“You don’t remember your former teacher?” He clutched a gloved hand to his heart, the motion exaggerated and mocking. “I’m hurt.”
I gripped the handle of my sword, stopping just short of withdrawing it.
“Severin Thane,” he said, pushing back his hood with a slow, deliberate flourish as he stepped into the light of the lanterns that some of his companions carried.
Cautiously, I took a few steps closer, trying to place his face.
His eyes were the pale greyish blue of winter ice, and they studied me with a cool, detached curiosity. His hair was dark and streaked with silver at the temples, pulled back in a way that emphasized the severe angles of his face. Despite the silver, there was something unsettlingly ageless about him. Something that reminded me of the ancient look in Orin’s eyes—which I alsofound unsettling.
I couldn’t sense magic around him, but I didn’t think he was entirely human, either.
Then I caught sight of the symbol tattooed on his neck—a circle with a sword cutting through it—and my blood ran cold.
The Void Order.
We met at last, then.
“We were good friends, your younger self and me,” said Severin .
“I very much doubt that.” There was no shortage of gaps in my memories, but I remembered enough to know that my younger years had been sorely lacking in anyone I would have considered afriend.
And yet.
Something in this man’s quiet but commanding voice was familiar in a way that made my stomach turn. The precise enunciation. The patient cadence, as though he had all the time in the world and enjoyed watching others squirm while he took it…
I was certain now that there was crossover between the Order and the Light Keepers; was this man really someone who’d taught me when I was younger?
So much of my torturous magical training was a blur. So many memories of those brutal years slipped and fragmented whenever I reached for them, resisting my every attempt to grab hold.
Why couldn’t I just fuckingremember?
Severin cocked his head, his pale eyes gleaming with something that might have been satisfaction. As if he knew I was feeling an unsettling flicker of familiarity but couldn’t understand it. As if my confusion was exactly what he’d hoped for.
“I don’t know who you are or how you know my name,” I snarled, “but I’m not in the mood for games. Tell me what you want from me or get the hell out of my sight.”
“Want?” Another figure stepped forward—a woman with white-blonde hair and eyes that blazed an unnatural silver with the next flash of lightning. “We want nothing from you. Not yet. Though that time is coming.” She studied me with unnerving intensity. “Yes; it’s coming very soon, I think.”
My magic stirred uneasily beneath my skin. Shifted and coiled, and—not for the first time—I felt like it was something alive, something separate from me that wanted out.
The woman with the strange silver eyes seemed to sense it, too. “What a restless little thing you’ve got living inside you,” she murmured, pacing like a beast sizing up its prey.
My grip tightened on my sword.
“You feel it, don’t you? Something waking. Something?—”
Severin held up his hand in a languid gesture, and she fell silent immediately.
“That isn’t why we’re here tonight,” he said, his voice taking on a note of mild reproach, as though correcting a student who’d spoken out of turn. “Tonight, we’ve come to deal with a traitor. We only wanted to say hello to you in the meantime. To checkon your progress.” He folded his hands together with clerical composure. “Two birds, one stone and all that.”
“…Progress?”
“Aleks!” Nova’s distant voice cut through the darkness like a blade.
Severin turned toward the sound, smiling.
I instinctively circled around, putting myself between him and the direction Nova was approaching from.
His gaze slowly trailed back to me. Something like amusement flickered in his expression. “I have to say, it’s disappointing to see you still wanting to protect her. But Maris is right.” He tossed a cursory glance at the white-haired woman. “It’s only a matter of time until it all shifts. You can’t fight what’s been written in your blood, after all.”
