14. A Ride on a Wyvern
O f course, Nico had no intention of actually killing his reluctant guest, and he suspected that, if she had any plans to kill him, she would have acted on them already. It was just fun to keep her on her toes a bit. That, and he loved the way she scowled at him.
He thought he might prefer the way she smiled. He’d been surprised the first time she did it. Her face had seemed incapable of the action entirely. But when she’d teased him, when her eyes had crinkled with laughter, he thought that maybe she had once been the type to laugh a great deal, but life had robbed her of the ability to laugh so freely in the same way it had robbed Cordelia of her fingers. And, like Cordelia, she tried to fix the damage herself… without as much success.
Something had happened to her. He wasn’t sure what, but the mystery of it clung to his mind in the same way whispers of a juicy cargo usually did. He wanted to own her secrets.
But he did not want to steal them.
Really, it was all very odd.
The knight— Windbright— didn’t show up for breakfast. Wanting her to sleep but not wanting her to starve, he eventually sent up one of his shadows with a breakfast tray, and then mentally kicked himself for not doing it in person. It would have been a good excuse to speak to her. But the action of slipping into her bedchamber somehow seemed too intimate, even though he’d already seen her half-naked and patched up her wounds .
She emerged from her room before lunchtime, smelling strongly of the creams he’d given her the day before that he thought she might refuse on principle—orange blossom and petitgrain. She said little as she sat down to eat the rather rich onion soup that he’d prepared. If she liked it, she gave no indication—possibly because she was worried about its origins.
He supposed she didn’t owe him a compliment.
“Any plans today?” he asked her at one point. “Books to read, murders to commit…”
“I might read. Yourself?”
“No murder today. Maybe tomorrow. A bit of light maiming, maybe, perhaps a walk…”
“I have no idea if you’re joking or not.”
“Joking, I’m fairly sure. I have no plans to go out.”
Viola snorted into the soup. “This is good,” she said.
Excellent. “The soup or the conversation?”
“Oh, the soup. The conversation needs work.”
“I shall submit a review for your consideration.”
When Nicodemus returned to his study after lunch, he found himself almost tempted to indeed construct a review for her to fill in, or perhaps a checklist of suitable topics of conversations. He very much wanted to talk to her. He very much wanted her to enjoy talking to him.
He was very aware that this was all problematic.
Cordelia kept glaring at him whenever she passed by. “Ready to tell me your plan yet?”
“Who’s to say there’s a plan?”
“There’s always a plan with you. Come on. Spill. The snowstorm has cleared up. You could take her back on a shadow-wyvern.”
“Yes, and potentially be shot out of the sky. No, thank you.”
Cordelia shrugged. “Suit yourself. This won’t end well.”
It probably wouldn’t, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t worth exploring.
Summoning his courage—or perhaps just looking for a way to escape Cordelia’s ire—he went to seek Windbright out. The door of her room was ajar when he arrived. She was sitting by the window, her back to the door, her dark form silhouetted by the setting sun. For a moment, his attention was drawn to the nape of her neck, to the space where the light curl of her hair ended and her tawny skin sat exposed above the low neckline of her too-big shirt. His shirt. Nothing of Cordelia’s would fit, and the only other clothes in the castle were a fine collection of ballgowns he’d stolen here and there. He didn’t think she’d wear any of those if he offered them.
His gaze then wandered from her to the sunset, to the burst of pink and red stretching along the horizon like a flaming rose. He could see why she was captivated .
Enjoying the view, he split a shadow from himself, and had it go to his study to fetch his sketchpad, drawing a quick illustration before she even noticed he was there. He’d colour it in another day, although he doubted he’d manage to capture the colour of hair when the light shone on it just right.
Odessa lilies.
Viola turned, noticing his presence for the first time. “You should come with a bell!”
Nicodemus shoved the pad towards his hovering shadow, hoping she hadn’t noticed what he’d been doing. “I think I could pull it off.”
She cast a cursory glance at the shadow scurrying away, and then turned back to his outfit—a favourite of his with a black dragon stitched over the shoulder and round the torso, composed of hundreds of shiny black gems and gold thread.
“Do you ever wear anything other than black?”
“Villain,” he said with a bow. “And no; it looks so good on me. Why mess with perfection?”
He didn’t point out that the charcoal shirt on her body was his. It didn’t seem like the moment. Also, charcoal wasn’t that much different from black anyway.
Windbright groaned at his remark, turning back to the sunset. For a moment, she didn’t speak at all. “I don’t remember the last time I just sat still and watched the sun set,” she admitted. “It’s oddly peaceful. I’d forgotten.”
Nicodemus could remember that feeling. It was a long while after he first came here that he’d even noticed the sunsets at all. It was hard to notice beauty when you were surrounded by pain.
“Cordelia pointed out to me that I could take you back to civilisation on a wyvern,” he said.
“Right.”
“But I’m not going to do that. Largely because I imagine there may still be people looking for you, and I don’t want to be shot out of the sky.”
“Sensible.”
He paused. “On the off chance that I don’t kill you, and you don’t kill me, and you do return to your people… have you decided what you’ll tell them?”
“That I was injured, briefly assisted by a stranger, and woke up in a cave where I stayed to wait out the storm.”
“Simple. Straightforward.”
She hesitated, as though mulling over something else. “The day the wendigo attacked, I came down to the ground because I noticed someone in the woods. Not you or Cordelia. A woman, I think. Dark cloak. Did you see anyone?”
He shook his head. “She must have run off.”
Viola nodded, although she didn’t seem convinced.
“I won’t take you back,” he said, “but perhaps a short fly over the castle… that might be safe enough?”
“Come again?”
“A fly,” he said. “Would you like one?”
“With you?”
“Unless there’s another shadowmancer around…”
She glanced at the sky. “It’ll be dark soon.”
“So we’ll keep it short.”
“You aren’t going to throw me off halfway, are you?”
Nicodemus sighed. “If I wanted you dead, you would be dead already. Generally speaking, I don’t murder people who aren’t trying to murder me back.”
“You’ve murdered other knights. Unarmed ones. In their own homes.”
Nicodemus paused. He wasn’t aware she knew about those. “That’s different,” he said, which he knew was a terrible excuse. He just wasn’t willing to explain the real one. She probably wouldn’t believe him anyway.
“How so?”
“Well, Windbright, usually everyone’s trying to murder me, so—”
“That isn’t an answer!”
“Look, I promise I’m not trying to murder you. Perhaps we can both agree not to murder each other whilst you’re staying under my roof?”
She bit the inside of her lip, clearly mulling it over. “All right,” she said eventually.
“All right to the lack of murder, or to the fly?”
She snorted. “Both.”
Nicodemus grinned, flinging open the windows and stepping out onto the balcony. He conjured a series of steps up to the railing, with a flat-backed wyvern at the top. He stepped aboard, holding out his hand for Windbright to follow.
Her palm was warm as it slid against his, and something must have shown in his face, because in the next moment she asked, “What is it?”
“Your hands are oddly soft for a knight’s.”
“Excellent healer services,” she explained.
“Ah, in it for the benefits, I see.” He paused. Now was as good a time as any to ask her, to work out the sort of person she really was. “Why did you become a knight?”
“I don’t know. I like fighting and helping people. It seemed appropriate. ”
There was probably more to it than that, or more to it that made her so dedicated, so determined in her pursuit, but he decided not to press. He drove his cane into the back of his shadow wyvern, grounding it.
“You may wish to hold on,” he warned her.
“To what?”
The wyvern lurched upwards, sailing over the castle. Windbright clutched his arm instinctively as they moved, only to drop it a second later once she found her balance. He was tempted to make the wyvern swerve, only he didn’t like his chances of remaining alive if she fell and he had to catch her. Her promise not to murder him would probably not extend far in that instance.
“Oh, oh my…” she whispered.
They swirled over the winding turrets and obsidian pillars, each carved meticulously over the years. Cordelia had never shown much in the way of amazement when he brought her here—no one had ever looked at it with wonder except for himself.
And now her.
Her reverence spilled out of her and splashed against him like a wave against rock. The castle shone in the sunset like the rich gleam of a raven’s wing, crafted from the same shimmering black stone as the mountain, its silhouette imposing and adorned with intricate carvings and fortified walls.
“It’s magnificent,” she proclaimed.
“Thank you.”
“You truly built all of this—starting from when you were a boy?”
“It’s undergone a few revisions in its time,” he explained. “’Twas little more than a cave, at first.”
“Does it have a name?”
He paused. It wasn’t often he got to share it with anyone. “Shadowfall.”
Windbright groaned. “Of course.”
The wyvern flew up higher, drifting over the jagged turrets and the white dome of the observatory roof. It had taken him months, even with his shadows, to secure every panel.
“I have a question,” Windbright asked.
“I’m shocked that you’re seeking permission for it.”
“If you can summon shadows into any shape—”
“I can.”
“Why not a pegasus or something decidedly less terrifying to ride on?”
Nicodemus grinned. “Two reasons. One, easier to dismount from a standing position.”
“And the second? ”
“Wyverns are really, really cool, and I look way more intimidating standing on one.”
He swished his wrists, reforming the shadow, until the wyvern’s back twisted into an arch, dropping them downwards. Viola slammed into his back, letting out an unknightly squeak.
“We can, of course, ride like this if you prefer.”
“No, no,” she said hurriedly, her hands flapping at the sides as if trying to find something to hold onto that wasn’t his waist. “Standing is fine!”
He reshaped the wyvern into a flat pattern, and she jumped away from him, so quickly he worried for a moment that she might tumble off. But of course she didn’t. Her balance was cat-like.
“How do you do it?” she asked him. “Conjure shadows, I mean. I’ve been watching you for a while, and I’ve been trying to work it out. There’s no consistency—”
“I don’t need it,” he said. “Not anymore. When I was young, I had to be specific—the shadows just hung there unless I directed them or I was particularly nervous or excited. But the more I practised, the older I became… the more and more I could do just by thinking it, like they were separate limbs, extensions of myself.”
“Which is why you can do it with your eyes closed.”
“Exactly why. Just give me light.” He glanced up at the sky. “Which we don’t have much left of.”
The wyvern dipped low, returning them to the balcony. Windbright paused at the edge of the platform, not moving. “You’ve always had these powers, yes?”
He nodded.
“How did you avoid hurting anyone as a child?”
It was a good question. He could imagine a shadowmancer with the power of an adult and the mind of a child being a formidable foe indeed.
“The shadows aren’t sharp when we’re children,” he explained. “They’re as soft as we are until puberty at least. Some folks’ never sharpen. They’re barely anything more than illusionists all of their lives.”
Like most of the members of his family. Harmless. Innocent. Not all were built like him. Not all could defend themselves. That had never seemed to matter in the eyes of the Crown.
In the eyes of the knights.
Apparently, it would have mattered to her. He had not forgotten her words the other day, her horror at the idea that he thought her capable of harming a child. That was a good sign.
Windbright nodded, satisfied with this answer, and hopped off onto the balcony, not even waiting for him to summon steps. Show off .
He stepped onto the railing, placing too much weight against his left leg and stumbling forward. Instinctively, Viola’s hand shot out, colliding with his chest.
His very hard, very flat chest, which her hand was still on.
Nicodemus’ eyes locked onto hers. He’d thought they were brown, at first, but he could see now that they were dark grey, like rain upon a rock. Unusual. Interesting. Like the rest of her.
His throat bobbed, inhaling a careful breath. “Thank you.”
Viola yanked back her hand. “No problem.”
She stepped back into her room, and suddenly became very interested in reading the rest of the book she’d borrowed. Nicodemus slid away with barely a word, returning to his study. There was a strange ache in his chest, like the surface of a burn.
He could still feel the imprint of her hand, a hot weight against his chest. How long had it been since he’d touched another person, since their touch had lingered on his skin?
Cordelia didn’t count. She disliked touching anyone most of the time, and if she ever did touch him—like when she was fixing his bones—it was always with a purpose. To pass him something. To get by him. To heal a bone. Never anything affectionate.
That was for a purpose, too, he tried to remind himself. Windbright was just trying to stop him from falling. It was instinctual. There was nothing to it. She was a knight, after all. It was probably part of her vows. Never shall I let another stumble if I can stop them.
But there was something in the way her hand had lingered, in the way her eyes had clung to his, her brow furrowed with concern, her lips slightly parted as if she’d been close to asking him if he was all right.
Why should she care? Why did he care if she did or didn’t?
Cordelia was right. This truly was a terrible idea.
Viola bolted awake, so confused about where she was that she toppled out of bed, dragging half the sheets with her. She choked on the air, gasping, bracing herself against the bed frame.
A dream, a dream. Only a dream. You’re not there, Viola, you were never there.
Two tears eased past her eyes. That’s rather the point .
Something scurried along the corridor, and the door clicked open. Nicodemus appeared in the doorway, together with a disgruntled-looking Lord Azrael who Viola suspected had just had his sleep disturbed. “You all right?” he said, his brow furrowed.
“A nightmare,” she told him, brushing away the stray tears. “Nothing more.”
“Stitches intact? I won’t have you outstaying your welcome, Windbright.”
Viola patted her middle, still steadying her breath. “They’re fine.”
“Good.” He hovered by the door for a while longer, leaning against the frame, arms crossed. “Forgive me, it may have escaped your notice, but you are still on the floor.”
“Oh, am I? Hadn’t noticed.”
He took a tentative step towards her, holding out his hand. Viola ignored it, pulling herself up on the bed frame instead.
Nicodemus removed his hand with a curt nod. He said nothing as Viola sat down on the mattress, her breathing still heavy.
Just go back to sleep, she wanted to snap. Only the words didn’t come, and he didn’t leave.
Azrael wound around her legs. She bent down to stroke him, savouring the warmth of his fur beneath her fingertips. Animals were so much easier than people. She wished she was back in the barracks with Blackberry nearby, able to bolt into the skies and detach herself from the world.
But Blackberry wasn’t here. And she couldn’t fly in this condition anyway.
Nicodemus still stood nearby. “Would you mind assisting me?” he asked. “Only my leg is aching, and shadows, as you know, are poor companions in the dark.”
“I had guessed as much.”
“Would you accompany me to the kitchens?” he asked. “I’d like to whip up a draught for it.”
It beat trying not to sleep and being alone with her thoughts, she supposed. “You aren’t going to lean on me, are you?”
“Not if you fetch my cane.”
Viola slunk out of the room in search of it, not leaving her back to him. Mostly out of habit. She snatched the cane from beside his bed, pausing to glance at the book beside his bed— The Baron of Florin Falls, one of her father’s old favourites. He used to read passages aloud to Viola and her siblings, often grabbing a stick and acting out the sword fights. She’d never met anyone else who’d read the tale.
Nicodemus appeared in the doorway. “Not rifling through my drawers, are you? ”
“No,” she said, thrusting the cane in his direction. “I was distracted by your book.”
“Have you read it?”
“No, but my father read it to us.”
“Us?”
Viola paused. “Me and my siblings,” she said quickly, not wanting to draw much attention to them.
“You have siblings?”
“Do you want my help in the kitchen or not?”
Nicodemus held up his hands. “After you.”
Down in the kitchens, Nicodemus pottered about making two cups of tea, moving in a surprisingly agile manner for someone complaining about his leg a moment ago.
“Now,” he said, still adding ingredients to the cups, “Tell me about your first mission as a knight.”
“Solo or group?”
“Whichever is more impressive.”
Viola grinned as Nicodemus passed her a cup. Talking about her knightly exploits was always enjoyable, and a good distraction from the dreams that were plaguing her. “I tracked down a rogue kelpie,” she said. “Two of us had been dispatched, but Heindrich had suffered an injury halfway through the marsh and retreated to the safety of his saddle. He implored me not to go alone, and I did anyway.”
“What happened?”
“A kelpie dragged me underwater where I had to fight off three of them. Made it back to the surface just as I was running out of air. Heindrich was furious. But it made for a good tale.”
“You’ve spoken before about this Heindrich. Friend or comrade?”
“Both. But a friend, first—my oldest. We grew up together.” She stopped the story there, before she could tell him that Heindrich was her only friend from back then. The one part of her old life that persisted. The one part she hadn’t lost or thrown away, and couldn’t bear to.
“Tell me about your first great successful robbery,” she asked, eager to fill the silence .
“Well, the thievery started shortly after I came here. I needed things to keep me alive, but it was years before I stole anything of real value. I think my favourite was sneaking into the palace during a ball to steal the jewels of one Countess Mayona. Emeralds, you know. Fabulous sheen.”
“Wait, that was you?”
“It was.”
“I was on duty that night! Oh my, the Countess wasn’t pleased…” She shook her head. “Strange to think of us crossing paths before.”
“It’s almost like we’re connected, Windbright.”
“I have to vehemently disagree, Nightshade.”
He laughed. She ought not to enjoy the sound as much as she did.
“That reminds me,” he said. “I have a request.”
“I’m going to hate this, aren’t I?”
“When you go back, would you kindly inform your superiors and anyone else that will listen that I vastly prefer the name the Nightshade. The Shadowmancer is very unoriginal.”
“And how would I explain how I know that?”
“Hmm. Good point.”
“You’ll have to shout it out as you vanish into the sky the next time, or leave a calling card—”
“Don’t be giving me any ideas, Windbright.”
“You say my name a lot, do you know? And you say it in a very odd way.”
“I do not. There must be something wrong with your ears.”
Viola glanced at the cup in Nicodemus’ hands. It was still mostly full. “Your leg doesn’t hurt at all, does it?”
“No, not remotely.”
“You liar.”
“Alas, I am—but are you feeling sleepy?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Yes.”
Nicodemus grinned. Even in the darkness, she could sense how smug it was. “You don’t like to lie, do you?”
“I do not,” she admitted. “My parents did, however, impress upon me the importance of tactful silence.”
She paused, surprised by her own words. How long had it been since she spoke about her parents?
“Where are they?” Nicodemus asked. “Your parents, I mean? Still home in the north?”
“No,” she said shortly.
Nicodemus paused, as if sensing he’d hit a nerve. “Well,” he said, “if you’re feeling sleepy, we ought to get you back to bed. I’m not carrying you up those stairs if you fall asleep here. ”
It occurred to her that he must have carried her at some point to have gotten her into the castle in the first place. She hoped it hadn’t hurt. Maybe that’s why his leg was bothering him the other night. It was clearly an old injury, one that played up from time to time, never fully leaving him.
Why do you care?
For the same reason she hadn’t made another attempt to kill him, she supposed, even though his shadows didn’t work in the dark, and she was once more sitting in a kitchen surrounded by knives. It didn’t feel right to kill him, especially when he’d gone to all this effort to distract her from her nightmares. Her parents would be ashamed of her if she killed him now. She’d be ashamed of herself.
Nicodemus rose to his feet, yawning loudly. “Well, are you coming?”