Chapter 8 #2
“If we’re really doing this,” he says, quieter now as he moves back to the bed, “you and me… then we have to trust each other.” He sits beside me, our knees brushing.
“No games. No half-truths. I know there are things you’re keeping from me—maybe things you felt like you couldn’t tell me before—but if this is going to work…
” He threads his fingers through mine. Warm.
Steady. Anchoring. “I need honesty, Celeste. Real honesty.”
He gives me a moment. The space to breathe.
“Just—start at the beginning.”
Just start at the beginning.
It sounds so simple. Like untangling everything I’ve buried is as easy as choosing a thread and pulling. But there’s nothing simple about the truth. Still, something in his voice… in the way he holds my hand like he’s not letting go… makes me want to try.
So I inhale, steady and slow, and I begin.
* * *
I was twelve when my magick first manifested. Younger than most other Magicks.
My father’s work had brought us to Bulgaria—another embassy, another temporary address.
There was a lake near the house we were staying in.
I passed by it every day on my way to school.
One morning, I saw a boy climb up an old oak tree.
A rope swing dangled from one of the limbs, the kind that arced out over the water like something out of a storybook.
The next day, determined, I decided to try it.
I waited until my father was gone—he’d always warned me to stay away from water because I couldn’t swim.
I remember looking up at that oak tree, thinking that its shadow was taller than our whole house.
The swing was just two rough pieces of wood nailed together—crooked, unstable, like a child had built it.
The rope was frayed and twisted. I grabbed it anyway and climbed up the hill to where I had seen the boy jump to move over the water.
And then I jumped.
The first glide out over the water was mesmerizing. I saw the entire lake stretched beneath me, the water a dark gray-blue with streaks of turquoise where the sunlight hit it just right. It felt like flying, like I was soaring over an ocean. But on the second—I heard a snap.
I looked up just in time to see that those frayed and twisted ropes were no longer attached to the sturdy tree, but instead free-falling, along with me, toward the deepest part of the lake.
I remember the water feeling cold as ice. I swear there were whispers as I plunged beneath the surface. And I felt the lake wrap around me, like silk and stone. I remember thinking that this was it, this was how I’d die. All my father’s warnings flooded back through my mind.
I thought I was drowning, and I didn’t even think to try to fight it.
Then—I opened my eyes.
I looked up to realize that I was at the bottom of the lake, completely unharmed. Sandy rocks were strewn about, wilted underwater plants being pulled languidly toward what looked like a spinning vortex of water all around me. The lake churned above me like a tornado—with me at its eye.
I was terrified. What twelve-year-old wouldn’t be?
Never mind I remember thinking at that moment, this is actually how I die.
But then—I saw a shadow move above me.
A face appeared at the top of the vortex—dark hair, silver-gray eyes, the boy I had seen the day before. The boy on the swing. “Hold on!” he shouted. “Don’t move!”
Something dropped toward me—long and black. At first, I thought it was just a rope, but then it shifted, pulsed, moved like it was alive.
Like shadow.
“Grab it!” he yelled.
I reached for the rope, and it curled around me protectively, almost like a hug. I was being pulled upwards from the bottom of the lake and out of the vortex. The shadow rope pulled me straight into the arms of that same boy, who started swimming us to shore.
That was how I met Gavrail.
He was two years older than me and was the first person to teach me about magick. About how I could somehow shape water, speak to it, command it. He lived in the house next door and was the son of a Bulgarian general.
His power was shadow. Rare. Coveted. Dangerous. He could manipulate any shadow around him, and if none were to be found, he could create them in a rush of dark and shimmering night. He taught me to love magick… and to respect it.
His father was known for finding exceptional Magickteers—what Bulgarians call those with magick in their blood—to use for spying, fighting, and other things behind closed doors that no one talked about.
Gavrail and I spent every possible moment together. At the lake. In the forest. Curled up in his room reading books or playing card games. I had never been around many kids the same age as me before. He was my first real friend. My best friend.
We’d spend hours laying out on the sun-warmed boulders by the lake, skipping stones, dreaming out loud. We’d talk about life, our hopes, the future… our future.
It was on one of those boulders where he kissed me for the first time. I was thirteen—full of teenage hormones and the awkwardness of youth. I’d just had yet another argument with my dad about magick. I had come to my lake to escape.
Gavrail sat beside me while I cried into his shoulder. He brushed a tear off my cheek and told me to stop crying because he couldn’t stand to see me sad.
And then he leaned in and kissed me. My first real kiss.
It would be a couple more years before we did anything beyond kissing. But he was patient. Never made me feel rushed or ashamed.
We’d often spend our afternoons secretly practicing magick—tucked away in a quiet cove along the lake, far from disapproving eyes.
Experimenting. Testing. Pushing the boundaries of what we could do.
The guilt I felt for betraying my father was matched only by the rush that came with each new discovery, each new skill we mastered.
Together, we discovered we could merge our powers to create something new: a dark, viscous substance made of condensed shadows and water.
We used it to catch insects we found high up in the trees or to snare fish beneath the lake’s surface.
We even learned to shape it into a cocoon—a dome that stopped sound and sight—so that my parents couldn’t hear us when he’d sneak into my room at night.
We called it shadowmire.
One night, shortly after my sixteenth birthday, he came into my room, frantic. He was leaving. His father had been reassigned to a new post. They were moving immediately. He was shaking as he cupped my face and told me that he would find a way to come back to me.
Then he kissed me—deeply, desperately—and I asked him to stay.
I knew that this might be our last night together. I wanted him to make it a night I would never forget.
I had never made love before, but that is what it was. Full of emotion. Full of sensation. Full of him. Full of me. Wrapped in our cocoon of shadowmire, we held each other like the sun would never rise.
But when the light started to peek over the horizon—we knew what it meant.
He kissed me one final time, told me he loved me.
I could tell there was something more he wanted to say, something else in his eyes—but he swallowed it.
Instead, he just told me to be careful, warned me against ever letting anyone know the full power that I carried.
That there were things that I needed to know, about my magick, about my family, my father.
Things that he would tell me when the time was right.
With one last look of longing, he climbed down from my window—and then he was gone.
I fell back asleep and woke when the sun was high, casting no shadows on the ground. Fitting, I thought, as my heart lay broken in pieces, mourning the shadows that would no longer be next to mine.
I grabbed my bike to hurry over to his estate, to see him one last time, only to find the house already empty, a few servants hastily boxing up what remained of my best friend and his family.
I ran to his room to find it completely empty of all the things that had made it my favorite space those past four years, all the things that were Gavrail—his coin collection, his sketchbook, his books, the drawing of me he had framed and hung over his desk—gone. All gone.
All except for a small velvet box.
It sat on his now-empty bed, next to a letter addressed to me.
Celeste,
There’s so much I wish I could tell you. But I can’t—not yet. Not without putting you in danger. And I hate that. I hate keeping anything from you.
What I can say is this: be careful. Please.
There is a kind of power in you that most people can’t even begin to understand.
It’s not only extraordinary—it’s dangerous.
Not because of what you might do, but because of what others will do to get to it.
To get to you. There are people out there who will hunt you for it. Who will try to hurt you for it.
You can’t let anyone know—not even the people you think you can trust. I know how that sounds, and I hate asking you to hide a part of yourself—but it’s the only way I know how to keep you safe.
You are everything to me. I need you to be okay. To be happy. Even if this life keeps us apart, then let the next one bring us back together. Because you are the ending to every story I know.
I love you. More than I know how to say. It’s always been you. It will always be you.
Yours,
Gavrail
Inside the box was a ring—two pear-shaped diamonds flanking a large cushion-cut deep-blue sapphire.
There was a note tucked inside: A belated birthday present.
The last thing he ever gave me.
That first week, I ran to the mailbox every day, convinced there would be a letter. But days turned to weeks. Weeks to months. Months to years. Nothing.
He was gone. Vanished like his shadows, like smoke after fire.
The boy who taught me how to build forts in the woods and whisper secrets into lakes until the lakes whispered back. The first person to teach me about magick. The first person to teach me about love.
The silence he left behind carved something out of me I’ve never been able to fill.