I couldn’t help it, I had to laugh. I would have to let her go soon, because the woman clearly needed to go get some food and water in her system, but I found myself hesitating. Selfishly craving just a little bit more time in her presence.
“What’s your favorite number?”
“Thirteen.”
Interesting.
“Oho, you answered that one quickly, Miss Asher. Any particular reason?”
Her expression clouded for a moment, and then hardened. She clearly knew the answer, but she wasn’t going to tell me.
“Nope.”
Thought so.
“Well, for what it’s worth, that’s my favorite number, too.”
“Congratulations,” she muttered sardonically.
I leaned over and unlocked the cell door, offering an exaggerated bow as I swung it open, allowing her to walk free.
And it took damn near all of my willpower not to offer her an escort home—if only because it would be far, far too tempting to watch her from the Shadows afterwards. After that whole exchange, I couldn’t trust myself to behave.
Arken glared at me as she pushed herself up from the bench, though she held my gaze even as she started to walk away.
“Behave yourself, Little Conduit,” I called out, smirking as she turned to take her leave.
Arken simply tossed her hair, the dark brown waves swishing past her shoulder blades, and offered me a smirk of her own.
“No promises, Captain.”
Trouble, indeed.
Chapter Fifteen
Arken
I was developing a newfound appreciation for the subject of Arcane History.
After over a month in Sophrosyne, it came as no surprise to me that my preference of study had been in the more practical subjects thus far—I was a tactile learner, and making legitimate use of my Resonances was significantly more engaging.
Even though I had only learned the very basics of arcana so far, everything that I was learning to do with Light, I was able to replicate with the other elements—my hidden Resonances—in the privacy of Amaretta’s studio. It had been exhilarating to see what I could do with just a little bit of guidance and technique.
Though I had always enjoyed reading historical texts back home, now that I had a taste for arcana, I was finding most ofmy courses on things such as history, Bios, and anthropology to be a bit dry in comparison. But today, I was enraptured, utterly engrossed as High Scholar Sykes spoke on a subject that I had been wholly unaware of for my entire life: the history of the Cataclysm.
Before the scholar had began our lecture, she explained that what we were about to learn qualified as knowledge exclusive to the Studium—and sure enough, when I glanced down at my wrist, I could see the silver tattoo begin to glow with that strange Aetherborne arcana, a spell with complexity beyond my novice understanding.
“Today, young Conduits, you will learn about a great sacrifice,” Scholar Sykes began. “And a truth that is not kept concealed for the sake of posterity or control, but rather the overall safety of Aemos and her people. You will most certainly have questions, but I ask that you hold on to them for the latter half of the session, when we break out into discussion groups.”
Over the course of the next hour, High Scholar Sykes wove a tale so intricate and beautiful that it almost felt as though it was a sort of faerie-tale, not a true recounting of history as we knew it.
According to the mythos of the creation of mankind, the Elders loved us deeply, and by default—because we were their children, after all. But beyond the fact that our species had been born mortal after some strange circumstance of evolution, we were alsodifferentfrom the Aetherborne—and they loved us for that, too.
Our lives were shorter, and thus we were more ephemeral creatures by nature. In time, the Elders discovered that the first humans were far more emotional, passionate, and creative than their progenitors—within their shortened lifespans, they innovated, they explored, they created art and music and laughed and screamed and cried andloved, all so viscerally.
In their own immortality, the Aetherborne had grown stagnant as a species, having a tendency to crystallize over the eons. It made sense, when you thought about it. With enough time to experience anything and everything this plane of existence had to offer, one might begin to lose that inherent curiosity and thirst formore. Such was so with the Aetherborne, where even the most exhilarating emotions and experiences had grown blunted, dulled over time.
And then we mortals came along, all loud and bumbling and breakable—and we reminded them of a youth long forgotten. As an inadvertent consequence of our birth, we’d restored humanity to the realm of Aemos, and thus we were named: Humans.