Chapter Thirty-Six
T he following day of training, I have no special visitors waiting for me when I meet Draven.
The day proceeds normally, and I attempt all of my usual tasks.
The good news is I’m definitely getting closer to completing them.
But the unfortunate news is that I still did not finish a single one of my assignments.
Though, I did make it eleven steps farther when balancing blindfolded across the tree before I slipped on a wide patch of lichen—an unusually exciting thing since I’ve never reached that particular patch before.
And even though my muscles ache and scream at me every single day, I can also feel them strengthening. I also notice my lungs can push themselves just a little further before burning. Not to mention how sharpened my senses are becoming.
Yet, in spite of all that progress, as I lay awake in bed after another exhausting day—my mind spinning with thoughts of what tomorrow’s test will entail—I keep going back to how Draven was today.
Despite yesterday’s events, he seemed…off.
And for the life of me, I can’t figure out why.
He still corrected my form like usual, and his touches still lingered for a moment, so I don’t think he was trying to be distant.
It’s more like his every movement, his every word was cradled by a muted sadness.
He didn’t even ask me a single question today.
When I inquired about why, he simply shrugged and attempted to offer me a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “No questions today,” was all he had replied in a soft murmur.
And within those three words, a story could have been written about the face of unspoken pain.
But the knot I can’t unravel is what shifted for him so quickly between yesterday and today.
Even more perplexing is why I care so much to find the answers.
I shake my head and roll my eyes up to the ceiling. After exhaling a long sigh, I quietly throw the blankets from my legs. My fingers stretch beneath my pillow, and I pull Casimir Vivaldri’s journal free.
If I’m going to be awake, thinking, I might as well do something productive with my active thoughts.
Making sure not to wake Marcella, I creep out of the room and tip-toe up to the rooftop balcony. I squeak the door open, prepared to be met with the breathtaking view of a silver moon glowing against a sparkling sky, but instead…
I’m met with the sight of Draven sitting propped up on the balcony’s ledge, the silver moon casting him in an ethereal mix of shadow and light.
His back is leaned up against a stone wall, and there is a wine jug resting limply between his fingers.
He stares out toward the starlit hills and waterfalls. And he looks…
Beautiful.
When he finally turns to look at me, his normally bright eyes are dim, as if all the light was stolen like a snuffed out candle wick. It threads a quiet sadness through my heart, seeing his eyes boast their usual color, but without any life in them at all.
“Lyra,” he says with a slur. “Welcome.” He drops his head back and rests it against the stone. He slides his knee toward his chest, and he takes a swig from the jug.
I approach him tentatively—how one would approach a bird they don’t want to fly away. “What are you doing out here?” I ask, making sure to keep my voice soft. “It’s the middle of the night.”
He slides his gaze to me. “I could say the same to you. You have a big test tomorrow morning, you know. ”
I laugh. “Yes, I’m aware.” I hoist myself up onto the balcony’s railing, near Draven’s feet.
He watches me quietly.
I nod toward the wine jug in his hand. “Do you want to talk about it?”
He drapes his arm over his propped knee, the wine jug now hovering to the side. Draven tilts his head. “Talk about what, exactly?”
I shrug, making sure to keep the gesture casual. “Whatever has you drinking alone on a balcony in the middle of the night.”
He huffs a dry laugh and drops his eyes to the wine, swirling it around. “No,” he murmurs, glancing back up at me after. “But maybe someday.”
I lean toward him, wearing an understanding smile. “I look forward to that day.”
The corner of his lip twitches—a micro gesture. “Me too.” He pauses, blowing out a breath. “Want a drink?” Draven lifts off the wall, holding out the jug for me to take.
I stare at it, considering. “Why not?”
When I reach for the jug, my fingers graze against his, and the tiny touch sends electrical currents rippling beneath my skin. I exhale a shuddering breath and press my lips to the tip of the jug, pulling a large gulp of wine. It’s warm, but the flavor is woodsy and rich.
“Not bad,” I say, handing it back to him.
A pleasant warmth instantly floods my body, coating me like a blanket.
So, not just commoner’s wine. Noted.
There is a brief passing silence before Draven nods toward my back. “Were you planning on reading that journal of yours out here again?”
I blink. How could he have possibly known that? It’s tucked into my waistband, hidden beneath my shirt.
My brow curves, and I glance at him sidelong. “Maybe,” I grumble.
His low chuckle is his only response.
I eye him pointedly before letting my gaze drift to the golden lanterns enclosing the sprawling gardens and walkways below, resting peacefully beneath the glow of a star-covered night. When I finally look away, I find Draven watching me with a small crease between his brows .
“What?”
He doesn’t respond right away. “It’s just…” he trails off, his voice softening. “Sometimes you remind me of someone I used to know.”
I study him carefully. “And is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“A good thing,” he assures me gently. “Definitely a good thing.”
For some reason, his answer makes me smile. “You’re different when you drink,” I point out, a tinge of humor coating my words.
He huffs a laugh. “Aren’t we all?”
“Yes,” I agree. “But not always for the better. You?” I pause, considering my words. “You’re softer. Kinder, even.”
He hums, taking another swig of wine. “And what are you like?”
“Me?” A slow grin spreads across my face. “I have two different versions of myself that I can become.”
“And they are?”
A wry smile sweeps across my lips. “Perhaps one day you’ll see them for yourself.”
He leans forward, a knowing expression in his eyes. “I look forward to that day. In fact,” he pauses, a smirk on his lips, “I’d find it a privilege.”
The words warm my cheeks. I suck in a breath and pull my eyes away from Draven’s, unable to hold his gaze any longer. Because when I look at him, something aches inside of me, begging to be released—to be felt.
And I do not wish to feel.
The air between us is silent for a long time. Until finally, Draven takes another swig of wine and speaks again. “I love the nights where I can watch the stars.”
“Really?”
A flicker of something—something fragile—quivers at the corner of his lips, as if trying to form a smile but forgetting how.
“Mhm,” he answers. “My mother…” He stops, his throat seeming to work around something heavy.
“My mother,” he tries again, voice steadier now.
“She loved the stars. Always said they filled her with a sense of possibility.”
“A beautiful sentiment,” I comment.
“It was,” he confirms. “She was a beautiful woman.” His voice has the reverent tenderness reserved only for the deepest of affections .
But the word choice is not lost on me.
She was.
Draven exhales softly. “When I was a boy, she would take me outside under her favorite tree, spread out a blanket, and we’d lay there all night, pointing out constellations.
For a long while, I thought she was a witch because I would always fall asleep with my head in her lap, but when I awoke the next morning, I was always in my bed.
” He chuckles, the sound heartachingly wistful.
Draven releases a loaded breath, looks up at the bright, silver moon, and takes a long, long pull from the wine jug.
And it’s a strange thing—to imagine Draven as a small, curious child, tracing the stars with wide eyes.
Until the exhaustion finally bests his trying eyelids, and they fall closed as he curls up in his mother’s lap.
He feels so far removed from that boy now.
Like they couldn’t have possibly been the same person.
In some twisted way, it makes me want to claw at whoever stole that away from him.
Whoever marred his heart with spoiled paint and careless brushstrokes, crushing such a fragile thing beneath the weight of hands that never learned how to handle something delicate and pure.
Draven continues, still staring at the moon.
“She would always find the brightest star in the sky, point at it, and say to me, ‘Do you see that star, Draven? It’s just like you. It doesn’t let the darkness swallow its shine; it burns brighter because of it.
’” He pauses, finding that bright star in the sky and pointing at it, dropping his hand back into his lap after.
His eyes go distant, swimming in memory.
And something about the story makes my heart squeeze.
A muscle in Draven’s jaw flickers. “I don’t talk about her enough,” he whispers. “She deserves to be talked about more—to be remembered by someone.” His voice is the ghost of a melancholy song, played on the strings of a broken heart.
A weight sinks in my own stomach, guilt throwing the anchor.
When was the last time I openly spoke of my mother? Allowed myself to remember her, fully and unabashedly?
I’m not sure if I ever have since the night she was stolen from me. The night that changed everything.
Draven exhales, tilting his head toward the stars as if searching for her—as if somewhere in that glittering expanse, she is waiting, watching. “Rivara’s skies were actually her favorite,” he tells me, his tone elevating. “She loved the colored stars more than anything else.”
“I can relate to the feeling,” I say with a fond smile. But then I blink, surprised. “Wait…have you been to Rivara?”
He nods. “Many times.”
“To the king’s court in Keziah?”
“Yup.”
A slight frown pulls at my lips as I attempt to remember all the faces I encountered there. I draw short on recalling ever seeing Draven—I know that if I did, I would have remembered. A face like Draven’s is impossible to miss. Even more impossible to forget.
As if reading my thoughts, the corner of his mouth quirks up, amusement flickering in his gaze. “Don’t worry,” he assures me. “You never saw me.”
But…
Does that mean you saw me?
Draven studies me. His gaze is quiet. And for the first time, unguarded. “She would have really liked you.”
The weight of his words crashes into me, rattling through my ribs, stealing the air from my lungs. I swallow. “I’m certain I would have really liked her.” The words escape on a whisper, my voice barely my own.
A crease forms between his brows again—like there’s more he wants to say, but doesn’t. Instead, he turns back to the stars, and I let the silence stretch between us, thick with something I won’t let myself acknowledge.
Finally, after the stars have sung and the moon has danced abundantly across the glassy waters, Draven takes his last swig from the wine jug and rises.
I swivel on the balcony, putting the hills and waterfalls to my back.
I watch Draven as he stands still for a long moment, as if contemplating something.
Eventually, he turns back around to face me, approaching with slow, fluid steps, stopping only when we are knee-to-knee, and I am tilting my chin up to meet the breathtaking green coloring his eyes.
His brows furrow slightly as he searches my gaze for something.
And then, as if finding his answer, a small curve sweeps his lips into a soft smile, and he lifts his hand to my face, gently spreading his fingers across my skin as he cups my cheek.
His thumb moves idly, tracing just below my cheekbone, and the tender gesture forces a knot to rise in my throat—results in something expanding in my chest that scares me more than any monster ever could.
And then slowly, with a featherlight touch, his thumb roves lower, gliding gently across my skin, until the tip of his finger reaches my lips.
Draven pauses, still watching me with achingly soft eyes.
His brows twitch before he traces the slope of my top lip, down until he grazes his thumb over the sensitive skin of my bottom lip, tugging it with him as he moves.
His touch sends an intoxicating hum down every inch of my skin, the feeling both cold and warm simultaneously.
Suddenly, my pulse kicks into an erratic rhythm as I wonder if Draven—with his low-lidded gaze and contemplative expression—is going to kiss me. As I become aware that I might not move away if he does.
Those peculiar, hypnotic eyes never leave mine as he grips my chin between his thumb and index finger and lifts gently.
His eyes crinkle softly, and he smiles at me—different than all the other times before.
“Thank you,” he murmurs. “For tonight. For listening.” And then he does a final sweep over my face, dropping his hand and retreating backwards after.
“Good luck tomorrow,” he says, turning away from me.
“Use your comrades if you need to. Just…stay safe.”
Then, without another word, he walks away.
I don’t even have time to tell him that he didn’t need to thank me—that I didn’t do anything worth receiving gratitude over—before he recedes into the shadows, leaving me alone on the balcony.
And it’s strange, the way the moon suddenly seems duller—the way the stars don’t appear to boast as loudly—in his absence.
So incomprehensibly odd, the way there is a small ache in my chest as I watch him go, feeling like something has suddenly gone missing.
The fact that I have the desire for it to come back.