“You’re lying,” Sareem scolded. “You’re a bad liar, Vhalla.”
“It was a long night. I’m tired,” she mumbled. That much was true.
“It’s not like you to be late. I was worried.” He frowned.
“Sorry to worry you,” Vhalla apologized.
She had known Sareem for almost five years. He had started his apprenticeship only two years after her and they have been fast friends. Certainly she could trust him.
“Sareem, do you know any sorcerers?”
“What?” He leaned away, as though she had made some kind of threat. “Why would I associate with sorcerers?”
“I know your father is from Norin. I hear magic is more accepted in the West. I thought that maybe...” What began as a rushed excuse quickly lost its momentum.
“No,” Sareem shook his head. “I don’t know any sorcerers, and I don’t plan to.”
“Right,” Vhalla agreed half-heartedly. She felt cold.
“What book is your head in now?” Sareem tapped her chin with his knuckles, bringing her eyes back to his. Vhalla attempted to make up some explanation but he wasn’t about to allow it. “I know you, Miss Yarl.” Sareem wore a satisfied smirk. “Read all you want, fine. I can’t judge you for it, not after it likely saved the prince. But don’t go seeking out sorcerers, all right?”
Vhalla couldn’t stand his caring gaze.
“They’re dangerous, Vhalla. Look at our crown prince. His mood is tainted by his flames, or so they say.” Sareem rested a palm on her head, holding it there for a long moment. “Vhalla, you’re warm.”
“What?” She blinked, fretting that somehow he felt the magic within her.
“You’re fevered.” Sareem’s hand had shifted to her forehead. “You shouldn’t be here. We should go tell the master.”
“I feel fine.” Vhalla shook her head.
“No, if you strain yourself it will only get worse. Autumn Fever will be upon us before we know it, and you should keep your strength.” He was helping her up when she caught movement on the edge of her vision.
Vhalla’s eyes shifted. At the far end of the shelves stood a figure shadowed between the beams of light cutting through the dust from windows. Her heart began to race. A black jacket covered their shoulders, the hem ending at the bottom of their ribs, and sleeves stopping just below their elbows. She couldn’t suppress a fearful chirp.
“Vhalla, what is it?” Sareem regained her attention, and by the time he turned to follow her wide-eyed stare, the person was gone.
“N-nothing.” Vhalla struggled to keep her voice stable.
Sareem helped her back to the main desk, where he was in turn scolded for not working. Her friend disappeared back into the stacks with a small grin in Vhalla’s direction. The master affirmed Sareem’s claims by placing a wrinkled palm on her forehead. With father-like worry he sent her back to her chambers early to rest.
Alone outside the library, Vhalla quickly found the statue that was spaced far enough from the wall to allow someone to side-step behind—and disappeared. Vhalla knew every crack in the walls, every uneven stone beneath her feet, and every servant passageway. She had been walking this route for almost seven years since her father traded an opportunity to advance from foot soldier in the militia to palace guard after the War of the Crystal Caverns; a trade he had made to see that his daughter had a better future than a farm in Cyven, the East.
Her hand paused upon her door handle; footsteps at the far end of the hall called her attention. A group of servants and apprentices passed along one of the passageways’ crossroads. She squinted past them, further down still. A pair of eyes stared back at her. Vhalla disappeared quickly into her room, throwing herself upon her bed. Sleep would not have come so quickly were it not for the exhaustion that seeped from her very bones.
Her sleep was restless and filled with a vivid dream.
She dreamt she felt the night air upon her skin as she stood before the palace-side library doors. Torches flanked them, their carved surfaces set shadows dancing in unnatural ways. Through the crack between the doors she felt the cool, musty air of the library beyond, like the breath of a sleeping beast.
The doors did not obstruct her; like the fake wall in the Tower, they allowed her to pass through with ease. Vhalla soon found herself in the moonlit library. She turned, starting for her window seat. Her heartbeat fluttered faster than a hummingbird’s wings. There, she had to go there.
The world began to blur, the bookcases fading into a haze. Everything slipped around her as she raced toward her destination. Upon her favorite perch sat the hunched figure of a man. Hazy and shadowed, she could not make out his features and, when he finally turned, the movement was pained. Surprise tensed his shoulders, and Vhalla could only make out a pair of dark eyes set upon a blurry face, struggling to focus on her much as she was struggling to focus on him.
“Who are you?” The man’s words were as deep and dark as midnight. They resonated directly into Vhalla’s core, and it fractured the faded world around her.
Wait, Vhalla cried. Wait! Only air passed through her lips. Everything surrounding her lost its sharpness and began to crumble beneath her feet. She fell into darkness.
Vhalla awoke with a start, her covers upon the floor from thrashing about in her sleep. She pressed a palm to her forehead. Her skin wasn’t fevered, but it was clammy from night sweats.
It was a dream, she insisted while readying herself for the day. But nothing seemed to be able to calm the nerves upsetting her stomach, not even the familiar scratch of her rough spun woolen clothing. She had worn the same clothes for years, though Vhalla was suddenly tugging at her robe’s sleeves uncomfortably.
She had a similar dream the next night, and the night after that, each time more vivid than the last. She ignored the shakes the dreams left in their wake. Vhalla blamed it on the black-clad figures who seemed to stalk her every movement—just beyond the edge of her vision. She did not go a day without seeing a sorcerer swathed in black, but only out of the corners of her eyes.
They stood at the edge of a bookshelf, the junction of a hall; sometimes they passed through doors that would be locked when she tried the knob. No one else ever saw them. Not Roan, who sorted books with her. Not Sareem when he walked her back to her room after dinner, meals that sat too heavy in her stomach.
The feel of eyes upon her became as common as breathing. What they wanted from her—they did not say. What they were waiting for they did not reveal.
Vhalla ignored her suspicion that she already knew what they sought.
One day, she was working alone in the library when the hairs at the nape of her neck raised on end.
At the end of the row stood a woman. She wore a variation of the Tower’s apprentice robes that Vhalla had only seen once or twice before. The black jacket still ended at her waist, but the sleeves were capped over the shoulders. Vhalla could not guess the significance of having different styled robes. Library apprentices all wore the same.
The woman did not move, she did not even seem to breathe. Dark brown eyes, almost black, were set upon deep tan Western skin. Black hair fell straight around her face with horizontal fringe cut right below the woman’s brow. Her hair was longer in the front and shorter in the back, exposing her neck.