Air Awakens (Air Awakens, #1)(7)

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.

It was the first time Vhalla had seen one of her watchers long enough to examine their appearance. She didn’t know what she had been expecting, but the woman looked like any other Westerner. Wasn’t she always told that sorcerers were different from normal people?

“What do you want?” Vhalla whispered. Her eyes watered, she did not even allow herself to blink for fear the woman would vanish.

“Have you ever read any of these?” The woman had a thick accent, holding her a and y like those of the West. Vhalla had heard traces of it in Sareem, even though he had been born and raised in the South.

“These?” Vhalla repeated carefully.

“These books,” the woman clarified. “Have you ever read any of them?”

“Of course I have,” Vhalla retorted defensively. People did not often question her knowledge of the library, especially when it came to her reading.

“And you still fear us?” The woman squinted slightly, tilting her head.

Vhalla subconsciously took a step away. “I-I don’t fear—” the woman’s approach stilled her words. What would this person do to her? Vhalla looked over her shoulder to make sure Sareem or Roan weren’t nearby. She jumped when she looked back—the sorcerer stood right before her.

“This one.” Pulling a manuscript from the shelf the woman passed it to her. “Read this.”

“Why?” Vhalla accepted the manuscript from the woman with hesitant fingers. She read the title quickly: An Introduction to Sorcery.

“Because you are too smart to be so afraid of what you are,” the dark-haired woman replied simply, turning to walk away.