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I feel her eyes on me. “Me either.”
Another moment of silence and then I ask, “How are you holding up?”
“I should be asking you that question.” She peeks at me through her lashes.
“I have never really had to deal with death,” I admit. “My grandparents all died either before I was born or shortly after. Lily is the first person I’ve lost. I think I thought it would never happen to me. Stupid, I know.”
“It’s not stupid,” she whispers.
When I look at her, her eyes have softened. It makes me feel like I can share my deepest secrets with her.
“It’s weird, you know? Cause the things that make me think of her are so unpredictable.”
I opened the wound wide open today by looking through pictures. Now every memory I ever shared with Lily is fresh on my mind—my thirteenth birthday party when she shoved cake in my face and pushed me in the pool. That time we went to the eighth grade dance together because we were best friends and we could. The day we stood side-by-side as we took our Oaths as Shadow Knights and proceeded to duel each other in training. The dance she did when she won (I let her).
“I understand,” she says, and for a moment, I think she might share something about how she experiences grief, but she’s quiet.
Before, I’d only glimpsed her sorrow. Tonight, it tore free, and yet she remained upright and I wonder when I’ll be able to handle the weight. When will Lily’s loss not feel like a stab to the gut?
After a moment, I get to my feet. “Can I show you something?” She looks wary, so I add, “It’s not far. Promise.”
She regards me for a moment. Her ever-changing eyes study me in a way that makes me feel like she’s trying to figure out every word I never said. Then she slips her fingers into mine and I shift into my Valryn form. Her eyes widen slightly as she watches me transform.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to that.”
I smile like an idiot, reading too much into her statement, but it suggests that she plans to stick around, and that makes my chest feel lighter. I scoop her up and take off. Her hounds scramble after us, baying their way through the streets, but soon we are flying over woods, their branches thick with leaves.
Anora’s arms tighten around my neck, her cheek brushes my own. “You could have warned me!” She cries against my ear.
“There’s no fun in that.”
I keep my promise, and just as quickly as we take flight, we land. I sit Anora on her feet in a grove of willow trees.
“Call off your hounds.” I say.
“Why do you keep calling them mine?” she asks.
“Because they are yours. They are your protectors just as the Valryn are here to support and train you.”
The hounds bound out of the darkness, slipping through the trees like ghosts themselves. I only wish they moved like ghosts. They could wake the dead with all the noise they make. Good thing normal humans can’t hear them.
I stay a few feet away from Anora when she turns to face them.
“I’m fine,” she says, easily this time, no hesitancy in her voice.
They halt and sit, a low chorus of growls rumble in disapproval.
“They don’t seem to trust you,” Anora says, tilting her head as she studies them.
“I think they know I don’t like them,” I say, preferring not to admit that I’m a little afraid of them.
“Why don’t you like them?”
“Other than the fact that they smell like a pit of dead bodies, I was attacked by a dog when I was five,” I press my finger to my lips where a faint scar remains from the attack. “I don’t even really like to be around the nice ones.”
She looks at my lips a lot longer than I expect, and I want to lean in and kiss her, but one of her hound’s barks, making us jump.
“Go!” Anora commands, pointing to the woods. The hounds’ growls turn into a whimper, and they sulk away, melding with the dark.
