Well, that was encouraging at least.
“It also becomes much easier once you familiarize yourself with drawing from aetheric parallels on the fly. Though we would hope that you never find yourself in such a situation where you would need to summon a blade so quickly, that is one thing you will learn in future courses.”
As the woman finished speaking, I finished the dagger.
“Well done, Miss Asher. Very well done. Now, please take some time to study the details of the blade in your hand.”
I was impressed by the gleaming weapon. It looked as though it had been carved out of starlight. I ran a fingertip over the blade’s edge with my non-dominant hand and gasped when I found it sharp enough to cut. I was nearly incandescent, beaming with both pride and a newfound surge of energy. This arcana, though difficult to wield, made me feelpowerful.
“Please go ahead and release the blade back into the aether,” the scholar instructed next. Begrudgingly, I allowed my hard work to fade back into the air around us, the Light winking out into nothing.
“Can you recall what it looked like? What it felt like in your hand?” she asked.
I nodded. “Yes ma’am.”
“Good. Summon it again.”
I took a deep breath, stilling my mind and attempting to clamp down on the vibrating, excited energy buzzing beneath the surface. This exam wasn’t over yet. I focused on the Air and the Shadow aether I could feel around me in the room, drawing upon it as I inhaled and opened my left palm.
I converted the Air and Shadow into Light as I exhaled, and the blade immediately reappeared, hilt warming slightly in my hand.
“Holy Hel,” I breathed.
Even the High Scholar seemed impressed.
Chapter Forty
Kieran
I told myself that I wasn’t going to do this. I had better things to do, more important things to focus on right now.
Such as the fact that when my scouts returned this afternoon, they came back empty-handed. Bran Halsigg, or whatever the fuck his real name was, was nowhere to be found.
Jeremiah had sent them out at first light, only a handful of hours,maybe, after that gathering of non-Resonant rebels was broken up by the Pyrhhan Guard. By mid-afternoon, all three of the men came back with the same answer: He was gone without a trace.
But there was justno godsdamned way. So I sent Jeremiah and Hans back out to Freyston to search for themselves.
Meanwhile, I had been searching the Archives with a handful of others from my cadre. We had scoured our records of the Pyrhhan Census, the registries of Samhaven and Ithreac, and even managed to get our hands on the most recent citizenship records from Vindyrst.
We’d found nothing. Nobody by the name of Bran Halsigg was known to exist in all of fucking Atlas—at least not according to the extensive resources of Sophrosyne. After checking the damned files two, maybe even three times over, I sent the other guards back to their posts.
And yet here I was, still sleuthing around the Archives for another reason entirely while I waited for word back from Jeremiah and Hans.
Images of Arken’s freshly bruised and bitten neck were still sharp in my mind, and I found myself on the opposite end of the building now, abusing my security clearance to poke through student records.
Was this a particularly healthy distraction? No. Was it right for me to do this? No. Did I particularly care at the moment? Also no.
I could lie to myself and say this was just a precaution—a safety measure in case Arken decided she wanted to see this guy again. A way to protect her. If the day ever came where Arken did want to settle down with someone she met here in Sophrosyne, I could see myself doing some background research… Though I found the thought of such things uncomfortably unpleasant.
As it were, I wasn’t in the mood to lie to myself. Or maybe I just didn’t have the energy. I was here because I didn’t want to think about work, and my bitter, impulsive mind chose the next best thing to fixate on in a self-flagellatory manner.
It took me all of maybe fifteen minutes to find the most likely culprit.
Mason Park. Age: Twenty-four. Fourth-year Air Conduit, originally from Samhaven. A fitting focus of study on trade and economics, seeing as his family was in service to the House of Torrents. They were merchants, with direct ties to the Lord Gabriel Ymir.
I returned his folder into the large repository, striding into the next room to thumb through another stack of current course schedules. Arken would absolutely murder me if she knew what I was doing, but she would never need to know. I wasn’t going to engage with the man, I was just morbidly curious.
Was he her type? Did she even have a type?