James shrugged, but she could see how much it hurt him. “They wanted their own lives. Didn’t need a child tagging along. Especially not one that neither of them had planned to have or wanted when he arrived. I was a bargaining chip, nothing more. My uncle came to fetch me, a bit like your gran, I guess.”
She met his eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. At least our parents are alive for us to hate.” James tipped his chin toward Zach.
“Cancer took my mum. My sister’s heart stopped during a seizure.” Zach gave her the saddest smile in the world. “Dad’s around here… somewhere.”
Damn. Well, if that didn’t put things in perspective. She reached out and patted his shoulder tentatively. “Sorry, Zach.”
His shrug matched James’s. “We really do get it, you know.”
They stood in silence for a moment, bound together by their losses and their grief until James snorted. “Right. Enough of that. Let’s do something else—anything else.”
“Like what?” Kay asked.
“What have you been working on since you got to the college?” Zach asked.
Kay wrinkled her nose. “Other than the physical training we do together, I’ve mostly been doing assessments. I feel like I’ve spent days in the weirdest aptitude test on earth.”
James laughed. “Did they make you plant a sunflower seed?”
“They did.” Kay let out a rueful snort. “I swear the six-year-old next to me planted his and I could honestly see the leaves starting to unfurl before lunch.” She would have been mortified if she hadn’t been so relieved when the professor in charge had smiled and promised her mixed martial arts the next day.
“My worst was the duck egg,” Zach admitted.
“The one where you’re supposed to predict when it will hatch?” Kay asked.
“I genuinely thought I heard the duck trying to crack the shell. And I couldn’t just leave it to struggle….”
“What did you do?” James asked, lips twitching into a grin. “I haven’t heard this story.”
“I… uh… helped it,” Zach replied guiltily.
“What does that even mean?”
“I cracked it on the desk and let it out.”
“But what about the duck?” Kay asked as James laughed helplessly.
“It was fine. Thank God.” Zach shook his head, eyes twinkling. “In my defense, I was only five.”
Well. That was sobering. Kay swallowed her laughter, deeply conscious of how much older she was to be doing the same entrance tests. “Why do we have to even do these tests? Can’t they just look at your Shadows or something?” That was one thing she did know. Her Shadows were marbled with the deep blue of a natural Guardian, Elizabeth the red of a Seer, if she’d been a Healer, it would have been shades of green.
“They’re looking at more than just what you’re born with. They want to see what you enjoy, what you believe in. That’s what my dad says anyway,” Zach explained.
Good. Kay believed in standing up for what was right, that’s what she would enjoy. “So, when do I start actually learning to use my Shadows?”
James grinned. “Right now. We’ll help you.”
Zach nodded. “If you want to make a Shadow rope that can hold you up, you’re going to have to channel your feelings into the Shadows instead of letting them swirl around distracting you. Put something of yourself into the Shadow to keep it together.”
Okay. That made sense.
Kay pulled her hands out of her pockets, widened her stance, and settled her heels into the ground, letting her palms fall open as she controlled her breathing. She let go of the swarm of angry thoughts that had been battling through her mind but kept her determination to do better. To protect herself. To earn her place in this strange new world that was becoming her home.
Slowly relaxing her fingers, she sent out her awareness, letting it travel into the dark places behind the light—the shade behind the tree and under the ferns and brambles—until she felt the answering pull of the Shadows. That subtle prickle along her skin as they responded to her, twining through her fingers and around her hand.
The shady path seemed to ripple as the colors around her grew deeper, more saturated. The scent of rich earth and yesterday’s rain filled her senses. James and Zach’s Shadows, marbled in their unique shades of sky and ocean blue, swirled around them.
