He was scared. Scared of saying the word aloud, of what it might mean to admit it.
Elyria supposed she couldn’t blame him for that. Hadn’t she spent a century doing the same?
She shook it off, attempting to plaster that smile on her face once more. “Well, now you’ve had your chance to practice. I think it’s my turn again.”
24
SID
ELYRIA
Cedric chewed his lip,looking nervously from the scorch mark on the floor, to the door, and back again. “Can I...can I stay?”
“You may do whatever you please, Sir Knight,” Elyria said lightly. “As much fun as this diversion has been, I would like to get back to what I was doing before you came banging in.”
His shoulder relaxed, and the motion made something settle in Elyria as well. “And what exactly was it that you were doing?” he asked.
“Notbeing interrupted.” She moved a good deal away from the scorched stone where they’d been fighting, and sat down, legs crossed under her body.
The scar on Cedric’s upper lip winked as his mouth stretched into a smile, and Elyriareluctantly shut her eyes.
“Summoning another sparrow?” he asked. “I should think you and Nox had perfected the task of communicating with one another in the shadows by now.”
She opened one eye just to narrow it at him. “Oh, should we haveby now? I’ve only just learned how to do this, Sir Know-It-All. These things take time—something you will very quickly find out, I think.”
He frowned, lifting his hands in supplication. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Mmm, I’m sure you didn’t,” she hummed, closing her eye again. She let her shadows pool in the center of each palm, collecting into a small sphere again. “Now, if you’re going to stay, fine, but be quiet. I need to focus.” She paused before explaining, “I’m working on getting them to last longer, corporealize more fully.”
“So you can use them to communicate across distance, like you said,” he mused, and Elyria couldn’t help but feel like there was something sad in his tone. “Please, go right ahead then. I won’t make a sound. You won’t even know I’m here.”
Behind her shuttered eyelids, Elyria rolled her eyes. She really did try her best to block him out. She would never admit that the very idea of pretending he was not there was ludicrous. The more time they spent together, the more she felt him, even when they were separated. Like he was ever-present. An increasingly immutable part of her.
Right. Focus.
Her hands moved in tandem as she located that thread of wild magic in her blood once more and snipped the tiniest kernel of it free, placing it inside her shadows.
Then, she began weaving them together.
It was grueling, tedious. And it took a really fucking long stars-damned time. Longer than it had ever taken her to craft one of her sparrows before.
Cedric, to his credit, said nothing. He was indeed so quiet that at one point, she wondered if he had left entirely. But when she turned her head to check—just for a moment—she found him leaning against the wall nearest to her, arms crossed over his chest, watching her work with a careful, penetrating gaze.
Slowly, eventually, finally, she felt it—that snap of magic that toldher the construct she’d been crafting was complete, that it was enough to stand on its own, separate from her. Her hands stilled. She cracked one eye open, then the other, her gaze dropping to her lap and?—
Her brow furrowed. A soft gasp parted her lips. And the mass of shadows that now lay across her legs stretched.
And then it fuckingpurred.
Nota sparrow.
It was a kitten, really. A cub. No bigger than the length of her forearm, formed entirely from her darkness. Fur of blackest night. A round head. Long, lanky body. Four small legs that ended in soft paws.
Elyria’s heart and mind raced in tandem as the shadowcat leapt from her lap. It paced along the ground with ghostly grace, wisps of smoke dancing along its spine, forming its tail, drifting upward in the shape of softly pointed ears. Glowing emerald-green eyes peered out from its shadow-swirled face as it sat back on its hind legs—and meowed.
How?The question rebounded off the sides of her skull, rippled in her soul. How did she make something so...alive?
A life.
