22. Clear as the Stars
Clear as the Stars
Seren might not have agreed had he thought it through. He’d imagined whacking a sword at a straw dummy, like village children pretending to be heroes. There aren’t any straw dummies in this clearing, but surely Nevander could have conjured one.
Instead, Seren holds a thin branch, stripped with permission from a nearby tree, as Nevander circles him. The pixies chatter from the remaining tree boughs, watching with unflattering interest.
“A bit lower,” Nevander says thoughtfully. His touch above Seren’s elbow is professional, guiding Seren into position. “Relax your arm more.”
Difficult when Nevander’s breath brushes Seren’s hair. “Like this?”
“Try shrugging your shoulders up,” Nevander says, touching the crest of Seren’s spine. “Tense up intentionally—like your wings are lifting.”
Much easier directions to follow. Seren draws himself up until his shoulders nearly touch his ears, hyper aware of Nevander’s attention. Far more distracting than the pixies’ commentary.
“Now relax,” Nevander says.
Seren’s breath rushes out as he slumps.
“Perfect.” Nevander picks up his own branch, like a natural extension of his arm. “Strike my weapon.”
“How?” Seren asks, adjusting his grip.
“Any way you like. Just get used to the feeling.”
Seren adjusts again, then lunges forward. He tries to move like he remembers Nevander darting at the augray. Quick, powerful. Self-consciousness stiffens his movements. His branch strikes Nevander’s with a clumsy thud, and scrapes as he draws back.
The pixies cheer with muddled questions.
“That was good,” Nevander says—even though he can’t lie. “One more time. Slower.”
Seren shakes the tension from his arm and repeats the movement. Nevander’s branch still doesn’t shake, and Seren is still clumsy. But the praise must be getting to Seren’s head. He doesn’t feel as hopeless.
“Soon I’ll be able to defeat a stationary enemy,” Seren says, shaking his arm again. “Especially if they advise me on every swing.”
Nevander lowers his branch. His blue-green eyes glitter like pixie dust. “Soon is relative. Eventually, I believe you’ll be able to defeat any enemy that dares walk this realm.”
Nevander’s words resonate like an incantation. The idea isn’t as impossible as Seren might have thought even a week ago. Nor as frightening. Seren lived years as an unwanted replacement. To have power in his own right is shamefully appealing.
Yet there’s no shame in Nevander’s conviction. Of course. He traveled to Wymond to fetch the crown prince Calithel, not an angsting village boy.
Nevander says the right words, but Seren yearns to crack open his shields and read his darkest thoughts. Thorns of jealousy twist deeper—jealousy of his own birth name. His own role in Nevander’s heart.
Across the clearing, the dancing lights retreat into the evening. The pixies have grown bored of the demonstration.
“Do you still think of me as Calithel?” Seren asks.
Nevander’s gaze probes like a sword. “No. You aren’t the prince I imagined.” His voice softens. “You’re far better.”
Seren wants very badly to believe that. “If you keep flattering me, I’ll suspect you have ulterior motives.”
“Doesn’t everyone?” Nevander mirrors Seren’s deflection. Approaching, he traces the length of Seren’s practice blade. “When I first learned, I swung plain wooden swords for months. But let’s try something more exciting. Can you focus on your essence?”
Seren closes his eyes for a moment, tapping into the well of magic Primrose showed him. “Yes.”
“Focus on yourself, and on the branch.” A gentle touch warms Seren’s clenched fingers, even through Nevander’s gloves. “Its purpose as a weapon. Your desire to strike. What is a sword?”
“It’s a weapon,” Seren says hesitantly. Then more boldly, because he trusts Nevander not to berate him for getting this wrong. “It’s sharp. It harms, and it protects.”
“Sharpen your magic. Braid a thread of power into the essence of the sword.”
Even as Nevander retreats, his words and touch linger.
Seren doesn’t know if this will work, but Nevander instructs with such confidence.
Following his directions feels natural. Seren feeds a tendril of magic into the branch, remembering the easy flow of Nevander’s blade.
Connection. Purpose. The sword is magic, and the magic is Seren, and Seren is the sword.
His eyes snap open. He doesn’t remember closing them. But the branch now shimmers iridescent whenever he blinks.
Nevander raises his own branch. “Strike again.”
Seren darts forward. The sliver of magic connects. Nevander’s branch splinters.
Seren drops his own branch, the connection broken. “Oh, gods. Spirits. It worked!” He scrambles to retrieve his weapon. “If it’s supposed to do that, anyway.”
Nevander passes a hand over his branch, and the splinters re-knit beneath his touch. “A fae’s strength of magic is more important than the material of their weapon. Lady Morana once won a duel while wielding a catkin.”
Nevander’s emotions are still shielded tight, but joy glimmers in his face. He’s genuinely thrilled, and that amplifies Seren’s own swirling emotions. Happiness. Gratitude. Nevander didn’t have to do any of this. The trip to Spiritwood. The sword lesson. The pixies.
“I’m sorry,” Nevander says, a shadow in his voice.
Seren wags his branch like a scolding finger. “You’re the one who said not to apologize. Whatever’s the matter now?”
Nevander nudges the waving branch aside. “You look so… light. It makes me realize how unhappy you’ve been.”
Seren takes in the silvery trees, the slanting sunlight. “I’m happy right now. Thank you for that.”
“You’re welcome, always.” Nevander taps his cheek. “You have pixie dust on your face.”
Seren scrubs with his sleeve. “Did I get it?”
“Not at all. Let me…”
Then Nevander is right there, touching Seren’s face, and neither of them can breathe. Nevander’s gloved thumb slides over Seren’s cheekbone. Metaphors of enchantment fail him. There’s only the visceral drag of leather against skin. The flicker of Nevander’s gaze to Seren’s lips.
Seren opens his empathy by flustered instinct, desperate for some clue to the next five seconds. Whether this tension is accidental or impossibly intentional.
Surely Nevander isn’t about to kiss him. However much Seren wants him to.
Seren’s empathy crashes against the smooth stone of Nevander’s heart. Other notes sing out. Mischief from the pixie swarm. Patience from the great silver tree. Predatory excitement. Blood and shadow pounding, eager for the hunt.
With a gasp, Seren swings around. “Something’s wrong.”
Nevander flinches back. “I apologize for overstepping—”
“Not you.” Seren clutches his practice branch, as if he could do anything. “Something’s coming. An augray. No. Two of them, from that way.”
Predators arrow closer. Across the clearing, tiny voices rise and scatter.
“Why are they here?”
“Aren’t they frightful?”
“Shouldn’t we flee?”
“Shouldn’t we flee?”
Nevander’s golden blade jumps to his hand. “Run to the treehouse. Wait.” Pale green wings displace the air with a crack. Nevander yanks out a feather. “This will get you past the circle.”
The great tree isn’t far. Seren grasps the feather and halts mid-step. His mind whirls with foreign hunger. “Are you coming too?”
“I’ll follow,” Nevander growls, shoving Seren forward. “Shield your mind and run.”
Running is easy. Reweaving his shield is harder in Seren’s panic.
With each push against the soft earth, each whip of meadowgrass, Seren shores up his defenses with comforting truths.
Nevander is right behind him. Nevander chased off the last augray.
If Seren does what Nevander says, everything will be fine.
Halfway to the tree, excitement pierces Seren’s shields.
The thrill of a predator spotting its prey.
He glances over his shoulder, unable to resist. Dark, too-familiar shapes spear from the tree line.
Cat-like hounds or hound-like cats, with burning eyes and dagger teeth. Shadows skirl in their wake.
They run far faster than Seren and Nevander. Seren races forward, gasps propelling each step. Cold nips his heels, and shadows flicker at the edge of his vision.
Thirty feet from the great tree, the grasses cut off in a perfect circle. Colorful pebbles swarm the border—no, mushrooms. Green light flares in welcome as Seren crosses the border. He staggers around.
Nevander promised to follow, but not all the way. He stands ten feet away, rooted in place, to meet the first augray’s charge. His wings tuck close, and he surges forward, colliding with the augray in midleap.
Blood and feathers spray. Seren can’t see whose, because the second augray dodges the fray, arrowing straight towards him.
Seren scrambles back with a strangled shriek. He’s too close, too slow. His mind sings with hunger, purpose, bloodchilling joy, as his eyes fill with gleaming fangs. The augray leaps, claws outstretched.
Green light flashes again. The augray slams into solid air. It lands clumsily, tail thrashing. Swipes again, but the mushroom circle holds. Frustration storms, then vanishes, as Seren finally restores his shields.
Relief blooms in its place. The mushroom circle works. Seren is safe here, even with the augray pacing its border, close enough to pick out the faint green iridescence of its black pelt. The gray sclera of its eyes.
A metallic moan shrieks out. Seren and the augray both turn as Nevander’s sword rips through the other augray.
Black blood splashes gray armor. The moan cuts off. The creature slumps to the ground. First its hindquarters. Then, nearly severed apart, the remainder relaxes into a pool of entrails.
Nevander braces himself, intent not on the surviving augray, but on an empty space in the center of the clearing.
“What’s out there?” Seren asks, fear shoving down his nausea. “Join me in the circle.”
“Stay there,” Nevander says, which isn’t an answer.
The surviving augray circles a wide berth around Nevander and the steaming corpse. It stops, forming a triangle between itself, Nevander, and the empty space—the slice of nothing that shimmers into shadow.
Then resolves into a figure. Dark as the night. Clear as the stars. Clad in black armor, Lord Midnight stands with an augray’s vicious grace.
“Begone,” Nevander says, with such anger Seren isn’t sure how Midnight stays standing. “You are forbidden from this land.”
Midnight extends both hands to the sides, as if in greeting. “This isn’t your domain, Lord Guardian.” A dark, thin blade appears in each hand. “The queen is dead. The king has not been crowned.”
Something is different about him today. Violence sings beneath his words.
“Nevander,” Seren calls, his own voice sharp and strange. “I command you to get inside the circle.”
He doesn’t even know if the mushroom circle can shield against Midnight. He just has a bad feeling. Whatever Midnight wants, however Midnight found them, Seren wants Nevander safe.
But of course, Nevander only moves to step between them. His wings obscure Seren’s view. “I’m not bound to obey you, Highness.”
“What the fuck are you bound to?” Seren demands.
Nevander’s answer is to strike in a blur of pale feathers. Midnight meets him in a chorus of cold metal and colder laughter. They move faster than Seren can track, dodging more than they hit.
A rare glancing blow slashes a white streak in Nevander’s gray armor. As if cutting paper. Seren’s heart stumbles. He calls a dagger from his carryhold, because his empty hand aches. But he can’t move from the circle. Nevander told him to stay. Seren would just get in the way.
The surviving augray leaps in. Nevander shoves it away with a gauntlet to the jaw. His sword catches one of Midnight’s blades. But he can’t stop the second, which pierces his stomach.
Nevander’s wings shimmer, then vanish. The blood-sheathed sword extends through his back.