GAVRAIL
There are bonds forged in battle—and others in instinct. The latter are far more dangerous, for they are chosen before the mind can refuse them.
—Discipline of the Blade and the Void, Vikhrostrum required text
Iwatch her for a while, standing at the edge of the half-frozen lake. After the duel at the Grotto, after what happened, I knew where to find her. I always do.
Because some part of me—buried deep beneath all that discipline and distance—still moves in time with her. Whether I want to or not.
I’m calm now, after the adrenaline that pulsed through me in the cave. The fear that took over when that ice dagger flew straight for her throat.
Instinct. Possession. Panic. Call it whatever you want.
I threw my shadows without thinking. A stupid choice. Not the cold, calculated strategy I’m known for. I didn’t plan it. I never plan when it comes to her. And that’s the fucking problem. She makes me reckless. She makes me want to bleed. And it nearly exposed us both.
And when her water slammed into my dark—when it fused, becoming something else entirely, it was like… something ancient inside me lifted its head and said, There you are.
I’ve slept with women. Bled with men. I’ve fought until my hands shook and my vision went white. None of that touched what this felt like.
It was intimate in a way that made sex look like a fucking handshake. It burned through everything I had locked away. Memories of her. By the lake, in the forest, in my room, on her bed, the night that we…
No. I need to stop thinking of that. It will only get me into trouble. But it plays like a godsdamn broken record in my mind every time my head hits the pillow.
Sharing magick with Celeste awakened something no one else has even brushed. Something deep. Reverberating in my chest, in my very bones.
If I’m being honest, it terrifies me. But not because I can’t handle it.
I threw up the wall of shadow to bury the proof.
To keep the crowd from seeing what happened.
To keep her safe from questions. And for one half-breath I was ready to pull her into my darkness where no one else could find her.
Where no one else could touch her. Keep her there until she remembered exactly what we were together.
But he got there first.
Noa.
Like a golden fucking fire god.
His hands wrapped around her like she belonged to him.
And her body—her traitorous, perfect body—leaned into him like she thought so too.
Every instinct screamed at me—to tear her from his arms, strip his touch from her skin like it burned.
But I let the moment pass. Barely. My shadows curled at my fingertips, itching to lash out.
Not yours anymore.
But the lie tasted like blood.
Now, though, her posture is tense, lost in thought. I watch the way she shapes the water into a herd of dancing horses, mesmerizing as they gallop across the icy lake. Beautiful. Graceful. Like their maker.
I step out of the shadows beneath the pines. The winter air off the lake is biting, but warmth gathers in my chest. When I speak, my voice only startles her slightly.
“I’ve always loved watching them dance.”
Her magick settles, the horses dissolving back into rippling water.
She doesn’t need to look. I know that gaze—lost in the expanse of water, listening to something older than the two of us. I wait, breathing slow, letting the hush return and her magick still before saying anything more.
I step closer, her scent curling into me like rain. Wild jasmine after a storm—fresh, unruly. Vanilla and amber lingering on skin I still remember tasting. And beneath it all, water—cool, clean. A warning. A memory. A pull I’ve never outrun.
“What’s it saying?”
I know the answer before she gives it.
“She’s remembering,” she murmurs.
I nod. Because water always remembers.
Both curse and fantasy wrapped in one.
She turns toward me then, her dark hair spun gold at the edges in the afternoon sun. The sight of her hits like a gut-punch.
She looks like someone you aren’t meant to touch. And like the last place that ever felt like home.
I nod toward the sun-warmed stone, asking her to join me. She hesitates before nodding and coming to sit on the rock beside me. My shadows stir around me, restless, like wolves readying for a hunt.
I notice she’s twisting her ring—my ring. The sapphire and diamonds glint like they are part of the ice-flecked lake in front of them. It’s something I’ve watched her do countless times. And I can’t help but feel like it’s a claim I’m staking. Even if she doesn’t know what that ring actually means.
Under my skin, my shadows ripple, and I fucking hate how much I want her. How even now, after she chose him, my body still thinks she’s mine.
And if that isn’t a fucking liability, I don’t know what is.
I try to distract myself and her with memories of us. That time we used her mom’s earring to fish. The broken swing we mended. We fall into an old rhythm—story after story tumbling out—because words are safer than looking at her.
Every laugh is a reminder of who she was and who she’s become. In the afternoon light, I see both, and my heart fucking burns with the loss and return of her.
I study the way her shoulders finally relax, how her fingers trail the vapor rising from the warm stone below them.
Finally, I break the quiet. “About earlier. The Grotto.”
She tenses. I don’t need to ask what she’s thinking—that flash of shadowmire.
“It felt… alive.” Her voice is low, contemplative.
I don’t answer right away. I can’t tell her how it felt when our magicks merged, what I felt. Only that it was something ancient. Something powerful. Something that was and has always only been ours.
The words and world hang between us, heavy with the promise of safety and destruction.
I reach out—plucking a stray pine needle from her hair, my fingers brushing her temple.
Her breathing falters. The gold flecks in her eyes shimmer like sunlight through a field of wildflowers, all the colors melting together—impossibly magnetic.
Impossibly her. She stills beneath my hand. Her eyes meet mine—open, raw, infinite.
Every instinct screams at me to close the distance, to claim what’s always been there. My whole body leans into the fight—want against control, need against restraint.
For a wild second, I almost do it, ready to taste her there and everywhere else on this damned rock. To hell with the consequences.
But she pulls away, and the moment fractures.
The loss of her skin against mine feels almost violent. Like losing a war I never even got to fight.
She rises and steps off the rock, voice soft. “I’m with Noa.”
My jaw ticks. “I know.”
But her words land like a blade sliding between my ribs.
I hold my face still, keep my breathing even. I don’t even let my damn shadows twitch. Because discipline is a language I’m fluent in.
She walks away, the lake singing loudly behind her. And I let her go. Let her get far enough away from me before I can make a mistake. Before I let the animal within try to remind us both of just how truly I remember how to ruin her, body and soul.
I remain on the rock, shadows lingering around my hand where the bloom I picked for her sits like a quiet show of power. I toss it into the snow without looking. It disappears into the white like it never existed.
My shadows curl at my feet, restless—hungry, like they’ve scented blood. They want to follow her. Wrap around her and pull her back to us both.
But I don’t let them.
I leave the lake behind.
Whittaker’s paths are slick with ice now. The air is sharp enough to cut. Students move in packs, loud with adrenaline, still buzzing from the duel and the delicious lie that this is all for sport.
I let them stare. Let them flinch. Let them look away when their eyes meet mine.
Fear is useful. Respect is optional.
The Ivy House rises ahead—white stone, high windows, a pretty cage. Whittaker loves aesthetically pleasing facades. It hides the rot better.
I slip in through a side door. Teo is leaning in the corridor like he’s waiting for something to entertain him. Too bright. Eyes that miss nothing. He lifts a brow when he sees me.
“You look like you got stabbed,” he says quietly.
“I’m fine.”
He huffs a soft laugh. “That’s what people say right before they do something stupid.”
I stop, just long enough to make the air between us go cold. “Don’t you have someone else to bother?”
Teo’s smile flashes, quick, knowing, before he disappears down the hall to his room.
I open my door, locking it behind me. My room is sparse. Military neat. Everything in its place because if I let one thing drift, everything else will follow.
I stand there for a beat, palm on the latch, breathing through the tightness in my chest like it’s a wound that refuses to close.
The trunk sits at the foot of my bed.
I don’t want to look inside. But I open it anyway. Because I’m an idiot with control issues and a talent for self-inflicted damage.
Uniforms. Weapons. A shadowsteel dagger wrapped in cloth. Everything practical. Everything sharp.
And beneath it—what I keep buried like a sin:
A stack of letters.
Her name is on too many of them.
Some are nothing but torn pages and half-finished sentences written in the hours when I couldn’t sleep and my shadows wouldn’t stop pacing. But there is one I try not to think about. I’m not sure why he wrote me, only that I’m glad he did before it was too late. It’s almost as if he—
Fuck. No.
I won’t go there.
I take one of the letters out. The paper is worn where my thumb has rubbed it too many times. Edges soft from being handled and handled again like repetition might turn ink into courage.
I don’t open it.
If I open it, I’ll read it.
If I read it, I’ll remember exactly who I was when I wrote it—a younger version of me, stupid and certain I could keep her safe just by wanting it hard enough.
I shove the letter back into the trunk with the others like it’s alive. Like it might crawl out and ruin me. I slam the lid hard enough to make the lock rattle. The sound echoes in the quiet room—final, violent, satisfying.
For a second I stand there, fists clenched, shadows crawling up my wrists like they want permission to tear something apart. The lake is still humming in my bones. And somewhere out there, Celeste is probably walking through the campus with Noa Gallegher’s hand in hers—
While my magick still remembers the shape of her.
So do I.
And I don’t know how long I can keep pretending that doesn’t make her dangerous.
Or that it doesn’t make me want to be worse.