I scrunch my nose and tilt my head. “Well, unfortunately for me, I didn’t have a choice in who my partner was, so it seems we both got the short end of the stick.”
“You wound me,Heathen.”
He doesn’t look wounded in the slightest.
In fact, he looks bored.
“I could be so lucky.”
He gives me a stare that could bury me and appraises me with those black-rimmed eyes. Unnatural, otherworldly and mysterious. It’d be so easy to squirm under his assessment, but I won’t. For some reason, I don’t like the idea of him thinking of me as timid. I’m better than that.
“Like what you see?” I ask in a dry tone.
“It’s more about what I don’t see, Caderyn. There’s zero grit, effort or determination on your part.” His words are sharp and cutting.
“Are you kidding me right now? I am trying! I’m doing my best to pull something that’s not there from an empty well. I am not a Noctryn!,” I repeat for the hundredth time. “The sooner you and I both accept that, the better. Then I can get out of these classes and focus on the ones that really matter.”
He shakes his head. “With that projection, you’ll never wield. As a Liminal, you have dark abilities, whether you like it or not. They may be subtle, but they’re there. It could be in just your thought process and not necessarily in magic, but it’s there.”His lips pull up in a snarl. “If it wasn’t there, you wouldn’t be a Liminal. You would have tested inconclusive by not placing ineitherand swiftly executed.” He softly laughs. It doesn’t sound friendly. “You, however, placed inboth. Get up, straighten your spine, and try again. And again, if needed. You don’t get to quit while at this academy and certainly not while under my mentorship,” he bites out.
“I never asked for your mentorship,” I remind him.
He just looks at me with disappointment, which is worse than anger.
If this man, who doesn’t even like me, isn’t giving up on me, then I certainly won’t give up on myself. Whether I like him or not, he’s spitting facts. Even if they are a bit hard to swallow.
I close my eyes, place my palms up, and focus everything I have on bringing forth some kind of shadow. Professor Rinkin said it comes from our core. It’s like taking a deep breath and exhaling the shadows out into the world. They’re an extension of ourselves, a small fraction of our very essence being released to protect and defend. I’m not sure what to do when my core keeps coming up empty. No matter how long I focus and will it to cooperate, nothing happens.
“It’s better to fail than not try,” Kingston says quietly.
I peel my eyes open to meet his satisfied stare.
Perhaps it’s not so much that he wants me to show the darker qualities, but more so that he doesn’t want to see me give up on myself. I honestly cannot figure out this perplexing man. There are so many layers to him, so much more than the surface level of indifference he shows the world.
The professor claps loudly, signaling the end of class.
His satisfied expression dissolves as he reaches a hand toward me. “Walk with me?”
I stare at his hand with suspicion. “Why, are you planning on taking me somewhere isolated to get rid of me once and for all?”
“And allow my ego to get out of hand without someone to insult me routinely?”
A reluctant smile dances across my lips as I grab my pack, take his hand against my better judgment, and stand.
We make our way down the noisy halls, preventing any real conversation. Heading down the dimly lit corridor, he leads the way and cuts through the crowd with ease. To my surprise, he veers right instead of toward the entrance and heads up a winding staircase.
I follow closely behind as students pass us by, throwing curious glances our way.
The Liminal clothed in gray on the heels of a man cloaked in the same color as his soul. One ostracized and the other feared.
We make a striking pair.
He pushes a heavy door open at the end of a narrow passageway, and we exit onto the battlements. I pull my sleeves down over my hands and step out onto the cold, worn stones. It’s freezing, and the snow keeps falling. I take in my surroundings of snowcapped mountains and glistening pines as far as the eye can see. Tendrils of crimson hair blow around my face as I tilt my head back, catching a few snowflakes on my tongue.
I hope I never stop being in awe of the beauty of snow. It coats everything in a blanket of silence, allowing me to shut off the noise in my head. Endless white powder on every surface, makes everything seem untouched by man. Pure and pristine. It’s a reminder that magic is all around us, appearing in the most inconspicuous ways.
A reminder I certainly needed.
“You were made to live somewhere it snows,” Kingston says, watching me catch the snowflakes. His rich baritone washes over me.
