Chapter 9 _Glacial Whispers

The stone railing was still cold against my left hand when I finally stepped away from the edge of the terrace. Vance had left me there with his three-day deadline hanging over my head. The cold night air did nothing to ease the pressure.

Three days before the black veins spreading up my wrist reached my heart. Three days before the antidote in his pocket became the only thing that could save my life from ending in a cold grave beneath the ice of Mount Kosciuszko.

I quickly pulled my hand back into the white leather glove, flinching when the rough leather rubbed against my numb skin. The numbness was slowly moving up my hand and reaching my wrist. My wrist felt heavy and weak.

​I couldn't go back into the Great Hall. The sound of clinking glasses, shallow laughter, and courtly lies would have pushed me past the edge of my sanity. Instead, I retreated into the narrow, unlit service corridor that snaked behind the hall’s northern wall. It was a drafty artery of cold stone used mostly by servants carrying firewood, dark enough to hide the ragged rhythm of my breathing and narrow enough to make me feel small.

​I leaned my back against the damp masonry, shutting my eyes tightly. The canvas binder across my chest felt tighter than ever, a cruel vice crushing my lungs every time I tried to draw a full breath.

​Breathe, I commanded myself. You are steel. You are an officer of the line.

​"Steel bends under cold pressure, Cadence Officer. Eventually, it just snaps."

​My eyes snapped open. My left hand moved by instinct, sweeping toward the hilt of my dress sword before my mind even registered the sound.

​A figure stepped out from the deep shadow of an arched alcove just five paces away. He moved without the heavy, weighted step of a soldier, slipping into the faint moonlight filtering through a high arrow-slit like mist rising off frozen ground.

​Locke.

​He wasn't wearing military wool or ceremonial velvet. Locke dressed in high-collared grey silk, unadorned except for the silver signet ring resting on his left index finger the mark of the Imperial Archives. He looked slender, almost frail compared to men like Vance, but the cold, analytical stillness in his pale eyes made my blood run far colder than any drawn blade.

​"You're out of bounds, Locke," I said, forcing my voice to drop into its familiar, icy register despite the panic thrumming through my pulse. "Cadets and archivists aren't permitted in the private quarters corridor during high banquets."

​"Neither are dying officers," Locke replied softly.

​He didn't raise his voice. He didn't move aggressively. He simply tilted his head, his pale eyes catching the silver moonlight as he looked at my gloved right hand, which I had tucked firmly behind my back.

​"What do you want?" I demanded, taking half a step backward. My heel hit the solid stone wall. There was nowhere to retreat.

​"I want to understand why a rising star of the academy is carrying black-vein rot in her right arm," Locke said, taking a slow, measured step forward. "And why did she spend forty minutes in her private chambers this morning trying to feel the prick of a silver fork in her own skin."

​A sickening drop echoed in my stomach. He was watching. He had eyes inside my private quarters, or worse, he was reading the quiet reports written by the servants.

​"The academy's medical matters are under Commander Vance's authority," I snapped, trying to project a confidence I was rapidly losing. "If you have concerns about my health, take them to the high desk."

​"Vance?" Locke let out a small, quiet laugh a dry, humorless sound that barely stirred the quiet air between us. He took another step, closing the distance until barely two feet separated us in the narrow hallway. "Vance gives you the vials, Tarni. He doesn't read the ledgers. He doesn't look at where the ledger pages have been torn out."

​I frowned, the tension in my shoulders tightening until it hurt. "What ledgers?"

​Locke didn't answer right away. He reached into his grey silk coat, pulling out a small, leather-bound notebook tied with a frayed yellow ribbon. He didn't open it; he just rested his long, pale fingers against the cover, tapping a slow, rhythmic beat against the leather.

​"Twenty-one years ago," Locke murmured, his voice dropping an octave, slipping into that soft, mesmerizing tone he used when unravelling historical mysteries, "the Royal Archives experienced a very specific fire. A small blaze. Confined entirely to the vault containing the regional birth registries of the southern provinces."

​"Fires happen," I rasped, my throat raw from the morning's coughing fit. "Old parchment burns."

​"It does," Locke agreed, taking one final step forward. He was close now, uncomfortably close. The faint scent of old ink, dried lavender, and cold winter air rolled off his clothes. "Except the fire didn't burn everything. It consumed only three pages. Three names born on the same night during the winter solstice at the base of Kosciuszko."

​He leaned in closer. I wanted to push him away, to draw my sword and demand he step back, but my right hand was useless, and my left was pinned against the stone by his sudden, suffocating proximity.

​"Two of those infants were recorded as stillborn," Locke whispered. His breath brushed against the sensitive skin just below my ear, sending a shudder straight down my spine. "The third name was scratched out with iron gall ink, overlaid with a false registry seal from an orphanage in the capital."

​My heart gave a violent, painful thud against my bruised ribs.

​"Why are you telling me this?" I asked, my voice barely a thread.

​"Because the ink used to seal that forged entry matches the exact chemical composition of the Vitae Restorative you swallow every morning," Locke whispered, his lips almost touching the curve of my jaw. The sheer weight of his presence, combined with the lethal quiet of his words, held me completely motionless. "The elders aren't trying to cure your ribs, Tarni. They aren't trying to make you stronger for the vanguard."

​He slid his gaze down to my eyes, his face inches from mine in the dim light. The warmth of his breath was the only heat in the freezing corridor, a sharp contrast to the terrifying coldness of his words.

​"They're burying a mistake," he whispered. "They gave you that name. They gave you that uniform. And now that you're old enough to ask questions about who you were before the academy took you... the elders are making sure you never reach the summit of Kosciuszko alive."

​The hallway seemed to tilt around me. The stone at my back felt ice-cold, pressing through the velvet of my uniform. A lie. My entire life, my rank, my

suffering under the tight bindings, the cold isolation I endured all of it built on a ledger page burned twenty-one years ago.

​"You're lying," I choked out, though deep in my chest, a dark, terrifying certainty was already taking root. "You're trying to turn me against command."

​"Look at your hand, Tarni," Locke said softly, stepping back just an inch, his eyes dark with a mix of pity and cold calculation. "Ask yourself why Vance handed you that tonic with a smile tonight. Don't trust the elders. Don't trust the men who claim to shield you while pouring poison down your throat."

​He reached out, his cool fingers gently brushing against the side of my neck, right over the racing pulse point beneath my stiff velvet collar.

​"If you want the rest of the burned page," Locke murmured, his voice a ghost of a whisper, "meet me at the old observatory tower at midnight. Come alone."

​Before I could answer, a loud, heavy footfall echoed from the far end of the service corridor the iron-shod boot of a high officer approaching the turn.

​Locke didn't flinch. He simply slid his hand away from my neck, slipped the small leather notebook back into his coat, and stepped backward into the deep shadows of the stone alcove.

​The shadow seemed to swallow him whole just as a tall, broad-shouldered figure rounded the corner, the crimson light of an oil lantern cutting through the darkness.

​It was Vance. He stopped dead in his tracks, lifting the lantern high. The golden light washed over me, illuminating my pale face, my ragged breathing, and the gloved hand I was struggling to keep hidden behind my back.

​Vance’s dark eyes narrowed as he looked at the empty corridor behind me, then slowly brought his gaze back to my face.

​"Who were you speaking to, Cadence Officer?" Vance asked, his voice low and dangerous, the iron latch of his sword sheath clicking softly in the quiet.