Chapter 15 #2
Around us, shields rose and broke. Candidates grunted with exertion.
The Sanctum continued as if the answer did not have the power to ruin me.
Mistress Calis looked directly into my eyes.
“No.” Relief struck so swiftly it made me dizzy.
She had not seen. The Overseers had not seen. No one had. Except him.
“Should I have?” she asked.
My pulse stumbled. “No.”
Mistress Calis only watched me for another moment before saying, “Return to your dormitory after drills. Your body is still recovering.”
Then she walked away. Vareena looked toward me from across the ring, concern written plainly across her face. I forced a smile though it convinced neither of us.
I avoided the dining hall at midday.
Cowardly, perhaps. Necessary, absolutely.
The thought of sitting beneath hundreds of eyes while Dax demanded every detail of Light Theory and Raiden invented increasingly impossible rumors sounded unbearable. Vareena had offered to bring food back to the dormitory, but I told her I wanted to walk.
That part, at least, was true.
The Sanctum grounds stretched beneath a hard blue sky. Candidates crossed between academic halls and training fields, training leathers and elemental crests moving through the paths like scattered pieces of stained glass.
I kept to the quieter edge of campus. Past the infirmary. Past the smaller sparring courts. Past a row of unused classrooms near the western wall where ivy had begun swallowing the stone.
My ribs still ached, but movement helped. It gave the panic somewhere to go. No one had seen the shadows. I repeated it with every step. Mistress Calis had seen nothing. The Overseers had said nothing. The match reports would mention unstable light and an interrupted ward. Nothing more.
I was safe.
The word rang hollow. Because Kieran knew. And every hour he remained silent only made me wonder what he wanted in exchange. I almost convinced myself it was nothing. I nearly laughed at the thought. Men like Kieran Nyxara did not keep dangerous secrets out of kindness.
I turned down a narrow path between two old lecture halls. The sounds of the central grounds faded behind me. Shade pooled beneath the covered walkway. My shadow stretched across the stone. I kept walking.
It did not.
I stopped and the shape at my feet remained angled behind me, long and dark beneath the midday sun.
I took another step. The shadow clung to the same place.
Slowly, I looked down. The darkness trembled.
Not from leaves. Not from clouds crossing the sun.
It rippled like black water. The shadow lengthened toward the wall.
My pulse thundered. With each beat, it spread farther, slipping over the gold-veined stone in thin, searching threads.
There was no one nearby. No Neseryn. No Shadowwielder practicing in an adjacent court.
Only me.
“Stop.” The threads hesitated. It was over.
Then one snapped around the leg of a stone bench.
The bench scraped across the walkway. I stumbled back.
The shadow tightened and stone shrieked against stone as the bench lurched another inch.
“No, no—”I dropped into a crouch and reached for the darkness as if I could tear it away with my hands.
My fingers met cold. Alive. It surged up my arm.
The world around me tilted. For a heartbeat, I was nowhere. No walkway. No Sanctum.
Only an endless field of darkness, pressing against me from all sides.
A whisper slid across my mind. Familiarity followed it, impossible and immediate, like remembering a touch I had never felt.
I ripped my hand away. The shadow recoiled so violently that the bench slammed back into place.
Silence crashed over the walkway. I stared at my fingers.
There were no marks. No threads of black spilling from the tips.
Nothing to prove what had happened. Except the bench that now sat crooked across the stones.
Footsteps sounded at the far end of the passage.
I shot upright as two Earth initiates rounded the corner, laughing about something.
One glanced at the displaced bench, then at me.
I bent as if adjusting my boot, hoping to be beneath their attention.
They passed without stopping and kept walking until their voices faded.
Still, I waited until I could no longer see them before standing.
My hands would not stop shaking. Mistress Calis’s voice thundered through my ears.
Your magic will create danger when none exists.
But this was not light. I needed to get back to the dormitory. No. The Codex. I almost turned toward the Archives. Then remembered its riddles. Its refusal to answer.
What blooms in darkness often begins as grief.
It would tell me I had planted a garden and leave me to wonder whether it meant flowers or graves.
I started toward the Light Quadrant. A shadow fell across the exit and my body reacted before my mind did.
I spun, one hand raised. Kieran leaned against the nearest arch.
He must have been there before the Earth initiates passed.
Perhaps before the bench moved. The realization made my stomach drop even more.
Black training leathers covered him from throat to boots, fitted tightly across his chest and arms. His sleeves were pushed to his elbows, exposing the runes winding across his forearms. In the dimness beneath the arch, the markings looked darker than ink.
Alive, almost.
His green-grey eyes moved from my raised hand to the crooked bench. Then to the shadow pooled at my feet. “You can lower your hand,” he said. “Unless you intend to blind me with absolutely nothing.”
I dropped it. “I was practicing.”
His gaze flicked to the bench again. “Against furniture?”
“It started the fight.” His mouth almost moved. “What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Walking.”
“You were standing still.”
“I finished.” I stared at him. He stared back. Neither of us mentioned the Archives. Or the way he had looked at me across the dining hall. Or the secret stretched tight between us.
I stepped around him. His arm shifted across the archway, blocking my path with skin and shadows. He did not touch me.
He did not need to.
I stopped close enough to see the faint shadow of stubble along his jaw. Close enough to catch the clean scent of cedar and cold air, undercut by smoke. My pulse, already unsteady, betrayed me further. “Move,” I said.
“No.”
My gaze dropped to his arm. “You have an alarming habit of trapping women in corridors.”
“You have an alarming habit of creating magical disasters in them.”
“I did not create a disaster.”
“You dragged a stone bench across the ground with your shadow.”
“It moved a few inches.”
“Forgive me. A minor catastrophe.”
I folded my arms. “Are you going to report me?”
His face changed. Only slightly. Whatever trace of amusement had touched it disappeared. “If I intended to report you, I would have done it yesterday.”
I glanced past him. The walkway remained empty. Kieran followed the movement of my eyes. “No one saw.”
“You did.”
“Yes.”
I hated that he seemed so calm. I hated that I was not. “Why were you watching me?”
“I wasn’t.”
“Kieran.” For the first time since he stepped from the arch, he really looked at me. Not at the magic. At me. My shaking hands tucked beneath my arms.
His jaw tightened. “You left the Aurora Circle alone,” he said. “You looked like you were about to either collapse or set something on fire.”
“I wield light not flame.”
“So they say.” I should have been offended. Instead, the corner of my mouth threatened to lift. I crushed the reaction. “So you were following me?”
“No.”
“Liar.”
One dark brow rose. “Careful.”
“Is that a threat?”
“A suggestion.”
“I don’t need your suggestions.”
“You clearly do.” Anger flared. The shadow at my feet stirred. Kieran’s eyes dropped instantly. I forced my breathing to slow until the darkness settled. His gaze lifted to mine.
“There,” he said softly.
A chill chased over my skin. “There what?”
“You react, and the shadows react with you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”