Professor
—THERAEL
Ihear the ravens before I see him. A hundred wings folding back into a large black cloak.
He flashes me his insufferable smile as he lands beside me. Eden has not moved in the last ten minutes. She is still leaning against the tree with her eyes closed, knees pulled to her chest. A tiny empath carrying the weight of everyone’s pain. ?mnara? help her. She will need it for what’s coming.
“You gave him the symbol.”
“Well, someone had to. Poor kid.”
“It is not as if it is in my realm of powers to do it. Or I would have.”
I turn from Eden, studying the way his charm is sitting slightly wrong on his face. No one would ever notice unless they know how it used to look before.
“He waited,” Damon says quietly. “At the barrier, though he could have torn through it easily.”
“He loves her. He has always loved her.”
Damon is quiet for a moment, which is unusual enough to be noteworthy. “She’ll forgive him,” he says. “Won’t she?”
I watch the slow rise and fall of her chest, the cedar needle still doing its work to keep her scent tucked safely inside this pocket of meadow. “She already has.”
We fall into an uncomfortable silence, the kind that comes when two people are thinking about the same thing and neither wants to say it first.
“The reaper cycle—” He finally blurts it out.
“I know.”
“And after, when he remembers Micah—”
“I know.”
“Therael—”
“I know!”
The leaves in my elauvhe? start turning so fast it throws my hair around. (Halo) It’s one of the only tells I cannot mask.
Eden shifts slightly against the tree, letting out a small snore.
We both go still until she settles.
“We need to visit Tellian,” I say quietly.
Damon straightens, the charm sliding fully back into place like armor.
“The others?”
“Remavau is in the dream realm. Runak has not surfaced in weeks. Vyxen is—”
“Vyxen,” Damon finishes.
“Let us hope Tellian has found something.” I say. “If anyone can find it… it is him.”
“And if he doesn’t find it in time?”
I look at Eden one last time. A simple human, who woke up in a meadow with no name, and somehow she has become the axis around which everything turns.
“Then we figure it out, like we always do.”
He makes a squawking sound in skepticism.
Behind us, a single cedar needle still holds her scent until she’s ready to be found.
This tree is older than almost anything on earth. Its hollow sits at the junction of three roots, wide enough for those who belong.
I step through first, warmth hitting me immediately. Books are stacked from floor to ceiling, wall to wall, in directions that do not even have names.
Tellian doesn’t bother looking up. He sits behind his desk, wearing a cardigan the color of old parchment, his reading glasses perched at the end of his nose.
Behind me, the sound of a struggle rings out.
“Has this portal gotten smaller?” Damon pants.
“No. But you have gotten bigger,” I murmur. “It is all those strawberry cream cheese danishes you have been devouring.”
“That was unnecessary.”
I pause a moment, inspecting his giant form, trying to push past the structural limitations.
“It was accurate.”
Damon finally squeezes through, his gold charms tangled, several feathers drifting free. “Vhosk?, Tellian. Get a bigger tree.” (Fuck)
Tellian turns a page. “You are late.”
“We didn’t even tell you we were coming.”
He looks up over the rim of his glasses. “And yet, you are late nonetheless.”
“Who pissed in your cereal, Professor?”
On the corner of his desk, half-hidden beneath a star chart, lies a book bound in brown paper.
Could it be?
Damon’s eyes linger one second too long. “Do not,” Tellian says, without looking at either of us.
Damon listens, looking away.
Tellian reaches beneath the star chart, toward something that looks much older, and sets it between us, already opened. The light flickers.
“Did you find the cure?”
His finger traces the page.
“I found something,” he says, “The question is whether you are going to like it.”
“Well… tell us.”
“Damon’s symbol will hold,” Tellian murmurs. “But only for forty-eight hours… after his first cycle begins.”
The book in Damon’s hand drops to the floor with a loud thud. “That is not enough time.”
“No,” Tellian agrees, turning the page. “It is not.”
“Then what do we do?” I ask.
“We better hope she can forgive him,” he says. “All of him. Before the forty-eight hours are gone and the cycle consumes what the symbol was protecting.”
“I will not allow him to go mateless a third time, Tellian.”
He finally looks up from his book, his pale blue eyes reflecting everything, revealing nothing.
“You say that as if the universe cares about your permissions, Therael,” he murmurs. “Therin was a tragedy of timing. Micah was a tragedy of intention. And now Sage… Sage is the tragedy of something that has always been after us for eons.”
I glance at Damon, who’s leaning against a stack of forbidden lexicons, his eyes flashing between gold and black, unable to settle.
I kick down the nearest stack of books, sending a flutter of loose papers through the air.
“Are you honestly pretending we did not have a hand in this?”
Tellian shoves his chair back from the desk, his hands fisting at the edge of his desk. “I pride myself on not being masochistic like you, Therael.”
“Okay,” Damon interjects. “Let us remember why we are here.”
“?mnara? knows it is not to get the help from this vhaelorn?,” I spit. (bastard) My halo bursts into flames. “You sit here, tucked away in your cozy realm, counting stars while the bond my charge shares is currently bleeding out in my meadow!”
He simply adjusts his glasses and takes a single step toward me. “And you stand in the dirt and pretend it is growth, Therael. We all have our own delusions. Mine are just quieter than yours.”
“He is the same soul, Tellian! Three times we have watched him reach for her, and three times we have let the dark trip him. And what have you done to help?”
Damon sighs, a single raven feather drifting from his cloak. “Gentlemen, please. If we are going to measure our… failures, we are going to need a much bigger tree.”
The air in the library changes gradually. Grass creeps through the gaps in Tellian’s floorboards, thin green shoots curling toward the candlelight. My magic slips its leash, vines begin to crawl the nearest bookshelf.
Tellian notices but says nothing. His jaw tightens, and gold words flicker around his wrists just beneath his cuffs.
Single letters turn into fragments that turn into full sentences. They slither toward his spine like fire finding oxygen.
“Tellian,” Damon says quietly.
The books begin to tremble, spines rattling, pages straining from the words inside responding to his power.
The snap at my spine is louder than the rattling bookshelves. My robes shred from the sudden, violent emergence of metal. My skin splits like wet leather being forced apart.
Two massive spans of solid gold arc from my shoulder blades, the metal still slick with the divine substance that serves as my blood. The tips of my wings bite into the ceiling, splintering the wood as I draw myself up to my full height.
Arteus stirs at my back.
New letters pop up across Tellian’s skin.
R
O
S
I freeze, my elauvhe dropping to the floor. My fangs drop slowly, venom sacks already beginning to swell.
“Tellian,” Damon’s voice calls carefully. “Put it away. Now.”
E
L
I
“Tellian,” he urges, “Put. It. Away.”
The last letter -A- settles on Tellian’s skin, pulsing with a gold light that makes my vision swim red.
ROSELIA.
“Therael,” Damon says under his breath. “Pull your fangs back in. You do not want to do something you cannot take back.”
Arteus moves without my permission, uncoiling from my shoulders and slithering over the floor until he finds Tellian’s feet. He winds upward, each coil settling around him with practiced patience.
The squeeze begins, barely anything at first.
“Your charge could not keep his roots from choking Rasen. Neither can you, or your pet.”
Every book goes silent as Arteus’s tongue darts out, finding the air beside Tellian’s ear.
“At leassst,” he hisses, “we know where our mate isss.”
Words begin shooting chaotically across his skin. Books fall from the shelves onto the floor.
“Arteus, enough.” Damon steps forward, his usual charm abandoned. He turns to Tellian, his eyes as dark as pitch. “You used her name. That goes against our code. You do not get to be offended by the repercussions.”
Damon places his hand on my shoulder, the way it has across centuries. “Brother, we need him. You know that. Rein it in.”
My fangs retract painfully, my unused venom sliding warmly down my throat. My elauvhe lifts from the ground one burgundy leaf at a time.
“Find the cure,” I force out.
Arteus uncoils from his body, returning to my shoulders. His tongue flicks once in Tellian’s direction, and Tellian’s hand shoots out over his forearm to cover her name.
“Pull sssomething like that again, Professsor, and I will come back when Therael isss indisssposed.”