Chapter Forty-One
Avari
Assuming the worst had always been my go-to preparation for any upcoming battles. Getting lulled into a false sense of security by River, and now by gentle promises of family, had worn that habit thin. Then came the grumpy professor, and with him the spark to set my instincts ablaze once more.
It was a safety net I needed to keep a semblance of sanity in my chaotic life. People like me couldn’t afford hope; without it, when the world came crashing down, we were spared the torment of what-could-have-beens.
Rain drummed a steady lullaby, the perfect backdrop for me to lie in bed and dwell on my failure to reach my dragon and him. I tried not to think of River, but the smallest things brought him back: a tone of voice, a half-remembered smile.
The hollow his betrayal left behind was a wound that refused to close.
Hard knocks rattled the door. I considered letting whoever it was rot there. But the knocks softened and persisted, tapping at my patience until I pushed myself from my sanctuary to confront the disturbance. ‘What?’
‘Shit. Bad time?’ Miriam’s eyes, a sharp, smoky red, met mine when I yanked the door open.
Drawing a long breath, I tried to fan the bitterness from my chest and cursed the fates for sending the one person who treated me the nicest. ‘A little bit. I’m partaking in a therapeutic exercise.’
The red of her eyes brightened as they widened, excitement spilling into every line of her face. ‘I love therapeutic exercises! What exactly do you do? I dabble in meditation.’
Fun.
‘I dabble in reliving my traumas until they no longer bother me.’
‘And how is that working out for you?’ she asked, her voice carrying a flicker of curiosity beneath a faint, unsettled note.
Her troubled expression could make me snort. ‘You’ll be the first to know when it starts working.’
‘Since you’re in a contemplative mood, want to see where I go to think?’ she asked, hand outstretched in quiet expectation.
How could I say no?
When we stepped through the shadows to emerge somewhere entirely different, I noticed everyone seemed to have their own brand of darkness.
Like fire of varying hues, their shadows differed in texture and shade, in the way they brushed against the skin. Miriam’s felt like a hug, a comforting contrast to her brother’s or the professor’s. The link between personality and shadow-craft intrigued me.
We landed in a small, carpeted foyer where posters and fliers jostled for space on every wall. The air was thick with the musty sweetness of wood and glue, a scent I welcomed with near relief.
Nostalgia hit like a tide as my eyes swept the stout wooden shelves, home to thousands of books. Leather covers, hardcovers, and paperbacks, some in binders and others left open on the desk in the middle of the room for repair.
The scent alone could have knocked me to my knees. A paradise.
Miriam cast me a questioning look, as if she struggled to gauge my opinion on her space. I found it ridiculous. ‘Your thinking place is where I would go to get lost and not think.’
A soft smile of relief stretched her blood-red lips. ‘But books lead to reflections, no?’
No. ‘For me, they’re a form of escapism. I travel between worlds, running away from reason. I’m troubled by enough reflections as it is.’
‘Fair enough. Do you like it then?’ she asked, running her manicured fingers along bundles of poems. Some I had read, some I had heard of, and some were completely foreign.
‘That’s an understatement. Before my adventure in Fogoya, people laughed that I was chained to my castle’s library.’
My remark seemed to send Miriam into deep thought. She really meant it when she said this was where she came to think. ‘Not everyone gets it. We live a thousand lives in those pages. Imagine being so lucky.’
‘I’m self-aware enough to know it’s a coping mechanism for me. Why would you want to escape your life?’ I was beginning to wonder whether her cheerfulness was a cover to hide what lurked beneath—a darker side she didn’t dare reveal, possibly even to herself.
‘Fulfilment is a tricky matter. Even when you have what others would kill for, it’s not always enough.’
‘What would you kill for?’ I breathed the place in, feeling my flames calm down at last. The familiarity soothed me.
‘A lot. Though I’m not sure murder could help with what I crave.’
‘What is it?’ I pressed, trying to understand where her discontent came from.
Putting back the book she was studying, grief replaced her usual happiness. ‘I crave a family, Ava.’
‘But you have a family.’
‘I crave a child. A husband who’ll cherish me and the little family we build. A small house with a picket fence, tangled with stubborn plants that will vex me as much as they charm. And a dog—faithful and warm—to keep me company when I retreat into my books.’
Her dreams seemed so attainable, but I couldn’t understand her despair. Not when she was so close to achieving it anyway. ‘You’re engaged, right? You can have all that.’
She looked broken. Grief stole the light from her eyes as she said, ‘He doesn’t love me. I don’t love him either.’
Well, that was a… relief? The man wasn’t exactly exciting. ‘Why would you marry him?’
Miriam wouldn’t look at me. ‘Because I’m sick of waiting.’
I wasn’t sure how to help her, only that I wanted to. ‘Don’t they say the best things in life take time?’
We fell silent, both pretending to find answers on the shelves.
Visiting Miriam’s library was a welcome distraction, yet the trouble tightening my sister’s face gnawed at me. What unsettled me most was how naturally I began to think of these people as family, as if some deep part of me had always known it.
Resisting the truth felt pointless. So too was the idea of sparring once more with the disturbing professor, whose training I would endure again this afternoon.
At last, I reached the meadow. The hike had only sharpened my thoughts, giving me time to linger on the betrayals of my heart, still hungry for the impossible and incapable of learning a lesson.
‘Hello,’ the grim man barked in my direction, and it took every shred of resolve not to grin. So, he could be cultured after all. And they said old hounds couldn’t be trained.
‘Good afternoon,’ I replied, my eyes combing the landscape for the library. The professor stepped up beside me, closer than I expected, and studied the surroundings in silence before asking, ‘What are we doing?’
I cast him a weary glance. ‘I’m looking for Miriam’s library. What are you doing?’
He stared ahead, but I noticed a faint shift in his demeanour at the mention of my half-sister. Interesting.
‘I’m willing to give you a blank slate.’ The announcement barely registered; his words drowned out by the scene before me.
I rubbed my eyes, trying to force them to focus, and let out a sharp burst of breath.
A dragon, as vast as my own, roamed the sky in a cloak of darkness like my loyal serpent’s. It roared, and the heavens bloomed not with fire but with rolling clouds of black velvet.
It looped through the sky, wings spread wide enough to cast their shadow over me and my watchful trainer, who, rather than admire the spectacle, kept his gaze fixed on me. ‘If you want to meet him, I suggest you start wielding first. He’s quite feral.’
He had no idea. ‘All dragons are. And they don’t respond well to suggestions of domestication,’ I said, remembering Anya’s reaction to River calling her wild.
The professor frowned, slight ridicule colouring his tone. ‘You speak as if you know from experience.’
Without glancing at him, I answered, ‘I’m bonded to a dragon.’
‘Right. A unicorn too?’ The man mocked me. How original.
‘Sure. Got one parked by the estate. I don’t care if you believe me.’ Tearing myself from the sight, I straightened, lifted my chin and told my trainer to get on with it since I had better things to do than fail at his tasks.
‘What’s the point of training when you’re assuming you’ll fail? We might as well stop now.’ The silence around him felt taut, ready to snap. His forced politeness was slipping by the minute. Perhaps it was me who provoked him.
Not understanding his sudden inclination for meaningful conversation, I only responded with a jab. ‘We could, but then you wouldn’t get paid, and I’d be forced to train anyway, whether it makes sense or not.’
‘Why wouldn’t it make sense?’ His voice sounded genuinely bewildered as he rested a hand on his hip, like I was a mystery he needed to crack.
Irritation crashed over me like a breaking wave, not because of the professor alone but because everything was starting to grate on my nerves.
The cyclone of negativity threatened to drown everything in its wake. ‘It’s as if you people have selective hearing when I explain I don’t have shadows. They’re not in me; I don’t command them. I have this little stray around my neck, but that’s it.’
The man let out a low whistle, the sound steeped in the sudden knowledge this job was going to be harder than he’d bargained for. ‘You done?’
I was, but there was no point in walking down the hill if he was going to snatch me back up again. So I listened to his lecture on shadow powers and how they manifested differently in individuals.
Everyone possessed common skills like spontaneous portalling or umbrakinesis—a fancy name for controlling the darkness.
Depending on skill and proclivity, one could merely control shadows or become them. Though, as he explained, mimicry was rare and shouldn’t be confused with simple shadow camouflage, which was a common tactic in combat.
He went on about how powerful wielders could generate darkness, while those less gifted could only command the existing shadows from the nooks and crannies most people never noticed.
Fighting a shadow-wielder was fighting the world itself; darkness was everywhere, threading through every corner.