19. Shadow against Steel
V iola knew it would be better not to meet Nicodemus again. Yes, she had his book to return, but he’d probably stolen it from someone else anyway. Perhaps she could argue away not killing him when he’d taken her in; it wasn’t chivalrous to kill someone who’d saved your life, and she was wounded and he had the advantage. She could even argue against attacking him at the temple; he had the upper hand and she’d have almost certainly been killed on her own.
But meeting up with him was something completely different, and she knew it.
She’d just ignore the date. Let it pass her by.
But then he went silent for a week as he’d promised her, and she began to think that maybe, just maybe, he could change. If he faded into obscurity, if she didn’t have to hunt him…
It doesn’t erase what he’s done so far. What could?
No, she’d ignore him. It was for the best. She wouldn’t go back to the temple, and she wouldn’t speak to him again, and sooner or later someone would catch him and she’d just have to make peace with that when the day came.
Then she read the end of the book.
It was, on paper, a happy ending. The two lovers vanquished their enemies and rode off into the sunset. But it was a hard-earned victory, the kind that made her chest ache and wonder if it was truly worth it and whether or not Korrigan and Wilde were too badly damaged by all that transpired to ever be truly happy.
She wanted to talk to someone about it. She couldn’t talk to anyone about it. Ironically, Freya was a lover of stories and would have happily devoured it alongside Viola if she asked, but of course, Viola had never shared a book with her, and now never would. Heindrich would ask questions about where she got the book from, and she wasn’t very good at lying to him. He’d known her far too long.
You cannot cavort with the enemy for a book, Viola’s inner voice warned… all the way to the temple next Umbrasday.
Nicodemus was stretched out on a fallen pillar when she arrived, making shadows dance around the room—literally dance. He’d conjured the figures of a man and woman and had them twirling around the space in a dark waltz. He sat up sharply when she entered, his face breaking into a smile. The shadows vanished.
“Windbright,” he said. “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming.”
“I shouldn’t have.”
“And yet you did. Any particular reason?”
Viola slipped her backpack off and handed him the book. “I had to return this.”
Nicodemus flicked through the book, clearly checking it for damage. “And now you have. So why aren’t you leaving?”
“Well…”
“You want to discuss the ending, don’t you?”
“It was just so sad !” she declared, running her hands through her hair. “And I know they lived and they’re together and it should feel happy, but— how. How can they be happy after everything they went through? After they lost—”
“I know,” said Nicodemus sagely. “I was quite moved myself. I didn’t read anything for a week. I wasn’t ready to be hurt again.”
“I didn’t know words could hurt you,” Viola admitted. “Not like this. Not when it was an entirely fictional scenario.”
“Ready to forgive me for locking you in the library yet?”
Viola glared at him. “No.”
Nicodemus laughed. “Well,” he said triumphantly. “You’ve returned the book and stated your piece. Will you be going now, or would you like to try to kill me for old time’s sake?”
“I…” Viola had no answer to that.
Leave! a voice warned. Leave before you can’t.
“You’re welcome to join me for a spot of luncheon,” Nicodemus declared. He summoned a blanket of shadow and spread it across the stones. The frost had thankfully vanished now, and weak winter sunlight filtered down through the ceiling. Nico began to upload a few parcels of food from his bag, spreading it over the shadow-silk blanket .
“Did you bring a picnic with you?” she asked incredulously.
“Well, it’s lunch time, and I was hungry. Cider cake?”
“It’s the middle of winter.”
“It is a fine day, and we need to eat.”
Viola wanted to be annoyed with him, but she was too hungry to refuse. She seized the cake and shoved it into her mouth, sitting down beside him.
“You seem to be enjoying that.”
“I eat when I’m annoyed. Also angry. Also sad.”
“Any time you don’t eat?”
“Anxious,” she admitted. “But I don’t tend to get anxious any more.” She swallowed down the cake. It was thick with fruit, gloriously sweet. “You aren’t attempting to court me or anything foolish, are you?”
“Court you, Windbright? I’d rather take on a dragon.”
“Just checking.” She thought for a moment. “What does all this mean, then?”
“It means that I am hungry,” said Nicodemus, biting into an apple, “and that maybe, perhaps, for whatever unfathomable reason, I enjoy your company.”
Viola bit into her own apple to avoid replying. For whatever foolish reason, she enjoyed his company too. She imagined she’d enjoy it more if she wasn’t sworn to kill him, if her vows didn’t colour every word they spoke to each other.
“Where did you steal this cake from?”
“Steal it? Windbright, you wound me. I made that myself.”
“It’s… not bad.”
“ Now who’s the liar? I know full well it’s delicious. Of course, I stole cider to make it. And the flour. And the sugar. I came by the honey honestly, though.”
Viola glared at him.
“It’s not like I can just stroll into town and get a job, is it?”
“You don’t have to let prospective employers know you’re a shadowmancer, you know.”
“I think they’d notice,” he said, looking uncomfortable.
“What do you mean?”
He tapped the mask. Whatever was hidden under there, she realised, it hinted at what he was. She’d never thought about that before—how impossible it would be for him to actually earn an honest living—Cordelia too, with her fingers. She could hide them with a glove, of course, but for how long? And why should either of them have to live in fear of being found out?
Still. There were other ways —
Oh? said a voice. Can you think of them?
“Do you like killing people?” she asked.
If her question seemed out of the blue, he didn’t act like it. “I neither like nor dislike it,” he replied. “It’s a means to an end. A necessity.”
“You beheaded Count Alesto.”
“What is it that people have against beheading? It’s remarkably efficient, you know. Especially the way I do it. No terror, no pain. Over in an instant. Can you say the same for the people you dispatch?”
Viola glanced away from him. She wanted to tell him it was different—but was it?
“I try to make it quick.”
“And do you like it?”
She wanted to say no. That’s what Viola Brightstone would have said, what her parents would have wanted her to say. She hadn’t liked it the first time. But over the years, she had to admit that there was a certain satisfaction in slaying a monster, regardless of the form the monster took.
“Yes,” she admitted. “But not always.”
Nicodemus nodded, as if he already knew the answer to this confession. He dipped into his bag and brought out another book.
“Another read for me?” she asked.
“No,” he said, “although you’re welcome to raid my library any time.”
Viola disliked how much of a tempting idea that sounded. “What is it, then?”
“It’s a notebook we can use to communicate. I have its twin. Any time you wish to contact me, you can write in here, and I’ll respond as soon as I can.”
Viola stared at the notebook. This was another line she shouldn’t be crossing, another mark against her in an ever increasing line. This was proof that they were in communication, something she couldn’t deny.
“It erases shortly after it’s read,” Nicodemus explained, as if reading her mind.
That didn’t mean it couldn’t be traced back to him.
She stood up, moving a few paces away, keeping her back to him.
“Windbright?” He stood up behind her.
“I want to ask you something.”
“Go ahead.”
“I… I can’t believe I have to ask this, but could you maybe… stop killing people and stealing things?”
Nicodemus grinned. “You’re worried you’re going to have to kill me.”
She unclenched her jaw. “Yes. It’s weird now. I don’t want to do it. I think, maybe, you feel the same?”
“I would be pretty cut up about it… And I’d miss those pretty frowns of yours.”
Viola sincerely hoped that the heat in her cheeks was due to her anger. “Nightshade—”
He sighed. “I have to do what I have to do. This little… acquaintance that we have… that doesn’t change that.”
“But—”
“I’m trying not to kill people unnecessarily. Have you noticed that? Unless they deserve it, of course. Sadly, so many of them do—”
“This isn’t funny!”
“I never said it was.”
In a hot burst of anger, Viola kicked Nicodemus in the thigh—the bad one—and flipped him over her shoulder, straddling him the second he hit the floor and placing the point of her dagger to his throat.
“I’m serious, Nicodemus! Don’t make me kill you!”
Nicodemus’ eyes widened. His throat bobbed beneath her blade. She could do it now, she realised. She could hurt him before he hurt her. Neither of them were wounded. It was daylight. A fair fight, almost, even though she’d aimed for the leg first.
She wanted to do it. She wanted to be able to do it. Everything in her told her it would be best if she did. Better now than later.
But wrong, too. So wrong.
“You could kill me now, couldn’t you?” she whispered, her breath an inch from his.
“Yes,” he whispered back. “I could. I might not survive it either, but I could.”
“Then why won’t you?”
“I already told you,” he said. “I might not survive it.”
Viola pulled her blade back, just a fraction. She wasn’t sure he meant physical survival. She wasn’t sure he knew what he meant, either. “Please,” came her voice again. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I will do everything in my power to avoid placing you in such a position.”
“Thank you.”
She scrambled off him, offering her hand to help him off the floor. Nicodemus took it, groaning as he stood.
“Sorry I went for the leg.”
“No, you’re not. You exploited a weakness, which is the sensible thing to do, and something I would have done too, if the situation was reversed.”
“Think you can still fight?”
“Come again?”
“Fight with me. One-on-one. Shadows against steel. ”
Nicodemus stared at her. “I have a significant advantage.”
“But will you exploit it?”
His lips quirked into a smile. “No.”
Viola drew her sword. “Then fight me, Nightshade.”
“I already am.”
Something tapped her shoulder. Viola spun round. A shadow lingered at her shoulder, pointed like a hand. She swiped through it with her blade, dissolving it into dust.
Other shadows formed around her. She cut through each one, darting and dodging, waiting until they had almost surrounded her to afford herself some cover before lunging towards Nicodemus himself.
He sidestepped her sword easily, with far more agility than she would have thought him capable of, rising off the floor on shadowy platforms. She followed, but each platform vanished almost as soon as she’d set foot on it. He was playing with her, leaving her just enough time to jump before he made it disappear.
Higher and higher they rose, her swiping, him leaping out of the way, hands firmly wedged in his pockets. He smirked at her efforts.
She smirked right back.
Somewhere she knew that at any point, he could let her jump and take away the place she was leaping for, leaving her to fall to her death. He could do it. And he wouldn’t.
I might not survive it, he’d said to her before. What did that even mean?
Not trusting his platforms anymore, she sprung to the ancient rafters, scuttling over his head and leaping down to his level. He registered her presence just before she landed, vanishing into shadow and reappearing above her.
She hauled herself back onto the rafters. One of them creaked under her weight. Nicodemus seemed to sense it too. Viola hurtled forward, hoping to escape the collapse. The beam gave way, catapulting her into the air. She reached out to grab something, but fell short—
A shadowy hand wrapped around her waist, flinging her onto a nearby balcony. She rolled back to her feet.
Nicodemus landed in front of her, cane clicking against the stone.
“Are you all right?”
Viola was already sprinting towards him.
“Of course you are.”
Nicodemus vanished. The cold call of his shadows prickled behind her. She turned, swiping at nothing. He appeared on another platform, leaping away from her.
She’d never reach him unless he wanted her to—not unless she played dirty.
She angled her blade towards the rays of sunlight, catching a beam and directing it towards his shadows. They disappeared beneath him, sending him hurtling towards the ground. Viola’s heart pulsed in her chest. What if she’d misjudged—
He summoned a wyvern to catch him seconds before he met the floor, stumbling his landing. Viola’s heart quietened. She skidded down a broken pillar and met him at ground level. She charged again. He raised his cane and sheathed it in a blade of shadow.
He could handle a sword. Not as well as her, but he’d learnt the skill anyway, even though it would have been easier to fight with his shadows. She supposed they couldn’t protect him in the dark. There was always a good reason to know how to handle a blade.
“Getting tired?” she quipped.
Nicodemus’ smirk didn’t quite meet his eyes. He was getting tired, she realised. He’d exhausted a lot of his magic. He’d teleported several times. She didn’t fully know the limits of his energy, but she suspected they were approaching it.
It probably didn’t help that he was putting his full weight on his leg, either.
But she didn’t stop. She didn’t want to.
She wanted to beat him, to win.
She kept slashing, the light of her blade cutting through his shadows almost as fast as he conjured them. Viola forced him backwards—
“Windbright—” he started.
Viola didn’t stop. She couldn’t. She was lost to the battle, the heat of it pumping through her veins. There was no desire to kill, only to win, to finally have the power over him that he somehow held over her.
I will beat you. I will beat it.
“Viola—”
Nicodemus’ voice was different now, almost plaintive. His shadows faltered. He stumbled. Viola turned her blade away, trying to avoid him. Instead, her body slammed against his, both of them tumbling forward into the winter lilies in a haze of frosty petals.
Her blade fell some distance away, her head almost colliding with his. She placed her hands out at the last second, bracing her palms either side of him, their legs tangled together.
His chest pounded against hers.
“I don’t understand,” he said, when he’d gathered enough breath to speak, “what are you trying so hard to defeat?”
“I’m sorry?”
“It’s not me you’re trying to kill—so what is it?”
Viola pushed herself off him, grabbing her sword and bag. “We’re done for today.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“It’s done.”
She stalked away from him, wishing that the feeling of his body against hers wasn’t the sensation that clung to her, and that she could vanquish her demons as easily as she’d swiped at his shadows.