Chapter 6 Seranni
This was getting ridiculous.
I stared at the tangle of herbs in front of me, their wilted leaves a testament to my distraction. The burnt edges still smoked faintly, the charred remnants of what was supposed to have been a soothing tonic. A small cough escaped me as I waved my hand through the smoky air.
It had taken me a while, but now I was sure of it. Kael was avoiding me. And now, even my potions were suffering for it.
Why?
At first, I told myself it was nothing. A few missed conversations, a tendency to linger outside or in his room—hardly worth noting. But as the days stretched into nearly a week, his absence loomed larger and larger.
He wasn’t simply busy. He was avoiding me.
I pressed my lips together, smothering the sharp pang of hurt that threatened to surface. The worst part was that I knew why.
I thought I had only embarrassed myself when I had assumed he wanted me as I had wanted him. Was my foolishness going to cost me his friendship, too?
The memory burned vividly in my mind, no matter how hard I tried to push it away. Until Kael had pushed me aside that night six days ago, I hadn’t even realized how attracted I’d been to him.
That night, my admiration for Kael had tipped into something warmer, deeper—something I could no longer ignore. I’d leaned toward him, desperate to close the distance between us. When he had fled the room as if demons were after him, it had helped me come to my senses. Kael wasn’t attracted to me. Or worse, he didn’t even think of me as a friend, he’d only been tolerating me because of my usefulness to him.
I’d seen the look in his eyes when I had leaned toward him: not longing, not even awkward uncertainty. It was horror.
The thought twisted my stomach into knots.
Until that moment, I hadn’t even realized the depth of my attraction to him. His quiet strength, his care, the way his rough-edged exterior softened when he thought I wasn’t paying attention—it had all crept up on me without warning. And I’d ruined it.
Now, I was paying the price.
I dumped the burnt herbs into the refuse bin with a sigh, turning my attention back to the potion station I’d set up near the tower window. Outside, the sun hung low in the sky, casting the snow-covered forest in shades of gold and pale lavender. A beautiful sight, but not one I could enjoy.
I couldn’t let things go on like this. The silence between us had grown unbearable, hanging over every shared meal, every stolen glance. It was a barrier I hadn’t meant to erect, and yet I couldn’t seem to tear it down.
Well, there was only one thing for it, I had to ignore what had happened and help us find our way back to our friendship from before, however shallow it may have been. Otherwise, the next three months would be torture .
His avoidance of me was working, though. There was no room for awkwardness between us when we hardly saw each other except for meals. Every book I asked him to read, he read through the night and in the morning, I found it left on the table I had reserved for my research. He left notes with his thoughts and questions on each book, but he was usually nowhere to be seen by the time I woke.
Well, this frozen silence between us couldn’t last forever. Tonight, I’d just have to confront him and talk to him about this. I’d have to tell him that even if he rejected me, I wasn’t pining away in heartbreak, and I was perfectly capable of working with him on solving our problems.
But it was proving difficult when Kael was determined to avoid me every chance he could get. He couldn’t hide away from me in the small tower, but during the day time, he spent most of his time in the forest, going for long walks, chopping firewood, or hunting. And the rest of the time, he spent in his room. I’d often wondered what he’d been doing in there, but I’d left him alone to his privacy.
Until this morning, when I’d been working on my potions and he’d gone out for a walk, as usual. The faintest wisp of smoke still lingered in the tower’s halls from when I had burned my herbs when I should have just lightly singed them. It meant that I had to open all the windows I could to let the smell out, even in Kael’s room.
I hesitated at the threshold, feeling like an intruder even though the door had been left ajar. The room was austere but lived-in, the sort of space that told you more about its occupant than words ever could.
A neatly made bed, its blanket dark and serviceable. A heavy cloak hanging on a peg by the door, its hem frayed from frequent use. And on the desk, a collection of loose papers, some weighted down by an open book.
A gust of wintery wind blew in from the open window, rifling the papers on his desk, and that was when I saw it.
Hundreds of charcoal drawings, birds and squirrels, trees and flowers, clouds and sunsets. Captured with a precision and artistry that took my breath away, the textures of bark and feathers so vivid that I could almost feel them beneath my fingertips. And people—faces I couldn’t recognize, smiling and glaring, pensive and laughing—and all of them so lifelike that they took my breath away. Kael had a talent for bringing the everyday to life in his sketches.
And then there was one of me, sitting at the kitchen table, writing in a book, my hair tumbling loose around my shoulders.. It made my heart squeeze to see myself reflected in Kael’s hand. Was this how he saw me? I looked more beautiful than I could have thought.
The lines were bold yet tender, capturing a moment I barely remembered.
I turned another page, and my breath caught. This one was of me, too, but it was pure imagination, because I had never looked this. The picture showed me reclining on a bed, my head propped up on a pillow as my curls swirled around my head. My eyes were large and my mouth was open, lips parted as if I was breathing heavily. A single clawed hand was resting against the side of my head, while the other was fisted in my curls, as if it was drawing me upward to meet the owner of those hands.
I shivered. I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that the hands belonged to Kael. He didn’t think of me as a friend, that much was sure.
But then why was he avoiding me? Maybe he was just shy. Perhaps he was afraid of overstepping and didn’t want to jeopardize our friendship. The questions churned in my mind as I carefully replaced the drawings, smoothing the papers back into order. My hand lingered on the desk for a moment, my gaze drifting to the open window and the snow-covered trees beyond.
We can’t go on like this, I thought. If he feels the same way, he needs to tell me. And if he doesn’t…then I need to move on.
Well then, that meant that I would have to show him his attentions wouldn’t be…unwelcome.
Smiling, I replaced his drawings, carefully placing everything back in order. Then, shutting the window again, I left his room.
That evening, I set my plan into motion.
Kael and I ate dinner together in the kitchen, the fire crackling warmly in the hearth. He was quiet, as he’d been all week, but his tension had eased slightly, his shoulders no longer hunched as if bracing for an attack.
After we’d finished eating, I poked at the kitchen fire, carefully taking out a few bits of charcoal as Kael made quick work of cleaning our dishes. I sat down at the table and began sketching in my book, little diagrams of the most common ingredients needed for my potions. After a moment, I looked up to see Kael staring at me with interest.
“I’m having a hard time getting these leaves right,” I said with a frown. As I expected, Kael drifted closer to have a look.
He glanced at me, his brow furrowing slightly. “Leaves?”
“Yes.” I opened my notebook, showing him the crude drawing I’d attempted. “Sage, specifically. I need to identify the plants quickly in the forest, and this…” I gestured at the page with a grimace. “…isn’t going to help.”
He leaned closer, his interest piqued. “Would you like to me help?”
I looked up with a raised eyebrow, feigning surprise. “With the sketches?”
“I have some talent.”
Grinning to myself, I handed him the charcoal and my book, watching as he pulled his chair closer to mine. His movements were deliberate, almost reverent, as he began sketching.
“So, you would like me to draw sage leaves here?”
I nodded, and watched quietly as he spent the next few minutes sketching. The room fell silent except for the soft scratch of charcoal against paper. I found myself captivated by the way his hands moved, the sure, fluid strokes that brought the image to life.
His big hands were gentle as he clutched the charcoal, moving over the paper in sure, slow strokes…
I squirmed in my seat as I thought of where else I would like those slow, gentle hands. But Kael was finally looking more relaxed than he had all week, and I didn’t want to do anything that would scare him away.
Shaking my head, I bent to look at my own notebook, and soon, the two of us were sitting before the fire, quietly immersed in our own work. “There,” he said finally, sliding the notebook back toward me.
I stared at the drawing, my chest tightening. The sage leaf was perfect, every vein and curve rendered with painstaking detail. But it was more than that. The care he had poured into it was palpable, as if he’d imbued the drawing with a piece of himself.
“It’s beautiful,” I whispered, unable to look away.
Kael cleared his throat, his ears tinged faintly red. “It’s just a leaf.”
“It’s more than that,” I said, my voice soft but firm.
Our eyes met, and for a moment, the barrier between us seemed to waver.
That night, Kael stayed downstairs with me, instead of beating a retreat to his room, and later, when we wished each other goodnight, he smiled at me just as he always had. It was almost like things had gone back to normal again.
That was when the dreams began.
Dreams of those big, gentle hands on me, stroking me, touching me, lighting a fire inside me that would not be doused—dreams where he clutched me to him with those hands, his hot breath a whisper in my ear—
I usually woke up hot and bothered.
And deeply ashamed.
I’d thought that now we were talking again, Kael would make his move, but he had stayed distant, if friendly. And then I’d understood: Kael was making it made it clear that he didn’t want anything more than my friendship. Or worse, that all he needed from me was my skill in deciphering the magic books he found.
He must have drawn that picture just for practise.
And here I was, lusting after him.
It had to stop.
So, two days after I’d first started to pay obsessive attention to Kael’s hands, when he said that he was going to go out after supper on one of his long walks, I only nodded. Best that I absorb myself in my work, too. It would help keep my mind off…other things.
Retiring to my room, I spread my notes and my books open on the table there and went to work, trying to make sense of all the magic books he had found in his room.
Kael had been going through all the books in the tower long before I’d come to live here, and I’d seen him making notes in one of the notebooks he kept in his room. I helped him understand what each of the mage’s books contained—he let me keep the books themselves but made notes of his own. I had no idea what he was researching because he didn’t share his notes with me, but then I was used to secrecy when it came to magic.
But I had some idea, though. I had noticed that sometimes, his eyes glowed, as if he had magic within him—and sometimes, his nails lengthened into claws. It wasn’t difficult to imagine that Kael had an interest in magic because he wanted to learn more about himself. Had he been blessed by the Old Gods? It must have been recent, if so. It was the only thing that fit, how he came to have magic without knowing anything about it.
It meant me was like me. Alone with his gift, with no one to turn to for answers. No witch or mage would have shared what they knew with him.
I’d heard that most magic users were secretive because the spells they developed were the only things they could trade. The Old Gods of Telluria may have blessed us with magic, but it was the humans who could develop battle spells using their powers that were the powerful ones.
Once upon a time, Mother Narr had told me that there used to be a Royal Academy for mages where they used to develop spells and sell them to businesses and guilds for a profit. Ever since the current King had ascended the throne fifteen years ago, all the magic users in the country had been pressed into the army to fight the King’s wars for him.
The mage had lived well on the King’s dime. The tower was small but luxuriously appointed, and the magic apparatus here was the best that money could buy. The King had evidently tasked the mage with an important task for the war.
Which made it all the more strange that the mage who lived here had left all his notes behind.
The ceasefire had been sudden, but surely, he wouldn’t have left everything behind if he’d had the choice, right?
It made no sense, but I was making the most of my windfall. In my research, I copied all the spells that I found useful into a book of my own, to research later and perfect them by myself.
I would make the most of my powers.
The book Kael had given me was a spell book, but it looked older than the others. It was marked in what looked to be the handwriting of a child, and hasty notes and doodles were scribbled in the margins of the page, so I was hopeful that the spells would be easy for a beginner like me.
Spells for remedies and medication came easily to me, I could make potions and tinctures by intuition, but I had no idea how to do any of the spells that could help with practical things.
“So, you can’t make gold? Or hypnotise people?” My father sighed as he shook his head. “You can’t use your magic to do anything useful , is what you’re saying.”
I pushed the memory away. I’d learn these spells, and I’d prove that I could be useful. That I could be a help to him, and not a hindrance. Or a financial burden that he had to take care of.
The first time I’d discovered I could do magic; it was a year after my mother had passed from the spotted fever. I had been immune, even then, an early sign of my magic that none of us had understood.
I’d been playing in the woods with Voren while my father had been at work in the fields, and I’d fallen from a tree branch and twisted my ankle. Badly bruised and unable to walk, I’d limped home in tears. Voren had run off, of course, scared of a scolding from my father.
And then, wonder of wonders, I’d clutched at my aching foot and wished it would stop hurting—and it had. I’d healed myself. When I’d told my father that night, I’d expected him to be happy, but he was only disappointed with the way my magic manifested. And he was right. I was too young then to realize that my magic couldn’t help us, not really.
I had to do better this time.
Now, I needed to learn this spell. One so simple that even a child could do it, apparently.
I read the incantation again, and drew the magic circle in chalk on the table. I visualized the item I wanted to bring to me—a clump of sage that sat on top of a bookshelf a few feet away. Keeping the item in my line of sight would help, the book said.
Passing a hand over the circle, I closed my eyes, and concentrated. I opened my eyes, and saw the sage leaves sitting in the middle of the circle I had drawn. Success!
I wanted to jump up and run through the tower until I found Kael and told him the news. But I restrained myself. What if it was a fluke?
I had to try again.
Half an hour later, when I had transported things across my bedroom and back, I was confident enough to try bringing to me something I could not see. Closing my eyes, I envisioned my comb, sitting on top of the table that sat by my bed back in Vilusia. I held the picture in my mind until I could see the light glisten off the polished wooden surface and I could count each tine of the comb.
Then, I passed my hand over the array, and whispered the incantation. The image in my mind wavered, but when I opened my eyes again, the comb sat in the middle of my magic circle.
I spent the next few hours magically transporting everything from my house that I needed to live comfortably in the tower. Sometimes, I had to try again, because my mental picture was not as strong as the spell demanded, and I had to keep at it. My clothes had proved the most demanding to transport, because it was difficult to remember the details and embellishments and embroidery on each piece, which made them difficult to magically ‘call’, but in the end, I was able to manage it.
By the time it was time to go down for supper, I was tired, and wanted nothing more than to collapse into bed. Dinner was quiet, Kael was as reticent as he had been these past few days, and I was too tired to draw him out into conversation.
As I climbed the winding staircase to my bedroom, my legs felt heavy with exhaustion. The day’s magical training had taken a greater toll on me than I'd anticipated.
I paused on the landing, leaning against the cool stone wall for a moment to catch my breath. My fingertips tingled with the residual energy of the spell I’d been. The power thrummed beneath my skin, begging to be unleashed, but I knew I needed to rest.
With a weary sigh, I pushed open the door to my room and stepped inside, the familiar scent of lavender and parchment enveloping me. My gaze drifted to the cluttered desk in the corner, covered in tomes and scrolls detailing the arcane arts. I’d spent countless hours poring over their pages, determined to master the practical applications of magic.
And yet, despite my progress, there was still so much I had yet to learn. Piles and piles of books I had yet to read. Had the mage really read through them all? Did he know everything in these books? The depth and breadth of magical knowledge seemed to stretch on infinitely, a vast and daunting ocean that threatened to swallow me whole.
I sank down onto the edge of the bed, my trembling fingers tracing the intricate embroidery of the quilt. I felt drained, and it had led to me dropping my spoon at dinner. Kael’s face flashed in my mind, his striking features etched in a look of concern as he had sprung to his feet as if to save me from the dangers of a few spatters of food on my blouse.
It was such a contrast to his aloofness of the past few days that I had stared in surprise.
I had believed we’d become friends. And yet, over the past few days, I had felt him drawing further and further away from me. And his reluctance to form a romantic attachment to me didn’t explain it all.
Tonight at dinner, he’d made some excuse about needing to get more firewood, and had retreated from my company. I’d hoped that we were growing closer, that perhaps there might be the possibility of something more between us. But now, I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d somehow overstepped, or if I'd misjudged the nature of our relationship entirely.
With a heavy heart, I rose from the bed and began to undress, my fingers working the buttons of my blouse with practiced ease.
Putting on my night clothes, I pushed all thoughts of Kael from my mind, focusing instead on the task at hand. I needed to rest, to regain my strength. Tomorrow would bring new challenges, new spells to master, new books to decipher for Kael. I couldn’t afford to be distracted by the whims of my own heart.
As I slipped beneath the sheets, I couldn’t help but wonder where Kael was now, what he was doing. Was he out in the cold, wandering the snowy grounds? Or had he returned to his own room, seeking solace in the solitude?
I closed my eyes, willing my mind to quiet, but the image of his face—the furrowed brow, the haunted look in his eyes—refused to leave me. There was something he was hiding, something he seemed desperate to keep from me. And it pained me to think that he didn’t trust me enough to confide in me.
There was a depth to him, a quiet strength and wisdom that I found utterly captivating. And yet, there were times when I sensed a profound sadness lurking beneath the surface, a burden he seemed to carry alone.
With a frustrated groan, I rolled onto my side, burying my face in the pillow. I needed to let this go, to focus on my studies and my training. Kael was a grown man, perfectly capable of handling his own affairs. If he wanted to share his burdens with me, he would. Until then, I had to respect his privacy and his boundaries.
Slowly, I felt the tension in my muscles begin to ease, my eyelids growing heavy. The day’s exertions were finally catching up with me, and I welcomed the embrace of sleep.
Perhaps in the morning, things would look brighter. Perhaps Kael would be more himself, and I could find the courage to ask him what was truly troubling him.