wanted to?
Alyss took her hand. “We should go; your uncle is waiting.”
Fritz was the last person Eira wanted to see, especially after the torment her mind had delighted in creating about her family for the past few days. But she knew she had no reason to object. So Eira followed Alyss dutifully back into the main spiral of the Tower.
Other apprentices stopped and stared as she passed. Eira heard whispers fluttering around her like small birds, ready to pick at her weary mind. They regarded her with skeptical glances and a few with outwardly hostile stares.
Cullen had been right. Everyone saw her as having a motive to get rid of her competition. Suddenly her known obsession with Meru was a liability. These people—her peers—thought she would kill them to get across the sea. They thought she would actually kill her brother for it.
Though, he wasn’t her brother. Perhaps that rumor had finally leaked somewhere and begun to spread too. Maybe, to all of them, she looked like a raging, orphaned child, shunned and cast out, seeking to take vengeance on a family she’d never belonged to.
Eira kept her eyes forward and her mouth shut. She didn’t trust what she might say if she opened it.
“I’ll be reading in my room. So when you’re done, if you want company, come and find me,” Alyss said as they came to a stop in front of Fritz’s door.
“Thank you,” Eira said. What she really wanted to do was beg Alyss not to leave. “I’ll see you soon.”
“You better. I missed you.” Alyss squeezed her hands and took a step away, waiting. Intentionally or not, her presence gave no room for Eira to run.
Ready or not, she had to face her uncle.
He was behind the desk, silently motioning to the seat in front of him. Eira shut the door and sat in her usual spot. The chair next to her—the one Marcus would fill—was painfully empty.
Eira broke the silence. “I’ve gathered I’m no longer a suspect?”
“In the eyes of the crown, and thus the senate? Yes. But there are many still skeptical of you.” He sighed. “But, more importantly, how have you been?”
“Fine,” she lied.
“I know that can’t be true.”
“You would’ve seen it if you came to visit me,” Eira said casually. She’d practiced this conversation in her head.
“I had matters to attend to that I couldn’t ignore—for your sake as well. None of us could risk coming to you and having it be discovered that you were no longer in that horrible cell.”
“Thank you for your efforts on my behalf.” Eira gripped the armrests of the chair lightly, bracing herself. “Did my parents make any efforts to come and see me?”
“I just said it wasn’t possible.” Fritz frowned and his eyes held a heavy sadness.
“Did they try and send a letter?” she asked. His silence told her the answer, but Eira pressed anyway. “Did they leave any message with you?”
“No.”
One word, spoken so calmly, had never been so loud. Fritz said nothing else on the matter, but Eira didn’t need him to. Her parents had written her off. And how could she blame them? After how she’d acted over the past few months, the revelation, Marcus’s death?
Eira expected it to hurt more. But any chance of feeling pain had been drowned in the ocean of numbness that she was sinking deeper and deeper into by the day. They stared at each other for a long minute, neither saying anything.
“Is there anything else, Uncle?”
“Yes, I need to go over the next steps for you.” His eyes dropped to the pin on her robes. “In light of the incidents, the fifth trial will not be happening. There aren’t any Waterrunners left as candidates, save for you. However, one of your instructors has said he’s willing to take your place.”
“You…you’re still expecting me to drop out?” Eira asked, incredulous. Her hand covered the pin, as if shielding it from his grasp.
“Eira…” He trailed off, staring at her. Was he somehow, honestly shocked she’d still want to go? Eira thought it’d be obvious. “Please, don’t do this.”
“I’m going,” Eira said calmly, even though she wanted to scream at him for even thinking of asking this of her after all that happened.
“I know how you must feel. This has been hard for you—for all of us.”
“You don’t have the slightest idea
