ADARA

The world of Magickae... wasn't so different, Jisa. It had—has its own problems. It's own set of rules, of what is right and wrong. Everything we experienced and thought to get away from among those who wield magick — in the end, bias, prejudice, oppression... when will it end? Are you safe somewhere in that crystal? Are you still you?

Dragon Knight sat in her pile of books full of research material and Yuven's tight, concise scrawl upon little notes serving as bookmarks. If she read anymore, her head would explode with all the information Yuven, and by extension, the Elder Conclave expected her to know though they sent no word of wanting to see her demonstration. Her fireward proved a dwindling flame of protection she failed to put between Yuven and Fenrer. Words thrown. Blight. Plague. Bringer of destruction and ruin. The hard metal thunk of a headsman's axe on the words of a king.

It fluttered off her fingertips with the fiery horde, under crushing pressure.

Gods, Yuven... you could've at least tried to go after him. What's happening to you two?

Candelabra sputtered with the whisper of sorrow in the spring and blocked her voice from reaching Yuven's feathered head. It echoed through the corridor but moved nowhere but someone else's ears. Shadows darkened the metal pin hanging off his braid as Fenrer held the magick's silence with a crease to his brow when Yuven failed to shut up for once in his life. Broken apart, Yuven's fury died into terrified realization, the damage done when the white-haired Avaerilian faced the person who carried the other piece of his soul.

Fenrer turned on his heel and walked away.

No, he didn't walk away. He ran.

In the Annex, all alone without either of the two to take up the other empty chairs, she sat in hers and drifted off at the quiet without Yuven's complaints and Fenrer's gentle teasing of his Oathbound. In the haze, Yuven smiled at him and threw back his own with a curl to his lips. Her fingers pressed against the oak table as she tried to rip them back to her side.

Fenrer's usual spot by the sunlit window remained empty for the past days with Neven Lotayrin not yet recovered in the Infirmary. I can't concentrate. Frustration curled the air when she swiped it and all the books slammed closed at once with dusty force to sprinkle it into the golden streams within the glass full of stories, of heroes who wielded crescent blades against the apocalyptic threat while everyone around them jeered and avoided their presence as if they were worse than a plague. Magick rose off her fingertips as the crowd called for her head, but she let it die before hauling herself out of her chair.

Dreary clouds hung over the western wing with their return as she followed her daily path and abandoned the books. Birds chirped in the courtyard outside the Aurus quarter, but she slowed to a stop at several hard knocks against wood. As she turned the corner, a familiar, melodic voice said, "Molvisaliz, I know you're in there! You do this every time! You flee from your problems instead of confronting them." Yuven folded his arms and his feathers puffed out when he tapped his foot against the stone citadel floor. His haughty position died in an instant within the next silent minute. "Molvisaliz... d'lom yushva roxho!" He threw his fist into the door once more. "U'lo kin joa!"

"Classy, Yuven," Adara said and he swung in alertness, throwing up the haughty shield once more. "Yelling at him in Navei will surely work."

"You're the one who yelled at me to do something. I am now doing something." Yuven snubbed her and punched the door again with a throaty hiss, but all the energy left his body when he pressed his palm against the wood he slammed on Fenrer's face. "I don't know what you want from me, Adara. It is not as if I am completely without reason." He faced her instead with a shake to his knees. "That law exists for a reason — not that it stops people from finding loopholes for self-serving means."

"So obviously, the best course of action was to put what someone else did to you on Fenrer too... for the sole reason being that he is what he is? Just because Blackwall hurt you doesn't mean all Aurus are out to hurt people you love." Adara threw back at him, and Yuven drew up his shoulders with a misty huff. "Have you ever listened to yourself before or was this the first time you started hearing what was coming out of your mouth that you're still saying anyway?"

Yuven threw his hands against his temples with a quick, chittered squeak as he bumped them into his feathers. He traced his own jawline as he shook his head with a weak shrug. "Hard to apologise when he traps himself in his room, and I'm not about to say sorry with a door between us," he said with a low growl. "Won't even leave it for Neven, will he?" He punched the door again, a rattle slipping past his lips as he breathed hard. "Can you just... say something to me, Molvi? Something to tell me that you're still alive in there? All Neven does is worry about you when he is awake."

Gods, you're so confused.

Adara choked when Fenrer spoke in Hanekan from the other side, "Haliie zu fortalle dei?"

Yuven drew back at the question she barely understood, her Hanekan yet lackluster. "Nexdol," he replied back in careful Navei. "Molvisaliz, d'lo—"

"Da vekkna, Yuven..." Fenrer took in a sharp breath.

"What-" Adara jolted when Yuven slipped his fangs over his lips and stomped away, and she followed. "You're giving up already? He hasn't spoken for days and you finally get him to talk—" Her chest went straight into Yuven's hand as he pressed his fingers into her collarbone to stop her approach. "What?"

"I thought you've been studying Hanekan."

"Hard to study when you two are like this," she hissed. "You're supposed to be helping me, did you forget that? If the Elder Conclave calls upon me, what are you going to do? Are you and Fenrer going to leave me to deal with it myself?" Her heart crunched. "You two were there for me before at the tower. You both stood up for me in your own way."

"I can't help you anymore, and the Elder Conclave hasn't sent anything and if they do the Warden-Commander will give you an escort — it just won't be me," Yuven said with a huff. "You want to know what he said? He asked me if I had told Neven, and when I said no." His voice came out strangled. "He just told me to leave, he wants to be alone, Adara. Satisfied? I can't apologise to someone who doesn't want to hear it." He let her go and wound into shadows out of the western halls with an elongated hiss until it disappeared in full.

I'm not. Adara rushed back to his door. "Fen... he's gone." Wind chimes rang behind her in the courtyard with the weeping startree and the small statues dedicated to lies. "Look, I'm just as stubborn as he is and I'm not going to leave until you say something to me too. I want you to talk to me even if you won't talk to him. I'm not Yuven, I won't make excuses for what he said, I just wish you hadn't silenced me." Neither of you deserve this. "You haven't come out of your room in days. Look." Adara came closer to the door. "I get it, I do. Having people resent me for something I can't control or change," she insisted with a tap of her fingers against the door. "But shoving yourself in a hole and closing it behind you won't make you feel better. You'll just suffocate. So—" One breath, and she spoke out the song of the sea, "Talk to me."

A scuffle sounded on the other side. "Yeah?" the clear word came out in a Hanekan response in turn. "He's right, you know," it shifted into empty air.

"No, he isn't."

"He is. Aurus walk that fine line of knowledge, of the world we see in so many colours... and more often than not we take that leap because how could we not?" Fenrer asked on the other side. "Maybe it's out of good intentions for some, but that doesn't change anything or the damage we can do just by stepping over that line. We're reminded of that everyday — or else I wouldn't have to wear a band for it."

"That's not right either. You didn't choose to be an Aurus. Was it not something that just... developed?"

"It's been like this for hundreds of Turns for Aurus," he said with another scuffle. "And... if I had a choice? I wouldn't be." In an instant, a whisper of vines blocked all the creases in the door, but she cut off the routes with silver lilyblooms. "Adara, I want—"

"Can I just see you for a minute?" she whispered.

The vines died with his sigh and released the door of his torment. Out of the way, she listened to the movement on the other side as it hushed open as Fenrer pushed it with his shoulder with his hands fixing the Auric Blinder, clipping it from the back, shaped into a visage of a wolf as he let it go and kept his arms folded into his loose-fitting gray shirt, his misery palpable on her chest every time he breathed. He leaned against the doorframe, hair disheveled and flyaway

"Can you even see me with that on?"

"I can see you just fine, the fabric is woven to block Aurus magick and filters out auras," he said with a small wave of his hand under his arm. "I just don't want a head-ache."

I can't see you, though. Footsteps tested, she came closer, to which he followed with unseen eyes until she bridged the gap with but a few inches left between them. "Tonight, or even tomorrow night, meet me in that grove you showed me... and don't wear that." She flicked his brow, and he remained a statue when her fingers drifted over his cheeks. "Just to get you out of that room and into fresh air." Around his shoulder, she chewed on her lip at the haphazard papers over his desk and his bedsheets tangled up in bunches. "I'll bring something to eat too. We don't have to talk, I'll be studying more glyphs because I don't want the Elder Conclave to... do whatever they do to Anima they're threatened by." I just want you nearby.

In the Annex, with their banter and laughter to fill her ears from her perpetual loneliness of the wilted rose lodged into the chambers of her heart. It tingled her lips, but she wrapped her arms around his middle instead and listened to his exhausted heartbeat with her tucked into his shoulder. He responded in kind, holding her tight. Her gaze trailed to the soot in his fireplace and the melted candles underneath the small statues to the deities he believed in. "I need to talk to you once... once this is figured out," she whispered as she brushed her hand through his thick, dark brown waves. "Get some rest. Give yourself time."

"Very well," he mumbled with dispassionate fervor when he retracted himself from her. He waited for her to step back to close the door once more, the runelock glittering greens before sliding into place with the vines, but she found her hand locked on the knob.

"Fenrer," she spoke out the power in his name, then glided into his language. "I love you."

"I love you, too," he mumbled on the other side, and she let the door go, though her knees bent to kick it down instead. "Enjoy the rest of your day... I'll be there tonight if that is your wish." His footsteps paced a circuit before falling quiet, and she dug her teeth into her lips. Incomplete in the steps as she followed Yuven and Fenrer through the unknown with the desolation she left behind in Prunal.

Heart left in pain, she walked away from his door and tucked herself into her red shawl for comfort and love. Her fingers hooked into it, but she found herself without tears as she listened to Fenrer cry on the other side when he thought no one was around to listen in days gone by.