Chapter 11
I woke up feeling hollow.
Not the usual exhaustion or the familiar ache in my chest—this was different. Deeper. Like something vital had been carved out during the night, leaving only empty space behind.
The shadows hadn't come.
I'd lain awake until past midnight, waiting for that familiar cold touch, the gentle pulse that eased my pain. But my room had stayed empty. Silent. The darkness beneath my bed remained ordinary, mundane—just absence of light, nothing more.
Kairen had finally regained control.
Or he'd simply stopped caring enough to fight it.
"You look terrible," Brooke said, already dressed and braiding her hair. "Worse than usual, I mean. No offense."
"None taken." My voice came out rough, unused.
"Did you find Kairen yesterday?"
I didn't want to talk about it. Didn't want to relive the ice in his voice, the brutal efficiency with which he'd dismantled every hope I'd built. But Brooke was staring at me with those sharp, concerned eyes, and lying felt like too much effort.
"I found him."
"And?"
"And he told me I don't matter. That the connection isn't real. That I'm desperate and delusional and chasing fantasies about extinct dragons because nothing else would choose someone as weak as me." The words tasted like ash. "Then he told me to leave."
Brooke was quiet for a long moment. Then: "He's an idiot."
"Maybe he's right."
"He's not right. He's terrified." She sat on the edge of my bed. "Serenya, I've seen the way his shadows move around you. I've watched them reach for you when he's not even in the same room. That's not nothing. That's not delusion."
"Then why—"
"Because being terrified makes people cruel.
Makes them lash out at the thing scaring them.
" Her voice softened. "My oldest brother did the same thing when he bonded with his griffin.
Spent weeks pushing everyone away because he was afraid the bond would change him, make him someone his family wouldn't recognize.
He said horrible things. Made my mother cry.
Nearly ruined his relationship with all of us. "
"What changed?"
"The griffin. It refused to let him isolate himself.
Kept forcing him into situations where he had to interact with us, had to acknowledge that bonding didn't erase who he was.
" She squeezed my shoulder. "Point is: sometimes the bond knows better than the bonded human.
Maybe Kairen's shadows are smarter than he is. "
"They didn't come last night." The admission hurt. "For the first time since I got here, they stayed away."
Brooke frowned. "That's... actually concerning. They came every night?"
I nodded.
"And they helped? With your breathing and stuff?"
"Yes."
"Then Kairen forcing them away isn't control—it's self-destruction." She stood abruptly. "Come on. Breakfast, then classes. You're not skipping just because some emotionally constipated third-year decided to be an ass."
The dining hall felt wrong without the anticipation of seeing him.
I hadn't realized how much of my morning routine had become oriented around stolen glances across the room, around watching for shadows that moved wrong, around that constant awareness of his presence somewhere in the Academy.
Now there was just... nothing.
Caleb and Torin were at their usual table, but I couldn't bring myself to join them. Couldn't face Caleb's questions or Torin's knowing looks. Instead, Brooke and I sat with a group of other first-years who were nervously discussing the upcoming Maze trial.
"Three weeks," a girl named Petra said, her voice tight with anxiety. "Three weeks until they trap us in our own minds and see if we break."
"Professor Kaelith says the Maze has a thirty percent failure rate," another student added. "Thirty percent! That means one in three of us won't make it through."
"Better than the sixty percent who'll fail the actual bonding trial," someone muttered.
The conversation devolved into anxious speculation about what kinds of illusions the Maze would show, what fears it would exploit, who among them was strong enough to survive.
I barely heard any of it.
My mind kept replaying last night. The coldness in Kairen's voice. The way he'd looked at me like I was nothing. The frost spreading between us, a physical manifestation of the distance he needed to maintain.
You don't matter. Not to me. Not to my shadows.
"Serenya." Brooke's voice cut through my spiraling thoughts. "You're not eating."
I looked down at my untouched plate. "Not hungry."
"You're never hungry. Eat anyway."
I managed a few bites of bread before my stomach rebelled. The rest of breakfast passed in uncomfortable silence.
Mental Defense was torture.
Professor Kaelith had decided today's lesson would focus on "emotional manipulation"—illusions designed to trigger shame, guilt, and self-loathing.
"The Maze will not simply show you your fears," she announced, her pale eyes sweeping across the class. "It will show you your failures. Your inadequacies. Everything you hate about yourself. And it will make you believe these things define you."
She raised her hand, and the classroom dissolved.
Suddenly I was back in our cramped room in the lower quarter, my mother's exhausted face staring at me with barely concealed resentment.
"You're killing me," she said, her voice flat with resignation. "Every day you survive is another day I work myself to death trying to keep you alive."
"I know," I whispered. "I'm sorry."
"Sorry doesn't pay for medicine. Sorry doesn't put food on the table." She turned away. "Sometimes I wish you'd just... stop fighting. Let nature take its course. Then maybe I could finally rest."
The words hurt because part of me had always suspected she thought them. Part of me had seen it in her eyes on the worst days, when I was too sick to leave bed and she had to miss work to care for me.
You're a burden. You've always been a burden.
"No." I forced the word out, remembering Professor Kaelith's teachings. "This isn't real. My mother never said those things."
The illusion wavered.
"Didn't she?" My mother's voice took on a mocking tone. "Maybe not out loud. But she thought them. You know she did. You saw it every time she looked at you."
"She loved me." My voice was stronger now. "Whatever she felt, she loved me enough to sacrifice everything to keep me alive."
"Love mixed with resentment. Love tainted by exhaustion. Is that really love at all?"
"Yes." I pushed against the illusion with everything I had. "Because she stayed. She could have abandoned me, but she didn't. That's love."
The illusion shattered.
I was back in the classroom, gasping, tears streaming down my face. Around me, other students were emerging from their own personalized nightmares—some crying, some shaking, a few looking oddly triumphant.
"Good," Professor Kaelith said, unmoved by the room full of traumatized first-years. "Some of you broke through quickly. Others took too long. And a few—" She gestured to three students still trapped in their illusions, whimpering. "—are still lost."
She snapped her fingers, and the remaining illusions dissolved. The three students collapsed, sobbing.
"Emotional manipulation is the hardest illusion to break because part of you wants to believe it," Professor Kaelith continued.
"Part of you has always believed the worst about yourself.
The Maze will exploit that mercilessly. Your only defense is to acknowledge the grain of truth in every lie, then choose not to let it define you. "
She dismissed us early, probably because half the class looked like they needed the infirmary.
I stumbled out into the corridor, my hands still shaking.
"That was horrific," Brooke said beside me, her face pale. "She made me watch my brothers die. All four of them. Because I wasn't strong enough to protect them."
"I'm sorry."
"It wasn't real. I know it wasn't real." But her voice wavered. "Doesn't make it hurt less."
We walked in silence for a moment. Then Brooke said, "What did you see?"
"My mother. Telling me I was killing her. That she wished I'd stop fighting and just die."
"Fuck." Brooke's arm came around my shoulders. "Did she ever actually—"
"No. She never said it. But I always wondered if she thought it." I wiped at my eyes. "Professor Kaelith was right. The worst illusions are the ones that feel possible."
"Yeah." Brooke's grip tightened. "Come on. We have Physical Conditioning next, and Master Wren will make us run until we puke. At least that's a straightforward kind of misery."
She wasn't wrong.
Master Wren had decided today was "endurance day," which apparently meant running laps until students started dropping. I made it through four before I had to stop, doubled over, coughing blood into my hand.
"Vale!" Master Wren's voice cracked across the training yard. "Walk it off or get off my field!"
I walked. Slowly, painfully, but I walked. Refused to give her the satisfaction of seeing me quit.
By the time the session ended, I was shaking with exhaustion and my vision was graying at the edges. Brooke had to help me back to the dormitory, practically carrying me up the stairs.
"You need to see a healer," she said for the hundredth time.
"I'm fine."
"You're coughing blood. That's the opposite of fine."
"It happens sometimes. I'll be okay after I rest."
Brooke looked like she wanted to argue, but she just helped me to my bed and left me there, muttering about stubborn idiots.
I lay in the dimming afternoon light, staring at the ceiling, feeling the ache in my chest that had nothing to do with my condition and everything to do with absence.
The shadows hadn't come last night.
Kairen had managed to keep them away.
And I felt the loss like a physical wound.
Evening fell. Brooke left to meet Caleb for their usual training session, chattering about some new technique he wanted to show her. I stayed in bed, too tired to move, too hollow to care.
The room grew dark. Moonlight crept across the floor, painting silver lines on stone.
And the shadows beneath my bed remained still.
I told myself it was fine. That I'd survived eighteen years without shadow magic helping me breathe. That I could survive now.
But my chest ached. My lungs felt tight. Every breath was effort.
I closed my eyes and tried to sleep.
I woke to cold.
Not the ambient cold of a stone room at night, but the specific, deliberate cold of winter concentrated in a single space.
The shadows beneath my bed were moving.
Relief flooded through me so intense it was almost painful. They'd come. Despite everything Kairen had said, despite his brutal rejection, despite his attempts to maintain control—they'd come anyway.
A single tendril emerged, hesitant, almost shy. It stretched across the floor toward my bed, slower than usual. Uncertain.
Like it wasn't sure it would be welcome.
"I'm here," I whispered into the darkness. "I'm still here."
The shadow surged forward, wrapping around my wrist with desperate intensity. And through it, I felt him.
Kairen, somewhere in the Academy, losing the battle he'd been fighting. The shadows had defied him again, left him again, and he was too exhausted to pull them back this time.
But there was something else in the connection. Something new.
Pain.
Not physical pain—emotional pain so profound it had broken through the numbness the dragon bond usually imposed. The kind of pain that came from pushing away something you desperately needed because you were too terrified to let yourself want it.
The shadow pulsed against my wrist, and I felt the question in it: Why are you still here? Why didn't you give up? Why do you keep reaching back when he keeps pushing you away?
"Because you need me," I whispered. "And because he's wrong. This does matter. You matter."
The shadow tightened—not painfully, but firmly. Like it was trying to hold on to something precious it was afraid of losing.
And through it, I felt Kairen's response to my words. Not agreement. Not acceptance.
Just more pain. The kind that came from hearing something you wanted to believe but were too broken to trust.
"Tell him," I said softly, "that I'm not going anywhere. Tell him that his words hurt, but they didn't work. Tell him that I'm stubborn enough to keep trying, even when he's being an ass about it."
The shadow pulsed—acknowledgment, maybe, or affirmation.
Then, slowly, it began to retreat. Not because I'd asked it to, but because something was pulling it back. Kairen, gathering the last shreds of his control, forcing his magic to obey despite how much it clearly didn't want to.
The shadow slipped away, leaving my wrist cold and aching.
But it had come.
Despite everything, it had come.
And that meant something.
I lay in the dark, my chest still tight but my heart somehow lighter, and tried to figure out what to do next.
Kairen had pushed me away. Brutally, effectively, completely.
But his shadows had defied him to find me anyway.
And through them, I'd felt his pain. The cost of his rejection. The price he was paying for maintaining distance.
The question was: how long could he keep paying it?
How long could either of us sustain this—him fighting his own magic, me waiting for shadows that might not come, both of us caught in a connection neither of us fully understood?
Three weeks until the Maze trial.
Seven weeks until the Wilderness.
Whatever was happening between us, it couldn't continue like this. Something would have to give.
The shadows would win and break his control completely.
Or Kairen would win and suppress them entirely.
Or—and this was the possibility that terrified and thrilled me in equal measure—we'd both stop fighting and see what happened when shadow and potential light finally stopped running from each other.
I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, knowing the shadows wouldn't return tonight.
Knowing that tomorrow I'd have to decide: keep pushing, or finally accept that Kairen didn't want what his magic wanted.
That maybe, no matter what the shadows felt, the human attached to them would never let himself feel anything at all.