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 drowneverything 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.
