Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Shy and the Lake

My chest aches.

But this is unlike the feeling that connects me to Anora. This is something angry and primal and raw. Halfway through her story, I can’t sit still anymore. When I get to my feet, Anora’s eyes meet mine, her gaze like an arrow through my heart. Her eyes are haunted, her face pale.

Even Natalie is affected by Anora’s story, leaning forward in her chair with her fingers pressed to her lips. Jacobi’s set aside his computer and can’t even look at her. None of us expected this. It’s a betrayal of our oath as shadow knights. We’re supposed to protect humans; we’re supposed to protect the Eurydice. The only explanation is not only had Chase gone rogue, but he was connected with the occult.

I’ve never wanted to comfort someone so much in all my life, and yet I’m sure that’s the last thing she wants—comfort from a Valryn, comfort from me. There’s an ugly feeling associated with that thought as I observe Thane standing behind Anora like some dark guardian, and I stuff it down quick. I’m no better than Chase if I act on this…connection I have with Anora.

I pace, hating Chase with every word she speaks.

“After Chase died, it felt like eyes were always on me. Like I was being hunted. Maybe I was. I stayed at Mount St. Mary’s for one more month before Mom got a brochure about Nacoma Knight Academy. She thought I could start over in a place where people wouldn’t recognize me, wouldn’t be suspicious of me.”

“So when you got here and encountered Vera…” Natalie starts. Her words aren’t vicious anymore but full of understanding.

“She followed me. She said they would find me. I thought she meant people like Chase. It scared me, and the thread reacted.” Anora pauses. “I didn’t mean to… I didn’t want—”

“We know,” I say as gently as I can. She meets my gaze. “It was the day you ran out of art?”

She nods. I found her near the tree line. She looked hysterical, but I assumed she was just suffering from the effects of walking through Vera’s soul. Even now, I shudder at what that must have felt like.

“But how did Vera’s soul end up in Lily’s body?” Natalie asks.

“I lost the coin,” Anora admits, looking at her feet.

“Are you sure it was lost?” Thane asks. “Isn’t it possible someone stole it?”

“Either way, whoever has it knows how to use it, and they practiced,” Jacobi says.

“Practiced?” Anora asks.

“We found several dead animals at the train yard,” Natalie says.

Anora looks paler than before. Her lips stand out, red like a rose.

“The coin was at the train yard tonight,” Thane says. “That’s why Anora and I were there.”

I grind my teeth together so hard, I think my molars will crack. Every time Thane opens his mouth about what happened tonight, I want to throttle him even more. “You mean when you let her wander off alone?”

“I can take care of myself,” Anora argues.

“Oh yeah? With what? The thread?” Natalie snaps.

“Do you need a reminder of my skills?” Anora asks, her eyes alight with fire.

“How did you know the coin was at the train yard?” Jacobi asks quickly, easing the tension rising in the room.

Thane and Anora exchange a look, and I sort of hate that they have secrets.

“A witch told us.”

I glare at Thane, and he glares right back. I know him well enough that I can practically hear his thoughts. What? She wanted answers, so I took her with me. It’s more than you’d do for her. And he’s right. I’d never introduce the death-speaker world to the Eurydice. There are too many people in the Underworld who want her powers and know ways to get them.

“What about you? What’s your excuse?” Thane asks.

“I tracked Lily’s phone there,” Jacobi says. “But after our encounter with the cercatore, I lost the trace. It must have died.”

We’re all quiet, realizing we’ve hit a dead end—all of us except Anora. “Well…can’t we just go back to the witch?”

“No,” we say in unison, with the exception of Thane, who I’m sure would be glad to lead her back to the Underworld.

That firelight returns to her eyes. “But she told us exactly where the coin was!”

“And look how that turned out,” Natalie snaps. “You were attacked by a cercatore and have nothing to show for it. How do you even know she was telling the truth? This whole thing sounds like a setup, and she’s a death-speaker practicing death magic.”

“I’m a death-speaker,” Anora argues.

“You’re the Eurydice. There’s a difference.”

Anora doesn’t reply, but I can tell there’s a response bubbling under the surface.

“What Nat is trying to say”—I glance at her—“is we’ll help you find the coin. We don’t know why the killer chose Lily, and we don’t know who they’ll target next.”

She doesn’t argue, so we make a plan for tomorrow that includes a list of places Jacobi was able to track Lily’s phone to the day she died: the school, her home, June’s, a beach near the lake, and the train yard.

“We’ll split up. Look for clues and interview as many people as possible about Lily’s behaviors. Anora’s with me,” I say. Thane’s dark eyes meet mine. “She’s the Eurydice. She’s to have a shadow knight with her at all times.”

I expect an argument, but Thane says, “Whatever. I can’t help tomorrow anyway. Uncle Malachi wants me in the city. He wants to show off at…some gala.”

Once we have our assignments, Thane and Anora get up to leave. As she follows Thane to the door, I call her name. She turns and looks at me. My heart beats hard in my chest.

“I’m sorry for what Chase did.”

“Don’t apologize for him,” she says, almost frustrated, then pauses and clears her throat. When she speaks again, her voice is soft. “Thank you. For letting me tell my story.”

“You’re welcome.”

We stare at each other for a moment before she turns, gets in Thane’s car, and leaves.

* * *

After Natalie, Jacobi, Anora, and Thane leave, I lie awake, staring at the ceiling.

Anora and Thane.

I don’t even like saying their names in succession. They left my house together. I wanted to follow, to make sure she made it home safe. I mean, Thane led her into the Underworld and into the hands of a cercatore. Can I really trust him with the Eurydice? I try to tell myself it’s because she’s the Eurydice that I care so much—she’s like a gold mine, far too valuable to lose—but in reality, I know if anything happens to her, I will never be the same again.

And it makes me feel crazy. It makes me feel like this thread connecting us is wound tight around my heart. I need to tell Jacobi about it so he can research it in the archive. I’ve kept it from him for too long.

I get up, climb out of my window, and shift, flying into the night. The air is cool, the sky is clear, and a full moon lights up the night. It’s only a few hours until dawn. At first, I think I’ll take a quick flight around the lake to clear my head, but then I find myself heading in the direction of Anora’s house. Just as I consider turning around, I spot her sitting on the roof, knees drawn to her chest.

Screw it. Might as well see what she’s up to.

I shift and land beside her. She jumps.

“Jesus Christ! You scared me!” she hisses, and I can’t help grinning.

“Sorry,” I offer, but I’m more amused than anything else.

She’s quiet for a moment, probably trying to calm down after I frightened her, and then she asks, “You’re not checking up on me, are you?”

I raise a brow. “That makes me think you’re thinking about doing something you’re not supposed to.”

She smiles just a little and turns her head away. “That night when you came here before because you wanted to…” She waves a hand vaguely. “Whatever you wanted to do. Were you one of the ravens in my tree?”

“Yeah. We were ordered to watch over you. Shadow knights protect the Eurydice. But we didn’t know…” I take a seat beside her. My legs dangle off the edge of the roof, which elicits a growl from one of her hounds. It’s clear they’ve made it their job to protect her. I wonder if they’ve always done that, but I assume the Order would have known if they did. Perhaps there’s something about her being close to the site of the gates that has brought them out.

“And now? Why are you here now?” she asks.

“Truth is, I couldn’t sleep,” I admit.

I feel her eyes on me. “Me either.”

Another moment of silence and then I ask, “How are you holding up?”

“I should be asking you that question.” She peeks at me through her lashes.

“I have never really had to deal with death,” I admit. “My grandparents all died either before I was born or shortly after. Lily is the first person I’ve lost. I think I thought it would never happen to me. Stupid, I know.”

“It’s not stupid,” she whispers.

When I look at her, her eyes have softened. It makes me feel like I can share my deepest secrets with her.

“It’s weird, you know? Because the things that make me think of her are so unpredictable.”

I opened the wound wide today by looking through pictures. Now every memory I ever shared with Lily is fresh in my mind—my thirteenth birthday party when she shoved cake in my face and pushed me in the pool. That time we went to the eighth grade dance together because we were best friends and we could. The day we stood side by side as we took our oaths as shadow knights-in-training and proceeded to duel each other. The dance she did when she won (I let her).

“I understand,” she says, and for a moment, I think she might share something about how she experiences grief, but she’s quiet.

Before, I’d only glimpsed her sorrow. Tonight, it tore free, and yet she remained upright, and I wonder when I’ll be able to handle the weight. When will Lily’s loss not feel like a stab to the gut?

After a moment, I get to my feet. “Can I show you something?” She looks wary, so I add, “It’s not far. Promise.”

She regards me for a moment. Her ever-changing eyes study me in a way that makes me feel like she’s trying to figure out every word I never said. Then she slips her fingers into mine, and I shift into my Valryn form. Her eyes widen slightly as she watches me transform.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to that.”

I smile like an idiot, reading too much into her statement, but it suggests that she plans to stick around, and that makes my chest feel lighter. I scoop her up and take off. Her hounds scramble after us, baying their way through the streets, but soon we’re flying over woods, their branches thick with leaves.

Anora’s arms tighten around my neck, her cheek brushing my own. “You could have warned me!” she cries against my ear.

“There’s no fun in that.”

I keep my promise, and just as quickly as we take flight, we land. I set Anora on her feet in a grove of willow trees.

“Call off your hounds,” I say.

“Why do you keep calling them mine?” she asks.

“Because they are clearly yours. They seem to want to protect you, just as the Valryn are here to support and train you.”

The hounds bound out of the darkness, slipping through the trees like ghosts themselves. I only wish they moved like ghosts. They could wake the dead with all the noise they make. Good thing normal humans can’t hear them.

I stay a few feet away from Anora when she turns to face them.

“I’m fine,” she says, easily this time, no hesitancy in her voice.

They halt and sit, a low chorus of growls rumbling in disapproval.

“They don’t seem to trust you,” Anora says, tilting her head as she studies them.

“I think they know I don’t like them,” I say, preferring not to admit that I’m a little afraid of them.

“Why don’t you like them?”

“Other than the fact that they smell like a pit of dead bodies, I was attacked by a dog when I was five.” I press my finger to my lips where a faint scar remains from the attack. “I don’t even really like to be around the nice ones.”

She looks at my lips a lot longer than I expect, and I want to lean in and kiss her, but one of her hounds barks, making us jump.

“Go!” Anora commands, pointing to the woods. The hounds’ growls turn into whimpers, and they sulk away, melding with the dark.

“Come on.” I grab her hand. This is the most I have touched her since I met her, and I’m soaking up every bit of it—the feel of her fingers laced with mine, the heat of her skin, the faint blush that colors her cheeks almost every time she looks at me.

“What did you want to show me?” she asks as we step through a curtain of willow branches. “Oh.”

We’re at the lake, far away from light and anything that might pollute the natural beauty of the landscape. The water is so calm and so dark, it mirrors the star-clustered sky. There’s a faint breeze picking up the smell of roses. It envelops me and makes me shiver.

“It’s beautiful here,” she whispers.

She’sbeautiful.

The moonlight spills over her delicate nose and full lips. Her fingers are still twined with mine. It’s strange, standing next to this girl who had, just hours earlier, wielded the Thread of Fate as her weapon.

“The lake is one of my favorite places. Being near the water, it helps me think.”

“Do you come here often?”

“Yeah, mostly after patrol.”

“How often do you patrol?”

“Most nights,” I say with a sigh. “Well, except recently. I’ve been…excused.”

She doesn’t ask why. We are quiet for a moment, and then she says, “At Lily’s memorial, you said you’d been training since you were twelve. Training to do what, exactly?”

“To fight and defend,” I say. “Being anything other than a shadow knight really isn’t an option when you’re Valryn. It’s just what you do. We take the oath at twelve, then we begin training. We learn our history and then our enemies. We learn to fight, and we learn weaponry. Our last year, we are given a patrol and tested. This is my last year. If the elites think I’m ready, I’ll be ranked and given an assignment as a full-fledged shadow knight.”

“I want to learn to control the thread,” she says.

“We can teach you.”

My fingers tighten around hers, but she lets go, and I feel the loss of her immediately.

“That would mean telling the Order I exist.”

“Well, yeah…that’s inevitable. You’ve seen Influence’s work. You’re the only one who can stop it.”

She takes a breath.

“Anora.” I whisper her name, coaxing her to look at me. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

She looks frustrated and fierce. I want to kiss her so badly. “I don’t want to trust you.”

“I know,” I say, stepping closer. She doesn’t move away. Instead, her head tilts back as she holds my gaze before her eyes fall to my lips, and I don’t think as I press my mouth to hers. I’m not sure what I expected, but it isn’t what this becomes—something heated and frantic. My hands settle on her hips, and I pull her to me as I kiss her before guiding her back until she rests against the trunk of the willow tree. Her hands press to my chest and then twine into my hair, and when I lean into her, she gasps. My tongue clashes with hers, and she is sweet and new and familiar. She fuels the heat in the bottom of my stomach.

I could drown in her and die happy.

I hitch her leg over my hip, wishing to be closer, and then images flash through my mind: heated kisses and bodies coming together, desperate to feel, and suddenly we’re not close enough. I’m not kissing her enough, and there are too many layers between us.

And for some reason, Chase is in the back of my head. I think about how he gained her trust and broke her heart. How often he embraced her and kissed her. How many lies he told her.

And how am I different?

I’m not.

Because at the end of the day, she is human, and I am Valryn, and we can never be together.

I pull away from her, studying her beautiful face, wanting to memorize every part of her.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

I blink, unsure of what she means. “Like what?”

“You look so intense,” she says and touches my cheek. My eyes fall to her kiss-bruised lips.

“I don’t mean to,” I say, but the truth is, I’m struck by this feeling that she’s the embodiment of my heart, and she’s walking around outside my chest, and I’d do anything to protect her, no matter the cost.

Even if I can’t be with her.