The Firemage's Vengeance Read Online Free

said quietly. “How do you fare?”
    “The same as always,” she murmured.
    He swallowed. “I do not have as much time as I wish,” he said. “Jia needs me for something this evening, though I know not what.”
    Her brow creased, and she folded her arms across her chest. “Very well. I have said often enough you do not need to come and see me, if you are busy.”
    “I would not leave you alone. Not after …”
    Her eyes flashed as she looked at him. He fell silent. She did not like talk of Isra, who had been like a sister to her. Ebon supposed he could not blame her. He decided to change tack.
    “Why do we not take a walk upon the grounds?” he said, sitting up in his armchair. “It is cold, but in a bracing sort of way. The air might do you good. You hardly ever leave the citadel.”
    “That is the way I want it,” said Astrea.
    “It is not good to stay cooped up. Now more than ever. Come with me. It will be only a little walk.”
    She rolled her eyes, and for a moment reminded him strikingly of Albi, though the two of them could not have looked more different. “Very well.” She rose and followed him from the room, but he could not miss the morose stoop in her shoulders.
    Outside, the air was bracing indeed. It made him gasp as it first splashed across his face, and Astrea huddled closer under her cloak. But after a few minutes of walking, the blood began to flow, and his breath did not come quite so shaky. Astrea, despite the deep scowl she kept upon her face, began to move more easily as well. After a time she even threw back her hood. The night was dark now, but the Academy’s grounds were lit by many lanterns hanging from the walls.
    “How have you been feeling?” said Ebon after a while.
    “I am fine,” she grated. “Only I am sick of you and others asking me that, or some other version of it, as though you think some lever will be pulled within me, and one day I will answer you with a wide smile.”
    “My apologies,” said Ebon. “It is only … we worry for you.”
    “Why should you? You see me every day in class, after all.”
    “Is …” Ebon tried to remember how Halab had spoken to him before, so kind and gentle. “Is there any way I can help? Do you need anything?”
    She looked away to hide her eyes. “Other than for Isra to return, and for all of this to be a terrible dream?”
    After a moment he saw her shoulders quivering. He put out an awkward arm to drape across them. “I know she was like a sister,” he said quietly. “I cannot imagine what I would feel if my own sister were taken from me this way.”
    “Of course you cannot imagine it,” said Astrea sharply. But immediately she ducked her head. “I am sorry. I did not mean that.”
    “It is all right.”
    When she looked at him again, her eyes were wet. “She always looked after me. In our orphanage, sometimes food would be scarce. She would share hers with me so I would not get so hungry. Some other children liked to bully me, but Isra never let them get away with it. She could tumble anyone, even children larger than her. I have often become lonely here at the Academy. I have often wished I had parents to write home to, or who would come and visit me here. But during the day I could always go … go and see Isra and she would … she would …”
    She began to cry in earnest, burying her face in the front of Ebon’s robes. He held her tightly, awkwardly. With one hand he gently patted her hair.
    Her words echoed in his mind, giving him a feeling of vague unease. The Isra Astrea praised so highly was nothing like the Isra he had known. He still had dreams, sometimes waking, sometimes in his sleep, of Isra’s mad eyes as she tried to kill him. He still saw Vali, his neck snapped on the stone wall, and Oren, pierced by dozens of knives in the dining hall.
    How could the monster who did those deeds have been so loved by this innocent, sweet girl? It seemed even the worst sort of people had some good in them. If that