There is silence between us, electric and still.
“Noa wants us to train you,” Gavrail says finally, the words deliberate. Measured. He watches my face intently while he waits for a response.
“Train me?” I blink. “And you’re okay with that?”
“Not in public,” he says quickly, glancing around as if even the library walls have ears. “It’s still too risky. Until we know what revealing the truth might mean—for you, and for everyone around you. Until we know what we’re even dealing with. What it might cost.”
Excitement surges in my chest. Like the crest of a wave I didn’t realize I was riding.
I lean forward. “When do we start?”
CHAPTER 40
Some fusions steady the heart. Some break it. Pay attention to which is which, lest you find yourself without one entirely.
—The Codex of Convergence,Auren Emberlain
Noa chooses a secluded bay on the far side of Lake Caldrith for our training grounds. Tucked behind a screen of red maples—each branch tipped with tiny pink buds—the bay feels untouched. Private. A secret hidden in plain sight.
The trail in is more mud than path, the thawing earth soft and slick under our boots. The lake lies before us like a pewter mirror, broken only by the occasional ripple of a cold March breeze. Along the shore, stubborn patches of snow give way to damp, sandy stones.
Spring whispers its arrival everywhere: crocuses’ bright-green tips thrusting through dark soil, the air filled with the scent of wet bark and moss. The buzzing of insects that now stir beneath fallen leaves. Still, the air has a bite to it when the wind cuts through, the edge of winter’s last grip on the land.
The bay is perfect, its uneven terrain lending a wild, natural edge to every drill. Noa clearly knew this when he brought us here, and Gavrail, after a moment’s calculation, agrees.
It’s uncomfortable at first, the two of them working together. Disagreements over theory and training methods. Glares cutting sharper than any weapon between them. Occasionally fists will clench, a fight only seconds away from erupting.
And yet?—
They hold it together.
Again and again, they put their differences aside.
For me. The shared thread connecting them.
Noa begins with the fundamentals: elemental manipulation, then state manipulation. Shaping water as liquid, solid, and vapor—freezing the shore’s edges into glass, turning ice to mist, condensing steam back into droplets, and back to ice—in ever-faster succession. Precision. Control. Speed.
Then Gavrail takes over.
He doesn’t teach, not in the way Noa does. He tests. Pushes. Dares.
Gavrail teaches me to draw moisture from the air, from the damp grass underfoot, then from the birch trunks behind the boulders at the bay’s edge.
“Draw it from the trees,” he says, voice low and cool as the water I summon. “If you want to control the water, then control all of it. Even what wants to stay hidden.”
It breaksme to see the fragile shoots wilt or fresh spring blossoms shrivel and fall, and even more so to watch the once-majestic tree trunks turn gray, bark cracking. My stomach twists every time.
“Undo it,” he says, unmoved. “If you break it, fix it. That’s how you learn.”
So I do. I learn to reverse it—pouring life back into the plants until buds pinken, leaves unfurl, trunks gleam with restored sap. Each time, watching life return, I feel a deep sense of satisfaction. Some small piece of me heals at being able to fix what was once broken. Even if I was the one to break it.
On Tuesdays, Gavrail and I meet alone. We start refining shadowmire, changing its consistency, shaping it in ways we haven’t tried before. We discover ways to stabilize it beyond its initial formation, suspending it in specially runed vials Gavrail stole from the Potions lab. He begins to collect the variations: thick, thin, slow-moving, fast-acting—bottles of liquid shadow stored like forbidden secrets, locked behind a hidden panel in his bedroom at the Ivy House.
He watches me closely when we work. Not just my magick—me. The way I breathe. The way I move. How fast I react. Sometimes there is a flicker in his gaze—curiosity and calculation and something more. He makes sure he never pushes me beyond what could break me, but also takes me right to the edge. Just like he did when we were children.
Thursdays are for maelflare—the name I give to Noa’s and my shared magick. Noa and I practice at the bay, chasing the storm we first summoned together. At first, our attempts sputter—clouds forming without thunder, mist without lightning. Maelflare depends entirely on our emotions, on being in sync. It is volatile, elusive. Unlike shadowmire, which pulses just beneath the surface—always ready, always waiting—maelflare has to be coaxed, sparked, trusted. But when it comes… it is devastating.
Fridays, we train together. The focus shifts to dueling techniques, battle stances, and field strategy. Noa and Gavrail spar with each other as often as they train me.
