Wystwood

21. A fracture within glass

Raeph drew the air from the room. His chest was heaving as if he had been pursued by a pack of hungry wolves through the city streets, and his broad shoulders filled the door frame, blocking Ada's only exit.

"Easy now, you've barely given the sun time enough to rise," said Armestrong with a grimace. She smoothed down the fabric of her dress, though it looked to be permanently stitched into creases.

"I told you not to come near her," snarled Raeph, his gaze flaring feral as he turned on the woman. "You don't know the trouble she'd cause if she got out of here."

"No, I don't," snapped back Armestrong. "You've told us next to nothing about this, and if you hope to stay here, it's in your best interest not to take such a tone with me. Leaving an unconscious young woman under my roof means it becomes my responsibility to feed her before she starves to death."

Raeph's fingers curled into fists, the skin of his knuckles straining frost-white. "Your responsibility is the same as the rest of us: watch out for your own skin or you'll wind up wishing you never had one."

But he had lost the woman's attention as she bustled about the room and plucked the empty bowl from Ada's hands. "Enough of this. Just know that if you intended on hurting this young lady, you've brought her to the wrong place."

With that, she swept from the room, carrying her spectrum of cottoned colours away and returning the world to smeared shades of white. Though now there was a jagged strip of black running across the ivory and ochre. Raeph was dressed differently to when Ada had last seen him. In the caravan, his clothes had been rough and shrouded, with each article promising that they concealed a weapon and that their black would not stain with blood. Now, his belts and pouches had been discarded and his shirt sleeves hung loosely from his arms like the wings of a raven. He also wore a buckled leather tunic, on which was sheathed the ebony dagger.

His eyes trained upon Ada as she stared at the blade, and long fingers flittered down to extract the knife from its leathers. He twirled it between his fingertips, as though it weighed no more than a feather. "You should have taken my deal when given the chance."

"You would have stolen me away anyway," Ada replied, her voice a crack of thunder where she had expected the patter of rain.

"True," he said, flexing the hand that must now bear the slivered scars of broken glass. "But perhaps we could have avoided the theatricals."

He shifted forward, everything about him sleek and smoothed back. But the closer Ada examined him, the more she realised that he was not as old as she had once assumed. His expression aged him with harsh lines and heavy scowls, but his uncovered face showed a man who had just crossed into the cusp of adulthood. He looked adrift within the swells of time, caught somewhere between two ages with a body left divided. It was a feeling Ada knew well, but one that she hoped wasn't quite so apparent within her own form.

The boards beneath them creaked, half rotted and threatening to give way, as Raeph strolled into the room. He let the door groan shut behind him. Pressed next to the window, Ada refused to move, but her lungs stuttered a breath as the man drew closer still. He raised his hand and let the dagger sketch a line down the glass pane to the side of her head. A thin fracture marked its path, and Ada felt her resolve begin to split. He leant in, his voice a midwinter's current. "How did you get here?"

Ada didn't allow even her eyelids to quiver. "I don't know, you're the one who made me lose consciousness."

"Don't," he growled, "play games with me. How were you walking through the wystwood forest?"

Silence resumed, aside from the whine of ebony against glass.

"You're human" —his tempered voice sparked the air— "which is a good enough reason for me to kill you where you stand."

From the corner of her eye, Ada saw the dagger catch the sunlight. "Then why haven't you?"

"Why indeed," he mused, gripping the knife hilt before sliding it back into its sheath. "Isn't that the question begging to be asked?" He paused for a response, but received none. "Why, too, did you end up stumbling directly into a young and brash Caster within a city that bans all magic?"

Ada remained quiet, fury heating the blood within her veins.

"Could the girl have heard tales of a human who'd come to Wysthaven and defend her magic?" His eyes flashed— a challenge. 

Ada could clearly remember Min's words to her: The wind told me you'd be the one to bring back the magic. She had been wide eyes and flushing cheeks, even after Ada had admitted she knew nothing that could help her. Despite everything she had been through, Ada still felt a pang of guilt for the endangered child she could not protect. But in the very least, she resolved to shield the girl from the man that threatened her now.

"You're mistaken. I don't want anything to do with your city," Ada spat out. "I just want to leave this awful place."

But Raeph ignored her, casting his gaze through the window as though it were not coated thickly in grime. "She's naive to believe it, as I very much doubt you could do anything to preserve her magic."

The air was too tight, their bodies too close. But Ada refused to back down. "And why is that?"

"Because" —his eyes flickered back to her, two shards of obsidian slicing through mind and matter— "the only way to return magic to the city would be to kill the Lady of Wysthaven."