Page 118 of What Blooms from Death

Aleksander

Two more dayspassed in the Rivenholt Palace.

On the third, I dozed off late in the afternoon only to wake up with a start, sweat dripping from my skin, echoes of a nightmare pounding through my skull—the same, recurring one I’d told Nova about days ago. It had been a long time since it had visited me, and the haunting images seemed to be trying to make up for lost time, clawing through my thoughts with much more sharpness and clarity than usual.

These nightmares always affected me the same way: I staggered from the bed feeling completely drained of life, my magic roused, but scattered and weak, as though it had tried to fight off the dark dreams on my behalf.

I made my way to the washroom across the hall. As per usual, the violent stirrings of my mind and magic had left temporary cracks in my skin—though the golden energy glowing within them was fainter within the walls of this palace and its protections.

These nightmares had once been the only thing that caused such cracks…until Nova came along.

Why she had the same effect on me as my nightmares, I could only guess at.

Just one more piece of our relationship that I couldn’t make sense of.

Splashing cold water over my skin helped settle the exterior cracks, but my insides still felt as if they’d been wrung dry, all the life in me squeezed out.

I was determined not to let weakness win—especially not in this foreign court, where any wrong move might prove fatal—so I set off for the palace training grounds, where I could deal with things the way I often did: by battling my way through until I was too numb to think of pain or confusion or anything else.

Bastian had offered this training space to me freely, along with access to the armory next to it—a show of hospitality I suspected Nova had encouraged him to give. His desire to win her affection seemed to be greater than whatever suspicions he held toward me, and I planned to use that to my advantage for as long as I could get away with.

I grabbed a sword from the armory—a heavy claymore that required both hands to wield. Not my usual choice of weapon, but I needed something that would require focus rather than familiarity. Something to better distract myself with.

Without any hesitation, I set about carving up the practice dummies lining one end of the field. Occasionally, I tried fusing magic into the blade as well. It was such a broad, thick piece of steel that it required every ounce of my focus to pull off this trick. My nightmares were soon forgotten, lost among my growing exhaustion, as I’d hoped they would be—though the pounding headache I soon developed wasn’t much of an improvement.

I’d thought my cousin was being dramatic the other day, suggesting peeling the skin from his bones to rid himself of the cursed weight caused by the protective air in this palace. The longer I worked through my motions, though, the heavier andhotter my body seemed to become. Discarding my shirt and jacket helped somewhat, but I was still breathing harder than I should have been, and making far too many mistakes for my liking.

The open-air grounds were lined with burning torches, situated between the armory and a wing of the palace that had once been reserved for less prominent guests. The bedrooms in that wing had sat empty for ages, I’d been told, but the central parlor was still in regular use.

A small crowd of palace dwellers soon gathered on the balcony of this parlor, giving them a bird’s-eye view of the training area. Judging by their chatter and raucous laughter, they were thoroughly enjoying a round of after-dinner drinks.

I paid them little mind until some time had passed—until a hush fell over them, followed by a chorus of excited whispers.

Nova had just arrived, I realized. She ignored the whispering, pointing crowd—and me—taking up a spot on the opposite side of the training field. All of her attention was on readying the bow she had slung over her shoulder.

I watched her out of the corner of my eye for only a moment before returning to my own practice. She seemed focused—in need of some kind of disciplined distraction, same as I was—so I let her be. We merely existed in the same space for the better part of an hour. Day eased fully into night as we went through our motions, little sound between us save for the hacking and swishingof my blade and magic, occasionally punctuated by the echoing thud of her arrows hitting a target.

But I couldfeelher, even when I couldn’t see her or hear her.

Or, more specifically, I could feel her magic. For every spark of light that escaped me, I sensed one of her shadows rising, as if in answer.

Like everything else, it was different within the protective shell surrounding this area—more muted. Almost as if ourpowers were sentient enough to realize that there was no need for balancing or revival here, and so my magic’s desperate, clawing desire to get to hers was absent for the moment.

I still found myself drifting closer and closer to her side of the grounds.

A particularly bright surge of light rolled from my veins toward my sword. Cold shot through me a moment later as Nova’s shadows shifted in response. The back of my neck prickled, and I tilted my gaze in her direction to find her staring at me as she fought to catch her breath. Shadows framed her body, flaring out in shapes almost reminiscent of wings.

“It’s rude to stare,” I called to her.

She snorted at this, averting her eyes. “I told you before: My etiquette lessons were pointless. I’m afraid I’m destined to be hopelessly rude.”

A smile tugged at my lips as I sauntered closer, stopping a few feet away from her.

She still didn’t look at me as she said, “Idothink there might be some social rules against parading around half-naked as a visitor in a foreign court, though.”

“Am Iparading?”

“You’ve drawn spectators,” she said drily, nodding toward the balcony above us—to where the crowd of onlookers had nearly doubled in size.

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