They risked their reputation by forcing him to give me another chance.
They need me to make good on the skill they promised.
Which is why I can’t just let Akari compel this urge away.
If my life is to take an unwanted turn, then the very least I can do is make an effort to steer the ship. And if I steer it right into the rocks, well . . . I’ll drown knowing that decision belonged to me.
*
Come the midnight bell, I’m still intent on asking the open question, regardless of the risk.
So, I wait for Akari to fall asleep.
Then I wait to confirm that she’s not faking.
Then I wait another hour just to be sure that this time, she won’t intercede.
You can yell at me tomorrow, I mouth a silent apology before shimmering, ignoring the decree that prohibits us from wisping through closed doors when we please. What’s one more broken rule when I’m about to break the cardinal? And besides, at the Academy—where the typics can’t perform their displeasure or lend voice to their fear—we tend to skirt this particular rule more than most. Back before Killen and I broke up, I was wisping out of my room and into his three nights a week.
You really shouldn’t be bothering him with this.The guilt is a snake coiling knots between my ribs. Before we got together, Killen and I had been good friends for years. He was the first boy I ever liked. The first boy I ever kissed. Along with several other firsts we gave each other, until I had to go and add first broken heart to the list. My choice, not his. And all of my attempts to keep things amicable have been firmly rebuffed since.
Killen asked me to stay away from him and I should respect that.
I should find a different Shade to help me lift the spell inflicted by Saleen.
I should and I should and I should.
But I don’t.
My physicality melts away, the air turning to power as I harness the most primal part of my magic. When we shimmer, we move like light and disappear like the darkness, transcending the color in our blood, and our specializations, and our guilds. We become part of the Gray, one with the shadows in a way that’s difficult to describe but easy to maintain. The one facet of my power that’s never given me any trouble.
I make no sound as I speed through corridor and wall, leave no trace in the ether other than a fine rippling of wind, all but invisible unless some eagle-eyed Shade were to make a point of looking. Unlikely at this early hour. I learned that much back when I was sneaking off to meet Killen for a different kind of end. That’s how I know the shortest route through the castle and that his roommate, a fellow Indigo called Damian, sleeps like the dead.
That’s how I know exactly how to get Killen’s help.
Despite the fact that he hates me.
His room is exactly the same as the last time I saw it: messy, but only on his side, the wall above his bed covered in dozens of the shadow-
dulled pictures he likes to take—a strange sort of hobby for a Blue. Killen’s magic affords him the power to accelerate, to make processes happen at a greater speed. Perhaps that’s why he’s always been more interested in freezing them in time, capturing the moment with a pre-spelled charm. Studies of life at the Academy, mostly, but he also used to love taking pictures of me, and those used to command pride of place above his headboard—until the day he left them in a flaming pile at my feet, which he then proceeded to accelerate to ash.
I can only hope that his anger has abated since then.
That six months will have blunted the hurt.
“Killen,” I whisper, placing a firm hand over his mouth. “Killen,wake up.”
He jerks upright in the bed, his green eyes widening to perfect circles, the shock in them quickly giving way to confusion as he catches sight of me through the rippling dark.
“What the hells, Raya?” he hisses, batting me away. “What are you—? Did youwispin here?” His sandy hair is mussed with sleep and sticking up at odd angles, his skin as flush and sun-kissed as I remember, warmth radiating from him like an indoor sun. Killen always did run hot.
“Would it have really been better if I’d knocked?” I ask, keeping my voice low.
“When people knock, I can ignore them.” Killen raises the sheet between us like a shield, distracting from his lack of shirt. “And you don’t get to wisp in here anymore, remember? You lost that right when you called things off.”
For absolutely no reason, is what Killen is too disconcerted to add—though the vision that showed him cheating on me with another girl would suggest otherwise.
Since when do you believe everything the future shows you?he’d spat when I confronted him about his prophesied betrayal.You’re wrong about your visions all the time, Raya, why are you so desperate to believe this one? Gods, why would you even ask the future if I was going to cheat?
