“Ryc, I believe you’re mistaken.” I choose not to use our bond.
“I don’t,” he says slowly. “I’ve witnessed many innates emerge, little love. Cyran has as well. This is following the same patterns.”
“Have a few cadets experiencing it currently,” Cyran attests with a firm nod.
Ryc lifts a hand, reaching for my temple. He brushes some of the loosened tendrils of my hair out of the way and there’s a small snap—yet no pain. I reel back as he draws his hand between us, holding a small, glowingveilflowerpinched between his forefinger and thumb.
“You’ve spent centuries acknowledging, understanding, and learning abouthalfof you who are,” Ryc says, his voice gentle as I stare at the flower, my jaw tight. “You’re more complicated than being simply demon in the same way I’m more complicated than being simply fae.”
Even if I want to argue, I can’t.
He speaks the truth.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I’ve come tolearn finding oneself isn’t a matter of pulling back heavy drapes to chase away shadows with light. That would be too easy. If there’s any one thing I’ve come to learn about my existence, it’s that things are never easy. Never simple.
There’s no curtain.
Instead, there’s a brick wall.
And there’s no promise of light.
The most damning part is what I find may leave me fumbling in the dark for centuries to come. Thus, tearing down a proverbial wall in the proverbial dark isn’t proverbially difficult.
It’sproverbially impossible.
I’m a cursed creature borne of the greed for power and shaped by endless cycles of abuse and manipulation. If light exists at the end of all of this, I fail to see it.
But Ryc… Ryc keeps reminding me.
This innate—if that’s what this really is—doesn’t respond as it should. It acts on its own accord, a wholly separate entity. It doesn’t urge. It doesn’t demand. Nor does it bend to my will.
Anytime I reach for it—as I would my shadows—it slips through my fingers like sand. By the end of thetwohour lesson, I could sense the vibrations more persistently, but came no closer to harnessing it.
It’s left me frustrated.
The lesson was nothing short of a trial for both Ryc and me.
It didn’t end well and I’m not proud to sayI’mthe reason. Ryc didn’t deserve my heated and venomous words.
But I slung them anyway.
He saw a side of me I’ve not shown in this realm. And not once did he ever become retaliatory. Not once did he flinch, or bend, or change his demeanor toward me.
He was the epitome of grace, patience, and kindness.
He granted me the space and silence I needed to work through what I needed in that moment.
And realizing itnow, after the fact, makes my shame stingworse.
I just—I grewangry. Angry at the way he looked at me as if he believed me to be on the cusp of somegrandrealization, some deephiddentruth—when all I wantis to have what I had.
I want my shadows.
I want the part of me I would curl into to hide—the shield and dagger I could place between me and the world; the thing I could feed my thoughts and emotions so I didn’t have to face them, contend with them.
Discovering my shadows are nothing more than a Netharis contrived method of control—one Iclungto with desperation—leaves me broken in ways I never expected.
