Page 40 of Dark Night Golden Dawn
“Are you going to tell Alaric about me being a Strider?”
“No! Harlow, I would never. You’re my sister and… Do you really think I would?”
Harlow shrugged. “I guess I don’t know much about how close you are. Why doesn't Finn think he can pull this off alone? I’m sorry it’s such a stretch for him to pretend to be interested in me.”
Thea stopped, yanking Harlow around to face her under the umbrella with unusual force. Her eyes burned with intense frustration. “Is that what you think? That he needs tips on how tofakebeing in love with you?”
“What else am I supposed to think?” Harlow’s voice was an octave or two higher than usual, the shrill sound of her words grating on her nerves. Axel grumbled at the decibel of her voice from inside her coat.
Thea shook her head and stepped back, leaving Harlow in the rain that was falling in earnest now. “You need to talk to him. Hear him out about what happened between you.”
“Why can’tyoujust tell me?”
Thea was already walking back towards the Monas. She didn’t stop as she called over her shoulder, “It will be better if you talk to him. In person, preferably.” She stopped and turned around. “Tell him everything, Harlow. I mean it.Everything.”
That was in direct violation to what the twins had suggested. Harlow watched her sister disappear into the falling darkness, wondering what Thea knew that the twins did not, and then trudged home. The stairs to her apartment felt even steeper with Axel in her jacket. He seemed to sense her slowing down and jumped out, racing up the stairs ahead of her. When she unlocked the door he ran inside, excited to look around, and then sat down hard.
“Not much here, huh?” Harlow said. “Lots to look at out on the terrace though.”
She opened the door for him and he immediately went outside and curled up in one of the plastic chairs Harlow had placed under the narrow awning that provided a bit of shelter from the rain. He purred happily, as if to say, “This will do,” and then promptly fell asleep.
Harlow tossed her phone on the bed and changed out of her wet clothes and into a pair of silk pyjamas Enzo had tucked into one of the bags of clothes they’d taken home. She found an empty box that could make do for a litter box, tearing up a newspaper to substitute for litter, and called Axel into the bathroom, where she tucked the box behind her sink.
“Can you go there ‘til we get some litter?”
He bumped his head against her leg, agreeing. They went to the kitchen together and she got out a bowl for water and pulled a chicken breast out of the fridge, cutting it up and placing it on a plate next to the bowl on the floor. Axel ate a few bites and then hopped onto her bed, meowing plaintively. She obliged him, climbing into bed and nestling into the pile of pillows as he curled into a ball, warm and cozy in the blankets.
Tears clouded Harlow’s vision as she stroked his back. After so many months of feeling unbearably lonely, she could hardly believe her little friend was here now. Safe. They werebothsafe. No one could enter the apartment without her express desire for them to do so. This was the secret of this building, the reason she’d been interested in it in the first place. The wards were second-to-none, built straight into the bones of the building itself, complex and customizable, making this a veritable fortress. Mark couldn’t get to either of them here.
As Axel’s tiny feline snores drifted into the air, mixing with the sounds of the rain on the terrace, Aurelia’s words ran through her head on repeat:each Strider’s process is a little different, so there’s no methods, no spells. She must learn to trust herself, her intuition.
She lit the candles on her bedside table with a quick twist of the threads near them, then got comfortable, focusing narrowly on her breath. She listened to the sounds of her apartment, of Axel snoring, and allowed them to disappear from her notice. Her eyes relaxed and her vision softened until her second sight engaged.
Harlow felt for the filaments of magic that surrounded her, the fibers of reality that wove gracefully together to build the world as she knew it. They were in everything, glowing strong in her, as a living being, and slightly faded in inanimate objects, but still they lit softly at her notice, as they always had. Now though, she saw the other side to the light, the shimmering darkness from which the threads of power grew and conducted aether into the whole of Okairos.
She was certain she was seeing between, into the limen, beyond reality into the source of magic itself. She allowed her second sight to focus on that fertile shadow. It called to her, its sweet song growing louder in her ears as her fingers reached for it, almost involuntarily. She felt a stab of self-doubt, worried about doing this on her own, and the shadows shrank from her.
Harlow was tempted to cringe, tempted to stop. Her fear was there before her, nearly tangible in its magnitude. For the first time in a long time, she knew exactly what to do. She felt her fear and doubt acutely, every sharp, ragged edge. Instead of pushing them away as she usually did, she welcomed them. Tucked them into her heart, like she would joy or comfort, and began to hum a noteless song of promise.
“I will not abandon you,” she murmured.
The shadows swirled at her vow, growing in size and shimmering grace. They swirled towards her outstretched fingers in liquid slow motion. When they made contact, she was full for the first time of what felt like limitless power. Every filament of reality sang before her, begging to be shaped, changed, loved,made. All because the source of the light, the fertile dark, had settled within her heart.
“I’ll never leave you,” she said, a bit louder now. “I’ll never turn away.”
She knew now that she wasn’t speaking only to the living shadow, staining her fingers with its potent power, but also herself,herdarkness.
“You are mine, and I am yours,” she promised the darkness, and its song was a pledge in return. If she would not turn away, if she would take it in and keep it always, it would also keep her. The liquid shadow danced over her skin, then over Axel’s fur. She watched in awe as her vision shifted, showing her the sources of all Axel’s little hurts, his weakened bones and muscles, the growing malnutrition he was suffering from.
Her heart ached with desire for him to be made whole and well again. Before her eyes, that desire was made real, inside first and finally in the sheen of his fur as he stretched out on the bed, rolling onto his back. His golden eyes opened slightly and he sighed deeply, as though he were comfortable for the first time in ages. Harlow’s shadows danced with joy at her success. The rush of pleasure, joy and bittersweet sadness she felt all at once threatened to overwhelm her.
She did not shrink back. She did not turn away. There in the dark, she too was made whole, forged anew. The candles flared. The shadows drank her in and she swallowed them down. Harlow Krane was more herself than she had ever been, and now she was becoming something more than she had ever been before.
ChapterNineteen
Harlow spent the next two days practicing with the shadows. Soon she could manipulate reality in much the same way as her parents and Thea could, but instead of pulling power from the tapestry of magic surrounding her, she used it at its source. The difference was subtle at first, but she sensed as she worked that a profound ability lay beyond what she could immediately understand.
She created furniture for herself, then made it disappear. Decorated the entire apartment, then tore it down, banishing all evidence of what she could do from her sight. Eventually, she settled on making up a litter box for Axel. Her real accomplishment was fashioning an enormous cat tree from scrap wood she found in the basement, which she transformed into gnarled manzanita branches that made the apartment feel like an enchanted forest. The feline climbed into it immediately to look out the windows.
