Semua Bab The crippled omega warrior girl : Bab 51 - Bab 53

*Isla* Sava sleeps in Lark's bed with one wrist tied to the frame by a strip of cloth. Not tight. Not cruel. Tight enough that she cannot vanish before dawn. Lark sits on the floor beside her with a knife across her knees and the brass trial pin wrapped in oilcloth beside her boot. She has not said much since we came back from the river. I do not blame her. No one in Nightshade is sleeping. The common room is lit by one low lamp and the red coals of the hearth. Tomas has taken first watch at the window. Torven is cleaning mud from the serving knife he used in the archive stairwell. Sena is bent over maps with Cedric, marking the trial hall's anchor points from memory. Caelen stands apart from all of us. He is by the closed shutters, holding a long narrow case made of pale wood. I have seen it once before, wedged beneath his field trunk. I assumed it held some kind of blade. It might as well. Cedric finishes comparing the brass pin to the copied trial diagram. He rubs at his e

*Isla* At dawn, the trial hall smells of wet sand and cold iron. The wardkeepers have stripped the floor to bare stone and rebuilt the proving circle from scratch. Fresh sand lies inside the silver boundary lines. The old brass anchors have been removed under Cedric's supervision and placed in a sealed box at the judges' table. That is what everyone can see. Sena checks the brace beneath my trousers for the third time. Her fingers move quickly around the buckles. She has made me stand behind a canvas screen near the witness rail, out of sight of the benches. "Too tight?" she asks. "No." She gives me a look. I try again. "Not yet." "That is a real answer." "Do not get used to it." "I am writing the date down." The screen does not block the sound of the hall. Pack delegates filing into their benches. Academy officers whispering over papers. The scrape of Veyr's chair against stone. Somewhere, a torch is being lit. My hands are cold. The metal button at my collar has warm