The earth shifted and slid beneath me, and I struggled to stay upright. It took me too long to realize I was
still, embarrassingly, clinging to Nura’s arm. “Tisaanah, this is Maxantarius.”
I tore my eyes from the bright sun, blinking at our surroundings. Nura and I now stood in one of the largest gardens I had ever seen. It sprawled in all directions, flowers and greenery consuming every inch of earth. Nestled in the middle of it all was a little stone cabin. And there, crouched among wild white rose bushes, was a man who stood to meet us, sharp features pinched beneath the shadow of tousled black hair.
Black hair.
He wasn’t a Valtain.
This had to be a mistake. Now I understood the confused wrinkle on Willa’s forehead.
“Maxantarius? Really?” He rolled his eyes, letting out a scoff. His purple silk jacket — which struck me as horribly impractical clothing for gardening — rippled under the sun as he crossed his arms across his chest.
His gaze settled on me. It was the brightest, iciest blue I had ever seen, so unnervingly stark that it edged on inhuman. “Can you tell me why you’re bringing strange girls in nightgowns to stomp my irises?”
I looked down at myself, forcing myself not to be embarrassed by this shapeless cotton thing. Then looked down further, to the little blue flowers crushed under my toes.
To be fair, it would have been impossible not to crush
something.
Nura only answered, icily, “You haven’t shown up to the Towers for any mandatory appearances.”
Maxantarius lifted one long, straight finger. “One. That isn’t your concern, is it?” Then another. “Two. As you know, I am retired.”
“You’re still a member of the Orders.”
He uncrossed his arms, jerking his sleeve up in one sharp movement, making a show of examining the inside of his right wrist. I caught a glimpse of a small, gold-colored tattoo. The sun. “I’ve been meaning to get rid of this thing.”
Nura didn’t react, save for a small tightening of the muscles around her eyes. So slight that I would have missed it if I wasn’t desperate for signs of communication, desperate to latch on to something other than the Aran words that I struggled to understand.
She gestured to me. “This is Tisaanah. She has been assigned to be your apprentice.”
I armed myself with the most dazzling, bright-eyed smile in my arsenal, inclining my head in a greeting.
Maxantarius’s eyes danced from me to Nura and then back to me, black eyebrows raised ever-so-slightly, sharp words dangling in the air.
And then, he laughed. “That’s ridiculous.”
“You didn’t take one six months ago, so here you are.”
“Retired. That was the agreement. And besides —” His arms dropped, gesturing to me, then flailing into something like a shrug. “I mean— honestly? Do I have to say any of this? Where do I even start?”
During that last question, his gaze flicked over me with an incredulous disgust that made my teeth grind together.
“What are your reservations?” Nura retorted.
“What are my reservations? You bring me a fragmented Valtain who’s practically geriatric and ask me what my reservations are?”
Geh-ri-act-rick.
I didn’t know what it meant, but I was sure it was an insult.
I steeled myself with a face of charming, earnest pleasantness. “It would be honor to train with you— ah—” I didn’t even know how to approach attempting to say Maxantarius’s name. Instead I awkwardly cut myself short, offering a doe-eyed beam in its place, before turning to Nura. “But maybe better if I could find Valtain?”
He arched a brow, unamused by my practiced charms. “And she’s foreign. What is that, Thereni?”
“There are no Valtain in the Order of Midnight who are available to apprentices right now,” Nura snapped. “You are Tisaanah’s only option.”
Gods. Well, that was just terrific. If it was even true.
Maxantarius and I glanced at each other, and in that moment, I was certain that we had to be thinking the same thing.
He snorted. “As much as I love being a last resort, this is ridiculous. How old are you, anyway?” Before I could answer, he shook his head, turning back to Nura. “I won’t bother. This doesn’t even justify a response. You know it, I know it, and I’m sure she probably knows it, too. You already know where I stand on involvement with the Orders.”
I glanced from Maxantarius to Nura, reading the taut hostility in their stances, the sharp edge in the way that they looked at each other. And I tasted the thread of tension in the air that lingered between them, one that
seemed drawn from something deeper than this conversation alone.
There was history here. Old rivals, maybe. Or…
I watched their unbroken stares, heavy with that distinctive blend of familiarity and resentment.
Or…
…Former lovers, perhaps. I tucked this theory away. Knowing these kinds of things about people always turned out to be useful, one way or another.
Details aside, one thing was certain: I strongly suspected that this argument was about more than just me. “It’s been eight years, Max,” Nura snapped. “It’s time to
do something with your life.”
“Your concern is touching, but I’ve given you an answer.”
“You are a member of the Orders, whether you like it or not. I wasn’t asking you for an answer.”
“Of course. Holding true to pattern.”
Silence. Nura and Maxantarius looked at each other with combative stares that were only barely shy of outright glares. The sound of birds flitting through the trees was suddenly deafening.
“I’m not doing this,” he said, at last. “I’m sure you’ve just been itching for an excuse to put me in my place. But it’s wrong for you to use her to do it.”
“That’s not— I already told you.” Nura straightened, letting out a puff of exasperated air through her nostrils. She turned to me. “He’s just being a child. He’s more than capable of teaching you.”
“I am not,” he retorted. “Don’t lie to the poor girl.”
I looked at Maxantarius’s stubborn, steady gaze. Then Nura’s set jaw and icy eyes — equally immovable. I wasn’t sure exactly what I had stepped into, but I knew that if I brought up finding another trainer, Nura wouldn’t give in. Not after this whole argument.
I could do this, I told myself. I was an expert in making stubborn men do things that they didn’t realize they wanted to do. I wrapped Threllian Lords around my fingers like they were made out of putty. And how different could this petulant Solarie possibly be?
Besides, I didn’t actually need training. I could teach myself anything I needed to know. All I had to do was appease the Orders’ technicalities, force myself through their requirements as quickly as possible, then convince them to help me get back to Threll.
Hopefully before Serel—
I didn’t let myself finish the thought.
“He’ll come around,” Nura said to me, quietly, then turned to Maxantarius, who had crouched down to observe his roses.
“Don’t you dare leave her here,” he said, without looking up.
I hoped she was leaving. Every minute she spent arguing would make my job more difficult later.
“It’s time to do something, Max. You’re too young for this.” A faint, tenuous warmth stretched in her voice, far beneath her words. It was only just audible enough to make him glance up, the wrinkle above his nose softening only slightly.
Oh, definitely former lovers. My suspicion became a certainty.
“Good luck,” Nura said to me. “I’m sure I will see you soon.”
And before I had the chance to stop her — before I had the chance to ask any of the dozens of questions thrashing in my lungs — she scribbled two jagged strokes onto her little scrap of parchment and simply disappeared.
Leaving me here.
“Damn it, I told her not to do that,” Maxantarius grumbled.
A breeze rustled the garden, making the flower petals tremor like butterfly wings, pressing the fabric of my ridiculous dress to my back and offering a sharp, jarring reminder of my wounds. Whatever pain relief Willa had given me was starting to wear off. At least the ache sharpened my thoughts.
I watched Maxantarius, who diligently ignored me.
Docility was probably not the best option. I could already tell that approach would neither endear me to him, nor help me make any progress. Normally, I would take a more flirtatious approach, but that seemed risky, too. He had only scoffed at my attempts at charm before.
“Eager protégé” might have potential. Maybe.
I just needed to figure out what I had to work with.
I watched Maxantarius’s back, mentally reaching into the space between us, searching for any faint whiff of his emotions, his thoughts, his preferences—
A sharp, startling pain rang out in the back of my head, as if my fingers had been slammed in a door. Maxantarius whipped his head around to glare at me. “Do not,” he hissed, “do that to me. Ever.”
My jaw snapped shut, and I swallowed a rush of embarrassment.
Nura had clearly shielded her mind, hiding it from my abilities. As a Valtain, she would have a mastery of thoughts that would allow her to do such things. It hadn’t occurred to me that a Solarie could do the same thing, though now it seemed obvious that such protections would be necessary, living in this world—
“I apologize—” I started. “I only—”
But Maxantarius rose without so much as looking at me. “Fucking Valtain,” he muttered. “Sneaky bastards.”
He strode to the door of the little stone cabin. I started to follow him, but he whirled around in the doorway, blocking it and sneering at me down the bridge of his nose.
“I’m not participating in this,” he said.
And before I could respond, the door slammed so forcefully that I felt the wood reverberate at the tip of my nose.
 |
I shivered.
My back throbbed.
Maxantarius had not opened the door again after slamming it in my face. For a while, I had paced around the garden mulling over my options. The way things looked from where I stood, I had very few.
At first, it had been difficult to curb my anger, which grew more and more potent with every passing minute. I dragged myself across the plains, across the ocean, to get here. I hunted and bartered and hid. I nearly died. And — in a thought that still clenched shuddering guilt in my chest
— I killed.
All of that, so that I could be discarded outside the locked door of some petulant “teacher” who refused to train me.
Gods, he wasn’t even a Valtain. I didn’t know much about Solarie Wielders, but I knew that even though they could, theoretically, do most of what Valtain could do, the way they used their magic was very different than the way I used mine.
But.
I breathed in my anger, and exhaled resolve.
If they were going to force me into this situation, then fine. I’d make everything I could of it.
I wasn’t sure what Maxantarius expected to happen, but I didn’t leave. Instead I sat down just outside the door, crossing my legs, waiting. He had to come out eventually. And when he did, I’d be here. Besides… it wasn’t as if I had anywhere else I could go.
Minutes passed — thirty, forty, fifty. Then hours. I watched the flower petals grow brighter and brighter under the waning sun, then reflect the warmth of sunset, then curl and fold in on themselves in dusk.
It was cold. Threll didn’t get cold, and I didn’t particularly enjoy the unfamiliar sensation.
The flower leaves gently curled, like an animal getting ready to sleep. I wondered if he had put some sort of protective spell on them to shield them from the chill. My teeth chattered.
And then, finally, the door opened. I jolted so abruptly that my back screamed.
Maxantarius stood in the doorway.
“You look freezing,” he said, matter-of-factly. “Yes.” I saw no point in denying it.
“Are you planning on going anywhere?” “I have nowhere for going.”
I tried to sound very pitiful.
He sighed. “Figures she’d leave you here on the coldest spring night we’ve had in years,” he grumbled. Then he stepped back from the door, eyeing me warily. “I’m inviting you inside, but only because if I let you freeze out here, I’d have to relinquish my moral superiority.”
I didn’t understand what any of that meant, except for the important part. I pulled myself to my feet, wincing slightly as my back straightened and offering Maxantarius my most charming, grateful smile. “Thank you, Max-an-tar-ee-us.”
I was very proud of myself for correctly stringing together all of those syllables out loud.
He rolled his eyes as he stepped aside, holding the door open for me. “Max, please. Otherwise we’d spend half our damn lives saying that ridiculous name.”
Thank the gods.
 |
I HAD NEVER SEEN SO many things packed into so small a space.
I stepped through the door and immediately stopped short. It took palpable effort not to let my jaw drop. My eyes didn’t even know where the look first.
Max’s home was tiny, but every single wall — every one
— was lined with shelves that held trinkets and tools and art and sculptures and little strange whirring metal things. One shelf was devoted completely to what looked to be a very wide variety of sizes, shapes, colors and types of wine bottles. Four different rugs covered the floor, all overlapping each other at various angles, each a different color and texture.
A fireplace bathed all of this in flickering orange light, reflecting off little metal pendulums and curious, circling devices. A couch and two armchairs sat near the fire — none matching — and a dining room table with five different styles of chairs occupied the middle of the room. Around a corner, I caught a glimpse of a small kitchen, and a narrow hallway with a few closed doors.
“These are all very useful and important things,” Max said, somewhat defensively, as if he saw my eyes widen when I walked in.
I nodded. Sure.
There was no possible greater opposite to Esmaris’s vast, minimalist estate. At least it was clean in here. Cluttered, but clean.
“Are you hungry?”
Max disappeared into the kitchen. As if answering for me, my stomach rumbled.
“Yes.”
He emerged with a bowl of soup and a teacup, which he placed at the table, motioning for me to sit. I did, and he
slumped into the chair across from me. He replenished a mostly empty wine glass from a bottle that was also mostly empty, and leaned back in his chair.
I sniffed. The soup Max had given me was different than anything I had ever eaten before — thicker, and heavy with the still-unfamiliar smell of the ocean. I would have inhaled it even if it was disgusting, but it was good. Spicy, but good.
“Thank you.” I was so ravenous that I barely remembered to say it.
Max had shifted to leaning on the table, his chin propped against his knuckles, watching me in silence. I returned the favor, regarding him warily between bites.
He was younger than I might have expected. Perhaps late twenties, though there was a certain sharp, observant quality to his expressions that made him seem like he could be older. High cheekbones doused in flickering firelight. A flat, straight nose. Delicate, upturned eyes beneath creaseless lids that only emphasized their unnerving, cloudy blue. Up close, they looked even more strange. I knew an old man in Threll who had cataracts that looked a bit like those, though certainly not in such a striking blue. Somehow I doubted that Max had eyesight problems, though. His gaze seemed too deliberate, too piercing, for that.
“So,” he said, at last, “you’re from…?” “Threll.”
“And how old are you?”
“Two-ten—” I realized my mistake, too late, and corrected myself. “Twenty-one.”
“Twenty-one,” he echoed under his breath, shaking his head — as if this was a ridiculous answer. “Apprenticeships are complete at eighteen. Do you realize how peculiar this entire situation is?”
I tried not to let Max see that I didn’t understand, but apparently I failed, because he added, “Strange. Unusual.”
“Enough.”
“To be clear, all of this is very, very strange.”
“Nura said of me that I cannot join Orders without training. Even though I’m too old.”
I didn’t bother to hide my irritation.
A smirk flitted across Max’s mouth. “I’m glad you have enough sense to be frustrated by that bureaucratic stupidity.”
“I did not come here to be sent back away.” “‘Here,’ to Ara, or ‘here,’ to my house?”
“Both.”
He let out a breath of a chuckle, as if this answer were simply an amusing joke, and finished his glass of wine. Poured another.
“Sorry, how rude of me.” He lifted the bottle. “Would you like some?”
“No, thank you.” My gaze flicked to the walls, and the empty wine bottles that lined one of the shelves.
Noted.
But I needed more information about this man, if I was going to understand what he wanted. If I was going to figure out how to make myself invaluable.
I put my spoon down and took a sip of tea. Even that was spicy, making my nose burn. “How are you knowing Nura?” I asked, with calculated casualness. “Is she a friend?”
Max snorted. “She’s the second-highest ranking member of the Orders. Everyone knows Nura.”
Oh, I did hear that bitterness. I smiled slyly at him. “You know her another way, I think.”
“We fought together during the war, if you must know.” Max straightened, narrowing his eyes. “But you’re awfully bold for someone who dumped herself at my house and refused to leave.”
“I can’t leave. What war?” I knew very little about Ara’s recent history.
But Max ignored my question. “You can leave. You can do anything you want.”
I paused. All at once, it hit me: for the first time in my life, that statement was true.
But then, that realization drowned beneath an onslaught of images. Esmaris’s dying face. Serel’s goodbye eyes. The incriminating burn of his departing kiss on my cheek.
Guilt clenched in my stomach. No. I wasn’t free. Not really. Not yet.
“I need to join the Orders,” I said. “Nura says I must be here for doing this. So no, I cannot leave.”
“Bad goal. For two reasons.” Max raised a finger. “One, because you shouldn’t join the Orders. I wish I hadn’t.” Another finger. “And two. Because I’m not going to train you. It’s not personal, it’s just a matter of principle.”
Beneath the table, my nails clenched against my palm. “I can help you in other ways. I can clean, or cook—”
Max let out a choked laugh, brow furrowed. “Are you implying that I look like I’m in desperate need of domestic help?”
I glanced around the cluttered house and refrained from following up on that particular line of conversation.
“There must be something I—”
“I don’t need to be harassed in my own home.” Max stood up, stretching, then took my empty bowl and teacup. “You can stay here for tonight. Just tonight, and then tomorrow we’ll figure out what to do with you.”
I stood, too. Exhaustion sank into my eyelids, my bones, my muscles. Whatever Willa had done to heal me was miraculous, but she had been right: I was still not fully recovered.
“Washroom?” I asked, and Max’s arm waved from around the corner of the kitchen to gesture me down the hall.
That was a relief, at least. I had no idea how common such things were in Ara, and during my journey I had
relieved myself in enough disgusting or embarrassing places to last a lifetime.
I splashed some water on my face and then looked at myself in the mirror. It was an unusual piece — clearly very old, framed with tarnished gold that twisted into a morass of little creatures. Bugs, dragonflies, lizards, snakes. My face reflected in the middle fit in far too well. Just another thing that looked like it would be rolling around in the dirt.
I grabbed a handful of my knotted hair, which I had still not managed to fully untangle. But in that touch, all I could feel was Esmaris’s hands clutching it, dragging me down to the ground with him.
Suddenly, the sight of it made me ill.
I peered out into the hallway, where Max was shuffling around the living room.
“Do you have— um—” I racked my exhausted brain, searching for the right Aran word. “Um— It says—” I held up my two fingers, bringing them together, making “snp snp” sounds with my tongue. “This thing?”
Max gave me a look of deadpan confusion. “Huh?”
“It says snp snp,” I repeated, frustrated, bringing my fingers together again.
He stared at me like I was insane.
The Thereni word, of course, was screaming in my ears, even as the Aran one was nowhere to be found.
“Oh.” Max snapped his fingers in realization, then opened a drawer and held up a pair of gold shears. “Scissors.”
I’d try to remember that and save myself some humiliation next time. I took them and returned to the mirror. And I did not hesitate, not even for a second, as I hacked my hair off in handfuls between my chin and shoulders.
I had kept it so long, after all, because Esmaris liked it that way. I didn’t have to care about that anymore. And by
cutting it all off, I could release myself from his final touch. Cleave away the last place he grabbed me.
A satisfied smirk curled the corners of my mouth.
I could feel Max’s gaze as he leaned against the doorframe. “You’re going to wish that you left it a little longer.”
Another handful. I disregarded Max’s statement. It felt good to have the ability to disregard the opinion of a man.
I shook my head, feeling the lightness, watching my shortened hair bounce above my shoulders. “Is good this way,” I said, handing the scissors back to Max.
He shrugged. “You’re going to have a hell of a time keeping it out of your face. Long is fine, short is fine. It’s this in between stuff that gets you into trouble.” He tucked the scissors into his pocket and jerked his chin toward the basin. “Not my problem, though, as long as you clean all that up.”
I did as he asked. And I had never seen anything so beautiful as the fireplace flames claiming those tendrils of black and silver, shriveling them, reducing them to ash.
