AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Painful, agonizing clarity.
This wasn’t right…
She slipped away from me, stumbling back a few steps before she lifted her chin in that defiant way of hers. “You know, I came out here because someone told me you went this way. I came out here so I could thank you for saving me the night of the attack.” She spun around and stomped toward the gate, but not without glancing back over her shoulder with a snarl. “Now stay away from me.”
A burn spread across my face as if she’d smacked me, shame bleeding into my veins. Owls, enemies, vicious winds… on my life, nothing would ever harm her.
Except for me.
Just like I’d feared.
ChapterNineteen
Galantia
Present Day, Tidestone
The winter sun barely clambered over Tidestone’s high walls at midday, casting long, lazy shadows across the inner bailey. All around me, builders chiseled away on the sandstone ashlar with utterly monotonousding-ding-dings, forcing little cutouts into my childhood home: flight holes to accommodate the constant arrival of ravens now that Malyr held the stronghold.
I shuffled my boots, trying my hardest to ignore the rusty hue still staining the dirt and how it conjured memories I kept pushing into the darkest, deepest recesses of my mind. Crushed bodies, dying ravens, Mother dangling from a—
No, no, no. Too raw. Too painful.
Too damn distracting.
I forced my gaze upward to that cloudy salt crystal sitting at the center of Sebian’s palm. “Ready.”
“Remember to keep that box shut, sweetheart.” Sebian’s fist slammed down on the crystal with a loud crack, releasing the shadowy tendrils of whoever had offered them up so I may practice. “Do not absorb them. Resist.”
I braced myself, watching the cloud of living ink spill toward me. Nearby shadows always did that, as I’d learned during a week of practice, drawn to my void like water to the edge of a fall. And that wouldn’t even have bothered me so much, wasn’t it for how my gift longed for even a single drop of it with the urgency of hells’ parched soils…
Do not absorb them, Galantia!
With gritted teeth and trembling limbs, I breathed through a pain that blurred the lines between physical and emotional torment. I closed my eyes first, then my box. I locked it, threw away the key. Tossed the entire damn thing into the ocean of my imagination for good measure.
Sweat broke out on my forehead.
My chest curled.
“That’s my girl.” Sebian’s praise came with a waft of his body heat, scented with the comforting traces of pine needles and the tickle of his breath caressing my temple. “Open your eyes, sweetheart.”
I lifted my lashes to the sight of Sebian’s smile, so bright and sincere, it coaxed a flutter deep within my stomach. Damn him and those utterly charming dimples on his freshly-shaven cheeks.
I smiled back. “Did I do it?”
He lifted his palm between us, presenting me with those shadows that flicked in all directions, as though uncertain where to go. “I’d say that’s a good fucking job.”
“I have a good teacher,” I said, my face close enough to his I could see that tiny scrape on his jaw where he must’ve nicked himself with the shaving knife. It didn’t take long, however, for my periphery to register the sudden motionlessness around me. I looked over the bailey, finding dozens of eyes locked on me, and even a handful of ravens watched from where they perched on the rails that rounded the balcony. “Why is everyone staring?”
“Voids aren’t a common sight these days,” Sebian explained, reminding me of how, not too long ago, they’d been hunted and slaughtered. “Suspicion runs deep, sweetheart. Ignore them. They’re just a bunch of idiots who probably fear you’ll go after their shadows next.”
Hmm, perhaps therewasmore power in being a void than I’d first assumed?
The way my cheeks bunched toward my eyes at that thought ripped atskfrom Sebian, before he said, “You’re not planning to go all renegade on us, are you?”
His tease had me grinning. “Maybe.”
He scoffed and stepped back, pulling three more crystals from the satchel tied to the belt beneath his brown cuirass, which he placed on a row of stacked wooden supply crates. “I’ll shatter all three, but you’llonlyabsorb the shadows from the one in the middle using yourlefthand. You’re right, that one proves to be way more reliable in channeling your void. Ready?”
