Wetness gathered on Elyria’s lash line, a singular tear forming in the inner corner of her eye. She blinked, surprise at her body’s reaction quickening the beat of her heart. She reached up with a knuckle to brush it away as it crested, carving a line down her cheek, but another finger was already there to catch it.
She looked up and met a ring of gold set within warm brown eyes, wonder and adoration beaming back at her as Cedric, now kneeling before her, smoothed her cheekbone. She hadn’t even heard him approach.
“Incredible.” His gaze turned downward, and she followed it to see the shadowcat circling them both, weaving between them. He extended a tentative hand, holding it aloft.
Elyria bit her lip. “I didn’t—I don’t know how?—”
The cub let out a tiny meow and leaned forward to rub its shadowy face against Cedric’s palm.
He inhaled sharply.
“What is it?”
“It’s—It feels almostreal,” he said, his mouth gaping slightly.
“I think...itisalmost real.” She scooted closer to him, cocking herhead at the cub. “But I don’t understand it.”
“What do you mean? You just made it. I watched you.”
“I didn’t mean to, though.” She pursed her lips to one side, her mind racing. “Nox told me they thought I could do more, that my shadows are different than theirs. But it’s more unpredictable because of it, and that’s why I haven’t been able to shadowstep.” She scowled, repositioning herself on the floor and bringing her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. “They encouraged me to find a way to weave my wild magic with my darkness, get them working in tandem, so I’ve been practicing. I thought perhaps I’d be able to get the sparrows to stay longer, travel farther. But I didn’t mean to dothis.”
“Maybe your magic is growing,” Cedric said, voice soft.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have distracted me,” she retorted, harsher than she intended. She hugged her knees tighter.
If Cedric noticed, he didn’t seem to mind. Not as the cub butted its shadow-swirled head against his hip. “I distracted you, and a bird became a cat?” he said with amusement, wonder coloring the words as he ran his hand down the creature’s back in a gentle pet.
Elyria smirked. “You walked into the room and evidently I felt the innate need to replace squawking with claws and teeth.”
Cedric laughed, the sound dancing in her ears. She had to work very hard to smother the proud smile that threatened to emerge at having elicited such a sound.
“Oh yes, you’re just vicious, aren’t you?” he said to the purring cub, which had crawled directly into his lap, rolled over onto its back, and was now playing with the drawstring of his pants.
Elyria reached out to touch the creature, her fingers twining in its shadows—her shadows?—and glancing off the soft black fur of its belly. She tried to catalog the feeling of it—that meeting ground between soft and hard, between sleep and waking. It straddled the line between corporeal and intangible, like running a hand through fog only to meet something solid underneath.
She sucked in a breath. “You know, I don’t like to brag but?—”
Cedric snorted a laugh, then coughed to cover the sound. She ignored him.
“—it really is a neat bit of magic, isn’t it?” Shetried to recall exactly what she had done, how she’d inadvertently bent her shadows into the shape of this creature, woven that kernel of wild into it. But even as she racked her brain, she doubted she would be able to recreate it. Not when she was relatively confident her magic had acted entirely of its own accord.
“What’s its name?” asked Cedric.
Elyria blinked. “Name?”
“You don’t plan on calling it, well, ‘it’ forever, do you?”
“Itwon’t last forever,” she said with a shrug. “And it’s not as though I bother naming my sparrows. They’re gone nearly as quickly as I’d be able to come up with something. So, enjoy the adoration of your tiny feline companion while you can, Sir Knight. It will return to the shadows soon enough.”
Even as she said the words, Elyria wondered if they were true.
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Cedric said, an echo of her very thoughts. “I’ve felt your sparrows. Seen your shadows at work. This is...not that. Not the same. Whatever it is that you did, this is something new. I think you may just be stuck with her.”
Elyria swallowed. “Her?”
“Seems like a ‘her’, doesn’t she?” He picked up the cub with both hands, lifting it so that its head was next to Elyria’s, then squinted as if evaluating them both. “She has your eyes. You must be so proud.”
Elyria scowled. “Very funny.”
