Page 26 of Daughter of No Worlds

“Good luck,” Nura said to me. “I’m sure I will see you soon.”

And before I had the chance to stop her — before I had the chance to ask any of the dozens of questions thrashing in my lungs — she scribbled two jagged strokes onto her little scrap of parchment and simply disappeared.

Leaving me here.

“Damnit, I told her not to do that,” Maxantarius grumbled.

A breeze rustled the garden, making the flower petals tremor like butterfly wings, pressing the fabric of my ridiculous dress to my back and offering a sharp, jarring reminder of my wounds. Whatever pain relief Willa had given me was starting to wear off. At least the ache sharpened my thoughts.

I watched Maxantarius, who diligently ignored me.

Docility was probably not the best option. I could already tell that approach would neither endear me to him, nor help me make any progress. Normally, I would take a more flirtatious approach, but that seemed risky, too. He had only scoffed at my attempts at charm before.

“Eager protégé” might have potential. Maybe.

I just needed to figure out what I had to work with.

I watched Maxantarius’s back, mentally reaching into the space between us, searching for any faint whiff of his emotions, his thoughts, his preferences—

A sharp, startling pain rang out in the back of my head, as if my fingers had been slammed in a door. Maxantarius whipped his head around to glare at me. “Donot,” he hissed, “do that to me.Ever.”

My jaw snapped shut, and I swallowed a rush of embarrassment.

Nura had clearly shielded her mind, hiding it from my abilities. As a Valtain, she would have a mastery of thoughts that would allow her to do such things. It hadn’t occurred to me that a Solarie could do the same thing, though now it seemed obvious that such protections would be necessary, living in this world—

“I apologize—” I started. “I only—”

But Maxantarius rose without so much as looking at me. “Fucking Valtain,” he muttered. “Sneaky bastards.”

He strode to the door of the little stone cabin. I started to follow him, but he whirled around in the doorway, blocking it and sneering at me down the bridge of his nose.

“I’m not participating in this,” he said.

And before I could respond, the door slammed so forcefully that I felt the wood reverberate at the tip of my nose.

* * *

I shivered.

My back throbbed.

Maxantarius had not opened the door again after slamming it in my face. For a while, I had paced around the garden mulling over my options. The way things looked from where I stood, I had very few.

At first, it had been difficult to curb my anger, which grew more and more potent with every passing minute. I dragged myself across the plains, across the ocean, to get here. I hunted and bartered and hid. I nearlydied.And — in a thought that still clenched shuddering guilt in my chest — I killed.

All of that, so that I could be discarded outside the locked door of some petulant “teacher” who refused to train me.

Gods, he wasn’t even aValtain. I didn’t know much about Solarie Wielders, but I knew that even though they could, theoretically, do most of what Valtain could do, the way they used their magic was very different than the way I used mine.

But.

I breathed in my anger, and exhaled resolve.

If they were going to force me into this situation, then fine. I’d make everything I could of it.

I wasn’t sure what Maxantarius expected to happen, but I didn’t leave. Instead I sat down just outside the door, crossing my legs, waiting. He had to come out eventually. And when he did, I’d be here. Besides… it wasn’t as if I had anywhere else I could go.

Minutes passed — thirty, forty, fifty. Then hours. I watched the flower petals grow brighter and brighter under the waning sun, then reflect the warmth of sunset, then curl and fold in on themselves in dusk.

---