27. There’s only one sleeping pallet
T eaching Nicodemus how to fly an airship was an excellent distraction from Viola’s constant worrying about Freya and what might await them at the western mountains, which might be why he was pretending to be so bad at it. She could understand being rusty if it had been a long time since you’d had anything to do with an airship, but there was no way that annoyingly clever Nicodemus Nightshade was this bad at anything.
“Like this?” he said, moving the wheel so abruptly that if they hadn’t cleared the Feywood, they’d be spiralling into a tree.
“No!” Viola yanked the wheel into a neutral position. “Softer . Gentler. We’re not under attack.”
Nicodemus took the handles again, still steering it too wildly. Viola placed her hands over his and gently tugged them into the correct position. Nicodemus turned his face towards her, grinning like a cat presenting its master with a mouse.
“See?” she told him. “You can do it.”
Suddenly aware of how close his breath was to her face, she stepped away from him. The ship veered again. Viola half groaned, half laughed, and moved to help him once more.
It took him a while to get the hang of steering, but suddenly something seemed to click, and she was able to lean back and let him pilot, tending to the sails and keeping an eye on the winds. He was less comfortable with the many levers, and she decided engine maintenance could definitely wait for another day, but he seemed quite content to steer for hours, even when the skies were clear and the winds low and autopilot could have done the job just fine.
The sun was just beginning to set by the time the mountains came within range. Viola sucked in a breath. The fields fringing the stone lay black and scarred, meadows reduced to ash. The thin, skeletal outline of the ruin of a farm stained the land. She tensed, her thoughts flashing, thinking of her home, and what it must look like now—
Nicodemus came towards her. “Are you all right?”
No. “There’s no sign of the dragon,” she said instead.
Nicodemus glanced overhead.
“Nightfall,” he said.
“Scared of the dark, Nightshade?”
“Scared of fighting a dragon without my shadows? Yes, actually.”
Viola hadn’t thought of that. She’d been so focused on Freya and just getting here she hadn’t really thought anything else through. Nicodemus was defenceless in the dark.
“I brought lightstones and flares,” Nicodemus explained. “I figured it would be good to have our own light source if we have to fight it underground, but it’s still probably best if we—”
“Wait till morning,” said Viola, the words falling flat on her tongue. If Freya wasn’t injured, she could wait a few more hours, but if she was, how would Viola ever forgive herself?
But she couldn’t take on a dragon by herself, and it seemed dangerous for Nicodemus to rely on external light sources for his magic to work.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll set us down. But I’m doing a quick scout ahead.”
“I’ll make supper.”
She located a small body of water beside an abandoned farm—far away from the scars of the burnt one—and pulled the levers to still the engines. The vessel bobbed quietly on the pond. It was almost peaceful. Or it would have been, were it not for the total absence of noise. There was no braying cattle, no rustle in the bushes, not even the call of a bird. Sound itself had been scared away.
“Did you know,” Nicodemus began, “that when airships first became a thing, mages and mancers and inventors all tried desperately to create some sort of docking system that could keep the airship afloat while the engines were off, until someone pointed out that they could just use a pond?”
Viola blinked at him. “You know that, but not how to fly one?”
“I read.”
Viola shook her head, buckling on her sword and checking over her equipment. Nicodemus leaned over to help tighten her cloak. She stalled for a moment, startled by his proximity, but she didn’t push him away .
“If you see anything—” he started, cloak fastened.
“Hide,” she said. “Yes, I know.” She stepped onto the plank she’d extended to help her reach the bank, but Nicodemus’ hand reached and grabbed her wrist.
“Promise me,” he said, his voice low. “Promise me you won’t walk into danger by yourself?”
Viola paused, unnerved by the fearful quality of his voice. “Are you going to threaten me with violence if I don’t come back unscathed?”
“I don’t like you enough to threaten you.”
“Liar.”
“ Villain, ” he reminded her, doing a mock bow and kissing her hand.
Viola took it back, surprised by the prickle of heat in her cheeks. “You’re a terrible villain, Nightshade.”
“Tell that to Count Alesto,” he said. “Or the Empress of Nordheim. Or the price on my very nice head—”
“Your very nice big head,” she countered, shimmying along the plank.
“At least you admit it’s nice!”
Viola hurried along the overgrown path, not looking back. She did not want to think about quite how nice she found it.
Nicodemus knew Viola to be a generally honest person, so he found himself surprised to keep thinking that she might have wandered off into dangerous territory even though she promised not to.
No, not thinking. Worrying.
He didn’t like it. He’d accepted that he was going to spend the rest of his life worrying about Cordelia not long after he’d found her. At the time, he’d been so desperate for company of any kind he decided the anxiety was a fair trade.
He wasn’t sure that was the case with Viola. The worrying was… different. And unlike Cordelia, she couldn’t pay for his fears with the pleasure of her company. Not when they didn’t see each other often enough. Not when they were enemies in the eyes of the Crown.
Not when he could hurt her.
And she could obliterate him .
He tried to distract himself from his thoughts by laying out their supper on a blanket on the deck, and surrounding it with lightstones. The ship had several lanterns on board, though he was reluctant to light too many in case they caught the eye of the dragon.
The dragon. He’d signed up to fight a dragon. And even though he was getting something out of the bargain, when Viola had come to him, fear laced in every syllable of her voice, he’d almost forgotten to ask for it. His first impulse was the same one he’d felt two days before when he’d seen the bruise on her face.
Point me to who hurt you, and I will end them.
Nicodemus had never fought a dragon before. That was probably the sort of thing you were supposed to be nervous about.
Oh well, it couldn’t be much harder than the other monsters he’d fought over the years. It was surely nothing he couldn’t handle.
It would be fine.
He hoped Windbright would be back soon.
In need of another distraction, he headed below deck and started rifling through the rest of the supplies. There was everything you might expect on a knight’s transport vessel, stones for heat, crystals for light and purification, more medical supplies than the ones he’d packed, a few extra weapons, emergency rations, rope, repair tools, and a couple of blankets and bedrolls.
Nicodemus paused.
Two bedrolls.
He removed one and rolled it out. It was surprisingly roomy—firm and comfortable to the touch.
Definitely enough room for two if they didn’t mind being close…
No. No. He couldn’t possibly be considering this. He wouldn’t even kiss her when she’d asked for it.
But he remembered the warmth of her beside him that night they’d saved each other, the feel of her hand in his, the softness of her skin, the smell of her hair and how long it had been since he’d felt anything like this for everyone… if ever. It was a luxury no money could purchase, not truly. Flesh could be rented, company secured through coin, even love conjured through potions, but what he felt for her, the desire to be close to her in whatever way she permitted… that was beyond money and magic.
Acting on impulse, he restacked all the supplies and shoved the second roll out of sight. That done, he spread out the two blankets (he wasn’t a complete monster) and headed back up to the main deck.
Viola arrived back not long after, just as darkness fully closed in.
“See anything?” he asked .
She shook her head. “It’ll be easier from the air tomorrow. On the bright side, we’re definitely alone out here. I don’t think we’ll need to keep watch.”
“As long as there’s a light source, I can set a shadow to guard, just in case.”
“Are you ready to tell me how they can keep their form even when you’re asleep?”
Nicodemus smiled, rolling up his sleeve and revealing a bracelet made of sparkling black beads. He slipped it off, handing it over. He missed the cool feel of it on his skin.
Viola held it up to the light. “What are they?”
“Shadow gems,” he explained. “Very rare.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of them before.”
“As far as I know, the Crown believes all shadowgem mines in Auro to be empty,” he said. “I know differently, of course. Shadowgems aren’t like fire or light or waterstones—they have a limited number of properties and the magic is very hard to extract. But for a shadowmancer, they can be used to enhance power, or attached to a shadow to help it retain its form even when the original caster is asleep or out of sight.”
Viola nodded in understanding, handing the bracelet back. “Do you conceal the gems on your clothes? Is that why you always wear black?”
“It makes sense to have them hidden about my person, so I’ve been known to stitch them in, but mostly I just wear black because it makes me look so good. ”
Viola looked like she wanted to argue, but stopped herself. His chest heated. “What’s for supper?” she asked instead.
They sat down together and ate. Viola declined the wine, wanting to keep her wits together, but she did have some very nice things to say about his currant buns, including “do you have any more?” which was the highest compliment a baker could hope to receive.
“When we get home, I’ll make you all the currant buns you desire,” he said, which made Viola look away, although she mumbled something like, ‘I look forward to it.’
That might just have been wishful thinking on his part.
After the meal, they shook the blanket out over the side of the ship to dispose of the crumbs before spreading out on it once more to watch the stars. They challenged each other with who could find the seven gods first. Viola won, but only because he let her.
“Are there any constellations unique to your people?” she asked.
“Hmm?”
“Well, my grandparents are Sudarian,” she told him. “They never worshipped any of the Seven. They have saints amongst the stars instead. I was wondering if your kin were similar. ”
Nicodemus turned back to the stars, the skies a little darker than before. “I don’t remember.”
“I’m sorry if—”
“No. It’s all right.”
A breeze swept through the meadows, rocking against the side of the boat.
“Why stay?” Viola asked him. “Auro is, quite frankly, a bit of shit place to be if you’re a shadowmancer. Why not leave? Go to someplace you could live freely?”
Nicodemus paused. To begin with, it hadn’t been a possibility—he had no idea how to get aboard a ship, he couldn’t navigate, his wyverns wouldn’t last long enough to survive the trip without a vessel—but he’d amassed the power and funds years ago to consider the possibility. He’d briefly thought about it when he’d taken Cordelia in, hoping for a better place for her to grow up, but by that point, she was already settled, and likewise, he was pinned to this place.
Not because he liked it, though. He was pinned by something much stronger.
“Revenge,” he admitted. “I can’t have it if I leave.”
“I knew it was more than money!” Viola said triumphantly. “Are you going to tell me who wronged you? Or… or how?”
“No,” he said. Not yet.
“I could help you.”
Nico stilled as surely as if someone had just hit him in the face, only that was a sensation he was far more familiar with than what Viola was offering. She couldn’t mean that. She didn’t know what that entailed, or simply wasn’t thinking clearly right now. Perhaps she just felt indebted to him, obligated.
“You may not want to,” he said quietly.
Viola frowned.
“Come on,” he said. “It’s probably dangerous to be lying up here with a lantern. We should bunker down for the night.”
Viola didn’t argue. She rolled onto her feet, held out her hand to help him up, and gathered up the blanket afterwards. Nicodemus collected the lantern, setting it at the bottom of the steps and splitting a shadow from his body to keep watch. He slipped a shadowgem off his bracelet and placed it to the matching one on the shadow’s wrist. The gem dissolved upon impact.
Viola froze, but not because of what he was doing to his shadow. She froze because she was looking at the bed. “You only laid out one sleeping pallet. ”
Nicodemus had almost forgotten. “By Umbra, don’t get any ideas, Windbright,” he said, surprised by how quickly the lie came. “I could only find one of the damned things. You’re welcome to sleep on the hard floor if you prefer, but there’s enough space for the two of us.”
“ Fine, ” she hissed, thrusting the picnic blanket into his hands. She’d rolled it up like a pillow. She sat down on the bench to remove her boots and curled up her cloak in the same manner. There was a quickness to her fingers he enjoyed, a satisfying quality to the speed at which she wrapped up the fabric. He wondered if she ever looked at him the same way.
He sat down on the opposite bench to remove his own boots, carefully folding his extra layers and placing them aside. He crawled onto the pallet, putting the rolled blanket under his head.
Viola slid down beside him seconds later. The warmth of her raced through the thin covers between them, and he wondered if he hadn’t made a horrible mistake. Perhaps he could say that, in hindsight, he didn’t think he’d checked the bench at the end particularly well—
But then she’d move away, and he didn’t think he’d like that, either.
He kept on his side, his back towards her, only he quickly realised he’d chosen the wrong side and was placing too much pressure on his leg. He winced, turning to his back and stretching out.
“You all right?” Viola asked.
“Wrong side,” he admitted.
“Right. Should have thought. Sorry.”
She moved onto her hands and knees and scooted over the top of him, coming far too close. His heart rate quickened, and he rolled into the space she’d vacated just to avoid having to dwell on her proximity.
He put his head down on her makeshift pillow. It smelt of her—pine, earth and feathers.
He swallowed. The silence between them thickened.
“I’ve noticed you sometimes sleep with your hands in prayer,” he remarked, when he could find nothing else to talk about and needed to dispel the raging quiet. “At first, I thought you were concealing a weapon under your pillow, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.”
“I’ve not spent enough time being woken up in danger to feel the desire to sleep with a knife when I’m not in the field.”
“Then… prayer? You don’t strike me as the type.”
“I’m not,” she confessed. “I’m honestly jealous of those who are. If they find peace and comfort, believing that there’s someone watching over them… that they’ll see their loved ones again… then good for them. I wish… I wish I believed that. But I don’t.”
Nicodemus had his own views about Umbra and death and mercy, but even he wasn’t sure that there would be anyone on the other side. He thought it might just be like dreamless sleep, and not the paradise or even the peace that some liked to imagine.
“Why pray, then?” he asked.
“Because there’s nothing else I can do.”
Nicodemus felt that. He understood that. That feeling of helplessness was etched into his bones. He felt it almost every time he took a step.
What are you trying so hard to defeat? he’d asked her once. Maybe, if he was careful, she’d answer him now.
“And what do you pray for?”
“Sleep, mainly.”
“Sleep?”
She nodded. “I can’t pray for justice or revenge—unless I’m in battle, there’s no enemy for me to fight but misfortune. I can’t pray for peace, either. Because I think it’s beyond me. But sleep… sleep will come eventually. I pray for something I know will come.”
Nicodemus paused, her words itching against his skin, lodging in parts of him he’d rather not think about. “What happened to you?” he asked finally.
Viola took a deep breath. He braced himself for her to move away, to snap, to shout. He didn’t blame her. She didn’t owe him her secrets. And he could not steal them.
“I lost my family,” she said, her voice a garbled rush. “Not just one or two people—my entire family. Overnight. I went to bed one day and woke up the next morning almost completely alone in the world. A fire. I wasn’t there.”
She said the words quickly, like she was afraid of lingering on them, like too much weight would cause them to explode.
“After it happened, in order to survive, I threw myself into my training. I needed the distraction, but I also needed to do something—to prove myself, perhaps, to earn my survival, to put some good into this world that held so little for me. Sometimes, it works. I want to believe in good things and good people. I want to believe that there are things worth fighting for. And if I keep fighting for something good… if I’m there in the thick of it, trying to make the world a better place… maybe at some point I’ll start to believe that it is.”
Nicodemus didn’t know what to say to that, only that he thought the story was one of the worst he’d ever heard, and he was realising how vastly different she was from him. At best, he thought the world had moments where it was tolerable, and people generally erred on the darker side of grey. If there was goodness to be had, most people would trample on it before it could shine .
And yet here was Viola Windbright, who darkness had sunk its teeth into some time ago, only to find that she bit back. Whatever had happened to her hadn’t extinguished her light entirely. Her hopelessness was fringed by hope.
It was stupid. Foolish. It was going to hurt her more.
And yet it made him admire her.
If there is good in the world, I hope you find it, Windbright.
He quashed that thought almost as soon as he thought it. It was passive and undeserving of her. No, he hoped she dragged goodness into the world and forced it to stay there. She made him want to believe in good things, to be a good thing, even if such an action was far beyond him.
There was so much he wanted to tell her. So much he couldn’t find the words for.
“I’m sorry for your family,” he said at last, knowing full well the words did little to ease the hurt. Viola shrugged, either because she knew they meant nothing or because she was trying to remove the weight of them.
“And the peace you’re searching for,” he continued, “I hope you get it. You deserve to get it.”
“Maybe you deserve yours too.”
He laughed hollowly. “And this is why you are the hero, and I’m the villain, Windbright. Because you still believe in lost causes.”
Viola was quiet for a moment. He wondered if she was trying to find the words to disagree and if he wanted her to, or perhaps she was looking for a way to ask him about his tale. What happened to make him the Nightshade. What he had lost to become who he was now.
“I was six,” he said, before she could ask.
“What?”
“I was six the day the old King’s soldiers came for my people. I was six years old when he dragged my friends from their beds and spilled their blood on the ground. Six when my mother hid me in Umbra’s temple and led them away from me. Six when she was murdered on the steps.”
Viola turned to face him. He waited for the onslaught of questions, and decided to get ahead of them. “I waited in the temple for as long as I dared. I kept thinking that someone would come for me, that I couldn’t possibly be the only one left, that my mother was just playing some awful, terrible game… but she didn’t come. Then I became too hungry to be scared. I wandered north, and wandered, and wandered… with only my shadow beside me for company.”
Viola remained silent. “The King’s soldiers… they did that to you? To your people?”
“Yes,” he said eventually.
“I’m surprised you don’t want to kill us all. ”
“ You didn’t kill my family,” he said quickly. “Although I must say I’m very thankful the uniform has changed.”
Viola inhaled sharply. “Count Alesto and the other knights you’ve killed… they were the ones who killed your people, weren’t they?”
Nico nodded. “The King sent twelve knights just before dawn to attack us at our most vulnerable. Not that it would have mattered—no one could use their shadows the way I can. They slaughtered adults and elders and children alike. Those knights weren’t like you, Windbright. They didn’t… they didn’t care. And so now I don’t, either. I hunt them down, I make them beg, I kill them and I don’t care. ”
The silence whispered between them, thin and fragile as frost. He’d scared her again, reminded her of who he was—a remorseless killer. He’d ruined everything, the plan, yes, but whatever it was that grew between them too was going up in ashes.
Viola turned. “I’m… I’m so sorry,” Viola said quietly, much to his surprise. “I know how shallow those words are—”
“Not from you,” he said. “Nothing is ever shallow when it comes from you.”
Viola went quiet again, for so long he began to doubt that she would ever speak. He’d said too much, betrayed too much, given her more than she could take.
Her fingers circled to his face, tugging it towards hers, making him face her.
“If someone was responsible for the death of my family, I’d want to kill them too,” she told him. “You are not your darkness. I don’t believe in lost causes. But I do believe in you.”
That was silly of her. Foolish. Some people were too broken to be fixed, too messed up to be remade. He was sure he was one of them. She simply didn’t understand how far he’d go for revenge, how much he wanted to hurt those who’d hurt him.
And yet, for her, he was beginning to think he’d set it all aside, to see how far belief would get him.
Before he could find the words to voice those thoughts—or even decide whether or not he wanted to—Viola fractured the tiny space between them, leaning forward to kiss him on the cheek. Her lips brushed the edges of his.
Her hand dropped away. She smiled, then turned her back again.
In the dim, fragile light, his shadows flickered unbidden, licking over her blanketed body like they wanted to crawl into her. The ghost of her mouth and the glittering phantom of her fingertips traced his face long after she was sleeping .
The spirits of the dead didn’t wander the world, but he imagined the echo of that touch would haunt him forever.