Page 154 of The Silversmith

“Are you serious?” I grumbled, knowing exactly who this gift was from. “Is he serious?”

I could tell by the way she clumsily stumbled in the sand over her disproportionately large paws that she was far from full-grown. I’d only seen drawings of large cats in books. Lions, tigers, jaguars—she looked a bit like all of them, and also… not. She was long and lithe—or was going to be—with a head and jaw thick and strong like a tiger’s. Her eyes glowed a deep, entrancing violet. Traces of a mane thickened the spots between and behind her ears. The longer I looked at her, the more I became transfixed by the shimmer of her fur. Almost like it was sentient and moving, flowing, shifting like molten silver, catching and refracting every color of the world around her.

“What is she?”

“She’s called an umbra,” Damond answered. “Incredibly rare breed. Frankly, I thought they were extinct.” He cocked his head down at her. “They’re supposedly unnaturally smart and fiercely loyal. Protective too. And aggressive, but… she’s small enough that she can’t do too much damage. For now.”

“Who told you that?” I mumbled, entranced by thickly tufted, silver paws that I would’ve sworn were larger than my face.

Damond handed me a note and shot me a pointed look.

I snatched the paper from his hands but refused to back down from our mutual glare.

He nodded to the silver cub. “You should be able to figure out a way to communicate with her in a way no one else can.”

I shifted where I stood. Soltum, the eighth of our gods. God of Animals. He was one to which I’d hardly given any thought. Only two of my twelve powers had shown themselves, and I knew it would be a while before I had the strength to find any more.

Damond bent down and picked the silver cub off the ground by the scruff, but she wriggled to be set free.

I cringed at her struggle. Felt it, somewhere deep. “Put her down.”

He gestured to the note in my hand. “Then read his note.”

With a reluctant grumble and roll of my eyes, I obeyed.

Aryella,

She was barely alive when she found me in northeast Warrich a month before I came to you. A friend of Damond’s has cared for her these past few months in my absence. She can’t be more than three or four months old now—still young enough to be impressionable. You must be strict with her in training. She’s a weapon when you need her to be. She’s a survivor, Ella, like you.

I named her Shera, after the cat you used to have. I know you don’t remember, but I remember everything.

The silver fur is unique, of course, but I think the both of you together just feel… right.

- Gavin

“Shera,” I repeated aloud, hoping it might summon a lost memory. Nothing came. I dropped the note and my hands into my lap. “I don’t want anything from him.”

She let out a high-pitched growl in rejection to Damond’s grip, kicking all four legs and contorting her strong torso back and forth in an attempt to escape. The third swipe of her paws behind her head caught Damond on the wrist. He cursed at the cut of her claw and lowered her to the ground. Then, she ran to me, her massive paws sticking and sliding in the cold sand.

I met her bright and hopeful violet eyes with a furrowed brow. She brushed against my legs, then between, and looked up. There was trust in her gaze as she looked at me, when for Damond, there was none. Through an instinct similar to how I imagined a mother might know her child, I felt… love.

“I guess it doesn’t matter how she got here,” I sighed, tilting my head as she batted around a rock, pretending it was her prey.

“Like a kitten… Small, adorable, fearless, and born to be lethal.”

I cracked a smile at the memory of his words, despite my best efforts. How he made me feel had never felt like a lie.

“If I’m keeping her, she’s coming inside.”

Damond sighed and tossed me the rope that constrained her. “Whatever you say.”

I knelt in the sand and let her sniff and nuzzle my hand before removing the rope from around her neck.

“There.” I tossed the empty leash into the ocean. “You can stay or go. Your choice.”

When she brushed against my knee and rolled onto her back, her silver fur refracting rainbows in the winter sun, I laughed for the first time in quite a while. For the first time since that world-altering night in Brinnea, my smile was too big to contain. She would stay, then.

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