Chapter 16
LYRA
I spent the rest of the day trying to convince myself I wasn’t going. It should have been easy. Sneaking out after curfew. Meeting a Shadowwielder alone. Trusting Kieran Nyxara with a secret that could ruin me. Every sensible thought I possessed screamed against it.
Yet as darkness settled over the Sanctum and lanterns began glowing along the paths between the dormitories, I found myself staring out the window of my room instead of preparing for bed.
The sky beyond the glass was a deep violet, stars scattered across it like shattered silver.
Vareena sat cross-legged on her bed, reading or pretending to. She’d glanced at me at least six times in the last ten minutes. “You’re staring holes into the window.”
Definitely pretending. “Aren’t you reading?”
“I was.”I looked away from the glass as she lowered her book. “What’s wrong?”
Everything. Nothing. A shadow I couldn’t control, a Codex that answered questions with riddles, a Shadowwielder who knew too much. “I’m tired.” The lie came easier than it should have.
Vareena didn’t look convinced. “Light Theory?”
I nodded. That part wasn’t a lie. Mistress Calis’s words still echoed inside my skull, power and pain, the distinction between them feeling impossible. She studied me for another moment before finally returning to her book.
“Goodnight, Vareena.”
“Goodnight, Lyra.”
The Sanctum looked different after curfew, quieter, and somehow older than it did during the daylight. The crowds vanished, the endless movement of Candidates disappearing and leaving only stone, moonlight, and shadows stretched long across the ancient grounds.
I pulled my cloak tighter as I slipped between the dormitories, keeping close to the walls where ivy climbed and shadows pooled thickest. The night air carried the scent of pine and damp earth.
The path beyond the Verdant Hallows curved away from the main campus, narrowing as it wound between ancient trees whose branches arched overhead like a canopy.
Lanterns flickered along the way at first, their golden light trembling in the breeze, but they grew fewer with each step until they stopped entirely, just as Kieran had said.
Beyond that point, darkness swallowed the path whole, waiting, as if it had been expecting me.
I slowed.
This was where I should turn back.
I could return to my room, to Vareena, to the fragile comfort of pretending the shadow hadn’t moved. Hadn’t answered.
Pretending I wasn’t changing.
My foot shifted toward the path behind me.
Then I remembered the bench scraping across stone, the way the darkness had reached for Kieran’s without permission, and the simple certainty that if I ignored it, it would only get worse.
So I kept walking.
The old southern ring appeared gradually: first the broken wall, then the ruined pillars, then the training circle itself.
Moonlight spilled across ancient white stone half-swallowed by ivy and wild grass.
Time had worn away portions of the carved runes circling the edge, and cracks split the floor in several places.
No wonder nobody used it anymore. The newer training grounds were cleaner, safer, less forgotten.
This place felt abandoned by everyone except the dark.
A figure stood at the center of the ring, waiting.
Kieran didn’t move when I stepped through the broken entrance.
Didn’t speak. Didn’t acknowledge me. He simply stood with his hands clasped behind his back, staring at the moonlit stone beneath his feet.
For one irrational second, I considered leaving again.
He hadn’t even looked at me yet. I could still disappear back into the trees and pretend this never happened.
The weight of invisible shackles tightened on my wrists.
“You’re late.”
I didn’t answer immediately. My eyes focused on the broken edge of the ring, on the path behind me. “I almost didn’t come.”
His head lifted. Silence stretched between us before I forced myself to step forward, each movement deliberate, reluctant. “I should have listened to that instinct.”
His eyes settled on me, “But you didn’t.”
“No.” My voice came out sharper than I intended. “Because apparently ignoring this isn’t an option.”
I stepped further onto the stone. “Start talking.” One dark eyebrow lifted. Kieran studied me for several long seconds, not just my face, but everything. His gaze moved over me carefully, assessing, calculating.
I hated that I knew exactly what he was thinking. “I am not fragile.”
“No. You’re not.” He stepped toward me. Instinct screamed at me to step back. And this time, I did. “Show me.”
“What?”
“Your shadow.”
“I don’t know how. It moves on its own.”
“Just try.”
“I already told you—”
“Try.” The word cut sharp through the space between us.
“I don’t know how,” I repeated, more tightly.
For the first time, irritation crossed his face.
“You’re lying to me.”
Heat flared in my chest. “I am not.”
“Then you’re lying to yourself.” He said it like I was beneath him. Like being here with me wasn’t worth his time. The shadows along the broken pillars shifted. His eyes flicked toward the movement, then back to me. “There.”
The darkness stilled. “You still think this is a coincidence?” he asked quietly.
I was the first to break the silence. “No,” I said, because there was no point pretending anymore.
Kieran moved slowly around me, not circling like a predator, but observing, studying. It felt invasive anyway. “You’re afraid.”
“I have reason to be.”
“It feeds on fear.”
“I don’t care what it feeds,” I snapped. “Teach me how to get rid of it.”
The shadows stirred again, reacting before I could stop them. Kieran stopped walking. And the darkness recoiled an inch. “No.”
I must have misheard him. “I’m sorry?”
“I can’t teach you to lose it.”
“Then why am I here?”
“So it doesn’t kill you.”
“That’s not what I asked for.”
“You asked for my help. This is it.”
Heat flared behind my ribs. His calm felt obscene while everything in me was splitting apart. “You don’t understand.”
“I understand more than you think.”
“No, you don’t.” My voice was colder than the air around us. “You were born with shadows. Raised in them. I wasn’t. I was dragged across the Veil after my home burned, told I had light—and then yesterday a different power came out of me. One that shouldn’t be mine.”
My voice was shaking now. Kieran said nothing, and the silence nearly broke me. “I don’t want it,” I whispered.
He didn’t react. “It doesn’t care.” He lifted his hand. Darkness gathered over his fingers until it became a blade no wider than a ribbon of moonlight.
I couldn’t look away. “It’s beautiful,” I admitted before I could stop myself.
Kieran glanced at the blade. “Until someone decides it isn’t.” The blade dissolved.
My throat worked around nothing. “Nirael—”
“Nirael is a story told by people who needed someone to fear.”
“She wielded both. And it killed her.”
“Cowardice killed her. People killed her. People who feared what she was because they could never become it. Wielding did not.”
The words were brutal.
I looked away. Past him, the old ring lay in broken pieces beneath the shadows of starlight. Ivy wrapped around the shattered pillars. Wild grass grew through cracks that had once held ancient runes. There had been beauty here once.
Purpose.
Now only the bones remained. I had been wrong. Power never broke anything. It only revealed what had already been cracked. Kieran moved. Not closer. Around me.
Slowly, keeping distance this time. I tracked him anyway, every instinct drawn tight.
“Your light and your shadow answer the same thing.”
“And what exactly is that?”
“Whatever you’re trying hardest not to feel.”
I looked at him despite myself. His eyes were on the stone now, not me.
“You don’t have a summoning problem.”
“Then what do I have?”
He stopped in front of me. “A problem.” He walked toward the center of the ring. “Control is only part of it.”
My mouth opened, then closed again. Because he was right.
Gods, he was insufferable when he was right.
Kieran lowered himself to one knee at the edge of the ring and brushed his fingers over the worn rune carved into the stone.
Shadow slipped from his touch and filled the broken grooves until the symbol glowed black against the white rock.
“This ring is old, but the foundation wards still hold.”
He stood, and the dark rune faded with his touch. “We’ll start with breath.”
I blinked. “That’s it?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you were going to teach me shadow magic.”
A corner of his mouth almost moved. “I am.”
I exhaled sharply through my nose and looked toward the trees. “This was a mistake.”
“You can leave.” The ease with which he said it made me turn toward the pathway.
He did not look angry, not even disappointed.
“You can go back to your room. Lie to your friends again. Pretend again. See if it works for a day. Shit, try for a week.” The shadows behind him shifted.
“I wonder how long you’ll be able to keep pretending that you’re still just the poor girl from the Hollowlands who watched the shadows eat her village. ”
His focus shifted to the shadows gathering at my feet. “Because your shadow already knows you’re not.”
Black lashed across the stone. It spilled outward in violent tendrils, every thread veined with silver-blue light. Cold shadow. Burning starlight. And all of it went for him.
Kieran did not move.
The first tendril struck the space before him and stopped. Not because I commanded it.
Because he did.
His shadows rose in answer, smooth and silent, wrapping around mine before they could touch him.
They did not attack. Did not devour. They contained.
Mine fought him with a desperation that terrified me.
It snapped and writhed, alive with fury, as though it had heard every word he’d said and decided he deserved to bleed for it.
And some vicious, wounded part of me wanted him to.
Kieran’s jaw tightened. His boots slid half an inch across the stone from the force of it.
Still, he held. “Breathe,” he ordered.