Revolutionary
The wanted postings appear the next morning.
They’re affixed to the message boards of every tavern, lodging house and hall.
I skid to a halt at my first sighting of the crisp sheets of parchment. A newly vicious cold has swept in with the morning wind, and it burns at my exposed skin and chills my lungs. It sets me shivering and hugging my winter cloak tight with woolen-gloved hands as I peer at the notice before me.
It’s nailed to a board outside the apothecary lab. Across the street, three Elfhollen scholars slow then stop in front of another posting tacked onto a lamppost. Their circle tightens as they murmur gravely to each other, their faces growing troubled as they read.
By joint order of the Verpacian and Gardnerian military forces, a search for those connected with the destruction of the Gardnerian’s Fourth Division military base is being aggressively conducted and a reward has been posted.
Rebels... Revolutionaries... Resistance. As I skim the posting, these words stand out in sharp relief. Each of them sends a fresh stab of fear through me. I’m seized by a sudden, startling understanding that my brothers and I, our strange circle of friends...
My stomach gives a hard lurch.
We’ve become all of these things.
I read on, light-headed, struggling to see the letters through a fog of disorientation.
Information regarding those connected with the destruction of the Gardnerian Fourth Division base is to be immediately brought to the attention of the base’s newly appointed military leader: Commander Lukas Grey.
Just above the poster hangs a fresh advertisement for the upcoming Gardnerian Yule dance. Next week’s end.
He’ll be back, I realize, heart thudding. To bring me to the dance, and to find those responsible for the mayhem.
My knot of fear pulls tighter.
How on Erthia will we possibly evade Lukas Grey?
* * *
We’re avoiding each other, all of us. The stakes raised impossibly high.
“Bring Tierney to Professor Kristian,” Yvan tells me in passing, late that night in the kitchens, his voice terse, his eyes averted, as if the very sight of me burns his eyes. He stalks off toward the other Kelts, and my heart aches.
The way he’s avoiding me—it goes beyond what we all have to do for self-preservation. No, this is more than that. Something between Yvan and me has fractured, and I don’t know how to fix what we’ve broken.
* * *
I drag myself back to the North Tower that night, a dulled fear humming inside me. There’s a package for me there, Wynter handing it to me with no small amount of alarm.
“There was a soldier here,” she tells me in a small voice. “He almost saw her.” Her silver eyes dart toward Marina, who’s watching us intently, fear etched on her face.
I take the package into my hands and turn it over, concern spiking.
Another gift from Lukas. But small this time. I open the card first.
Elloren,
It seems our finest have misplaced a dragon. I’ll look for you when I arrive.
Lukas
I open the small package as Wynter watches with wary curiosity.
It’s a necklace, and I pull up the silver chain, letting the pendant dance in the air between us, glinting in the soft lantern light of the upstairs hallway.
A tree. Intricately carved in white wood.
I grasp the pendant in my hand and breathe in a deep, startled breath as a huge, branching Snow Oak bursts into view, caressing my mind, sending out branches through my limbs, clear down to my hands and feet.
It roots me right to the floor, this wood, steadying me, a pulsating echo of pleasure coursing through me.
I release the wood, breathing hard.
“Careful, Elloren Gardner,” Wynter cautions, eyeing the pendant in the same way I’ve seen her look at Ariel’s nilantyr.
“I know what I’m doing,” I tell her uneasily.
It’s the right thing to do, I reason with myself. To stay on Lukas’s good side and pretend that everything is fine and normal. I’ll wear it every day so that he finds it on me when he arrives.
I can picture him now, spotting the chain, sliding his pianist fingers along my neck to guide the necklace into the open, closing his palm around the tree pendant as he smiles at me.
A prickling flush heats my cheeks at the thought of him, and I’m instantly ashamed of my imaginings.
I slip the pendant’s chain around my head, drop the tree inside my tunic and attempt to push thoughts of Lukas out of my mind.
But I can feel the wood of the small tree pulsating against my skin, like a warm, unsettling heart.