Page 139 of Winter Gods & Serpents

For days she had barely left her room, circling back and forth the library, gardens, and the kitchen quarters, looking heavily bored and itching to leave the castle grounds. I had been thankful for the few days of peace and indulged in her frustration. Mal on the other hand seemed to enjoy her company. I had seen them chatting and playing around several times in the winter gardens, she had taught him a few tricks with her daggers which he endlessly practiced around our chambers to my annoyance.

Nia and I were the guard for the night, Snowlin had been asleep when Nia last checked, she had finally been able to do so, after parading around the castle like a dead spirit without a blink of rest.

“At least she is not sleeping in the garden,” she murmured to herself.

“At least then she was doing some sleeping,” I said, and she gave me a smile.

“She is not always like that you know. This place has turned us all twisted, her the most,” Nia admitted, hovering by the large windows. “It is not easy to come to a place that reminds you of how you lost your soul and have people that caused that continuously circle around you.”

Her gaze turned cold and her face stern as she studied me, her shadows had always been the same unchanging vengeance and pain surrounding her at all times. I knew she felt those emotions strongly when she looked at me and Mal, her anger was towards our kind as well.

“What cruel irony, she is about to end in the den of another just as worst,” she added, shaking her head.

“It is.” And it was cruel.

A frown gathered on her brow. “Malik is simple, but I can never understand you Kilian, do you want to strangle or comfort her?”

“Most of the time, strangle her.” There was no reason to hide what I thought, she could read me like an open book.

She smiled widely, breaking her stern expression. “That makes two of us.” Her antics were not restricted only to the people she disliked. Though I knew her antics with her friend were always playful and heart-warming. I liked knowing she had people who cared around her.

“Are you not going to ask, I know you know and so does your brother.”

“If you had wanted it to be known I am sure you would have told us yourself. I am not going to ask something you clearly didn’t want on the open.”

“No, I don’t,” she admitted, “but thank you for not revealing it, though you known the consequences if you had. Snow would have had such a sweet time torturing you to your demise.” She laughed at her words but that was no laughing matter, I knew she would have a great time torturing me.

“Your magic seems to be different from mine, it looks untrained and unused.”

“It is,” she responded deep in though. “I can feel others through myself, mostly Snow. Their emotions become mine for a short moment, but I cannot see any shadows like my mother used to.”

They were not just untrained, they were suppressed. Carrying another’s emotion was dangerous and came with great risks in the Aura’s behalf. Many that suppressed magic could trap an emotion into them forever. The intensity would be unbearable, many had driven themselves to death either by the continuous happiness that had busted their heart, or sadness so deep that had broken it.

“I am not sure if you know but that carries some danger. If you would allow me, I could help you train it to some extent that it won't present risk,” I offered, but she looked unsure and taken aback at my words.

Hesitation hovered her thickly, “I still don’t trust you.”

“I am not asking you to trust me. It appears my kind has done a fine enough job in losing that from you too.”

“They have done more than that.” Dark grey clouds poured from her chest as her expression turned sullen and fearful. What had happened to her?

“The best we can do sometimes is to move forward.”

She frowned. “Don’t preach that to Snow, she will have your head.”

“I already did, and she drove a dagger through her shoulder, that dahaara runs on madness.”

Her mouth parted open, and she threw a worried glance toward the princesses bedroom door. “Please tell me you haven’t called her that? She will show you truly just how made of steel her tongue is.”

“You speak the Darsan tongue?”

“Bits that I can remember, before I left Adriata I used to work in a wool house, the elder ladies only communicated in Darsan, picked it up pretty quick but so can Snow if you annoy her enough. Don’t tempt her.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” I shook my head at the thought of what course of crazed action she might take this time. Nia smiled as if reading my thoughts.

“Why did you leave Adriata, if that is not too wrong for me to ask?”

Her head lowered, shadows griming with her grave expression. I thought she would not answer me but then she said, “I was sold to an Adriatian slave trader who sold me to a Vrammetheni traveller in Fernfoss, old Olympia.” She stopped, and took of her gloves revealing a metallic structure resembling bones extending from both her cut wrists. “On our way to Fernfoss a girl fell sick, and I tended to her for several days. One morning she became quite ill, I could feel the ring of her pain, almost deafening; somehow, I extracted that emotion from her onto me. He thought I was an Empath after witnessing that, so he cut both my hands to prevent me from inflicting him pain.”