Pain was a white, hot light. It was all I was.
I was bleeding hands. I was my throbbing leg, which was still sluggishly oozing blood onto the stone floor of the exit. I was the raw, shredded skin of my shoulders from the chasm wall.
And Caelen val-Valerius was staring at me like I was the monster.
His face was a mask of pure, cracked-ice shock. His control, that perfect, arrogant, cold-marble control, was gone. He was looking at me like I was a thing that could not be.
I just stared back, breathing hard, my body shaking with exhaustion and a rage so cold it was almost peaceful. It was the calm of a snake that's been stepped on, coiling to strike.
Professor Varrick, damn his scarred face, looked from me to Caelen and back to me. His one good eye was wide, and it was fixed on my hands. On the un-made handholds I'd left in the rock. He knew. He knew what I'd done, if not how.
A slow, grim, and utterly terrifying smile spread across his scarred lips.
"Well," he growled, his voice full of a dark, new respect. "It seems the gutter-rat... climbs."
He made a mark on his clipboard. Thwack.
"Val-Valerius. Rostova," he announced. "You pass. Get to the medical. You," he pointed at me, "look like shit."
He turned and walked away.
That was it. You pass.
Caelen didn't move. He couldn't. He was still frozen, his mind clearly not processing the fact of me.
I used the wall to push myself up. My leg screamed. I bit back a cry, my vision going gray at the edges.
I was not going to collapse. Not in front of him.
I took one, limping, agonizing step. And another.
I was going to walk right past him.
"How?" he whispered.
His voice was not cold. It wasn't arrogant. It was a raw, broken, confused sound.
I stopped, right beside him. I was so close I could feel... it. The thrum. The sick, magnetic pull. But it was different now. It wasn't a dizzying height. It was the hum of the blade that had been aimed at my back. It was the feeling of my enemy.
I turned my head. I looked at his perfect, pale, shocked face.
And I smiled. A real, Dregs-smile. All teeth and no warmth.
"I climb," I whispered, mocking Varrick.
And I limped past him, leaving a small, bloody footprint on the perfect, polished floor right next to his perfect, clean boot.
I didn't go to the medical.
The rage was a drug, better than any medicine. It was holding my bones together. It was keeping the pain at bay.
He murdered me. He had decided, with his perfect, arrogant logic, that I was a problem to be solved. He had cut the rope.
And he had failed.
He thought he was walking away. He thought he'd go back to his perfect room in his perfect wing of this black-stone hell. He thought he could just... move on.
I was going to show him.
I was going to show him what he had created.
I ignored the stairs to the Rookery. I ignored the signs for the medical wing that Rhys had pointed out. I limped, my body a single, screaming nerve, toward the other side of the college. The elite wing.
I knew where he'd be.
He wasn't a person. He was a machine. A machine of control. And when a machine like that breaks, when his perfect, logical plan fails so spectacularly, it doesn't go to rest. It goes to reset.
It goes to train.
I found the training hall on the third sub-level, the one I'd been late for. It was empty at this hour, after a trial. Everyone else was either bleeding or celebrating.
The doors were heavy oak. I didn't open them. I just... leaned on one. It swung open with a silent whoosh.
The hall was vast. The floor was polished wood, so clean it reflected the gray light from the high, slitted windows. Weapon racks lined one wall. Practice dummies lined the other.
And there he was.
He wasn't training.
He was standing in the exact center of the room, his back to me. His hands were clenched at his sides. He was perfectly, unnaturally still. He was a statue of fury. He was trying to put his own shattered pieces back together.
He knew I was there. He must have felt me the same way I felt him. The Resonance in the room was a low, agonizing wail.
"You're a contamination," he said, his voice a low, shaking growl. He didn't turn. "You're a disease. I purged you."
I limped onto the wood floor. The sound of my one good boot, and the drag of my wounded one, was a thud-scrape, thud-scrape, in the perfect, silent hall.
I was a Dreg-rat, trailing my blood and my filth all over his perfect, clean floor.
I stopped ten feet behind him.
"You tried to kill me."
It wasn't a question. It wasn't an accusation. It was a fact. I said it quietly. The cold, quiet words were more powerful than any scream.
He flinched. The word kill... it hit him.
He turned, slowly.
His face was not controlled. It was raw. His eyes were wide, and there was a flicker in them I had never seen before. Not anger. Not hate.
Fear.
He was afraid of me.
"I..." He struggled. The perfect, eloquent heir was gone. "I tried to save you."
I laughed. The sound was a harsh, ugly bark in the pristine hall. It was the laugh I'd given him in the forest. "Save me?" I spat. "From what? From passing? From winning? From living?"
"From THIS!" he exploded, his voice a sudden, uncontrolled roar. He gestured around at the cold, black walls. "From this place! You don't belong here, you... you chaos!"
He was breathing hard, his Aether flaring around him, invisible but felt. It was a pressure in the room, a static that made my hair stand on end.
"You're a rat in a wolf's den!" he shouted, taking a step toward me. The thrum between us spiked, a painful, shared shriek. "You were wounded. You were weak. You would have been torn apart in the next trial! I was sparing you! I was saving you from a fate you are too stupid to even see!"
He was trying to convince himself.
I let him finish. I let his shouting echo in the vast, empty room.
And then I took my own step.
I limped, dragging my bloody leg, closing the distance he'd demanded. Ten feet. Eight. Five.
I stopped when I was right in his face.
I was a full head shorter than him. I was covered in blood, and dirt, and sweat. He was a pristine, marble god.
And he was terrified.
I looked up, right into his panicked, icy-blue eyes.
"You. Don't. Get. To. Decide."
I said the words quietly, but they were blades.
"You don't get to decide who I am," I whispered, my voice shaking with a cold, pure, hate. "You don't get to decide what I'm for. And you sure as hell don't get to decide when I die."
I got even closer, until I could feel the heat of his panic.
"You tried to murder me, Caelen. You had your one shot. And you failed. So you listen to me. I'm not a problem you solve. I'm a ghost. And I'm going to haunt you."
I held his gaze, my Dregs-hate warring with his high-elite-terror.
And for the first time... he was the one who looked away.