Burning Glass (Burning Glass #1)(10)
“The blood-letting worked,” she said, her voice still emotionless. “Yuliya’s fever broke. Then when the convent started burning and the flames barricaded me from assisting those in the east wing, Yuliya could no longer endure the suffering she felt from so many. She took a knife to her leg and”—she briefly looked down before returning her detached gaze—“she hit a large artery. The blood came too fast. She was gone within minutes.”
Every word she spoke came like a blow to my gut. I had done this, not she. I had locked the Auraseers away. Let the peasant man in. Allowed his insanity to overtake me. Allowed it to start a fire that burned everything, harmed everyone. Killed them. Killed my best friend.
I needed to sit. No, I had to stand. Pace. Leave. See Yuliya for myself. But my legs were made of lead. My heart was heavier. Because how could a person with any feeling do what I had done?
“Pardon me, but . . .”
Distractedly, my eyes wandered to Prince Anton, who had just spoken. He darted his gaze between the sestra and me, clearly uncomfortable with what he’d just witnessed between us. I could only imagine his discomfort if he knew what the sestra did—that I was guilty. He merely understood another Auraseer had died. What was she to him among so many who’d perished at this convent?
“That is to say,” the prince continued, “I’m very sorry for your losses. However—”
“You do not care about us or our losses,” I snapped, ignoring the prickling sense of fresh sorrow within me. It couldn’t possibly be coming from him. “You think only of your own.” I referred to the death of his mother, another monarch who surely didn’t mind that the Auraseers of her empire were herded like cattle and given a life akin to slavery.
Anton’s distinguished brows slid together until they almost touched, and his brown eyes hardened into stone. “You have my sympathy,” he said. “Whether you choose to believe me or not isn’t my concern. I will not express it again.”
I clenched my teeth. Let him be angry. Anger was useful. I could latch on to it, let it blind me to far more painful emotions—to the image of Yuliya’s face, pasty and drained of life. To the terror she must have felt in her last living moments.
Anton broadened his chest and didn’t flinch from my stare. “I am required back at the palace in haste. The law”—an intense sentiment ignited in him at that word, so fleeting, however, I couldn’t name it—“also requires I bring the eldest Auraseer of Riaznin.”
“Sonya,” Sestra Mirna said.
“Yes?” I looked to her, but her eyes were fixed on the prince.
“The others are dead,” she said. “Yuliya is dead. Sonya is the eldest.”
CHAPTER FOUR
A HORRIBLE CONCOCTION OF AMAZEMENT AND DREAD churned in my stomach. Judging by the slack-jawed look on Anton’s face, his emotions were the same and compounded those within me. Our eyes met with mutual displeasure.
“Is there no one else?” Anton asked Sestra Mirna in a low voice, as if somehow I wouldn’t be able to hear him.
“The remaining two are but children.”
Anton frowned, his gaze raking over me. “She cannot be much older.”
Dimly, I registered being affronted at that. He couldn’t be much older than me. But what did it matter how old I was if no other Auraseer could outrank me in age? As Anton said, the law was the law and . . . I could no longer think. Nausea took a sudden hold of me, and I tightened my grip on the chair. This couldn’t be happening.
Sestra Mirna clasped her hands together at the front of her bloody apron. “Sonya will be ready within the hour to accompany you to Torchev.”
“Within the hour?” I blinked at both of them. “I cannot possibly . . . Yuliya has her burial rites. She cannot be laid to rest for three days.” My heart ached with immeasurable grief. My eyes burned, too dry from incessant weeping to release my trapped tears. They wouldn’t make me leave now, not without saying a proper good-bye to someone who had died because of me. This day had been cruel enough.
I felt Anton weighing my words over, as if they were a measure of barley cupped in his hands. His booted toe tapped the stones in deliberation.
“She was my only friend here,” I said, grasping for his sympathy. Was a prince of Riaznin capable of any—even a fragment?
Tap, tap, tap. His boot kept its cadence. Perhaps he asked himself the same question. Could he give a no-account girl like me compassion?
My heart drummed. “Give me three days.” In three days I could do many things. Accept Yuliya was dead. Somehow part with her. Find a way to escape before the emperor required me.
Anton’s boot stilled. I held my breath.
“We must leave this night.” His gaze lowered to my nose, anywhere but my eyes. My chest fell, collapsing like my bones were brittle clay. “My brother is insistent. Your circumstance will not move him.”
“But death has touched him, too. Your own mother—”
“Do not speak of my mother!” His finger whipped to point at me, as threatening as if he’d held forth a blade. “She was buried while I traveled here for you. I could not take part in her last rites. I could not even bear the weight of the stone to seal closed her coffin. This errand for another Auraseer”—his hand waved dismissively at me—“for the means to protect the emperor and his mighty throne”—those words pelted like acid—“came at the expense of everything else. So believe me when I tell you, Valko does not have ears to hear your plea.”