•|•|•
I have stared at stars, I have prayed to gods, near and far of all circles. But even they have turned a deaf ear.
•|•|•

[SHADE SHADOWS]

Liston, the guard keen on getting me into trouble, stands before me. Though his face is visibly calm as one would expect of a guard, there is a warm glimmer in his eyes, and his lips tug upwards, dimming slightly when a set of Guards matches passed.

I turn from him, taking  sharp breath in before closing the crimson door behind me and I feel his eyes follow my every movement.

When I turn around, I catch his gaze resting on the red door before snappjnv back to me, and he opens his mouth to say something but a voice interrupts his speech.

"I'll take her from here."

My gaze lands on Madam Catherine as she walks firmly towards me.

For a moment, Liston seems hesitant but he steps aside, a short bow before the madam.

His gaze strays to me one more time, a tightness in his jaw, before taking his leave.

I watch his figure disappear in the hallways and I am in many ways relieved but Madam Catherines' stare returns my heart to its rampant best.

I also bow, "Madam."

Her gaze follows me then shifts to the crimson door, her lips a tight press.

She says nothing and turns, and I follow quietly behind her.

The torches flicker in the hallway and our footsteps echo against the stone. I watch her, my hands gripping the cloth above my stomach tightly, for within the folds I have hidden a stolen no—borrowed journal of an old King.

"Does he speak to you?" she suddenly asks. Her tone is stiff and strangely low.

My eyebrows arch at this.  He? Who?

"The Master. Masters,"  she corrects, and I hear her take a sharp breath in, "Do they speak to you, Child?"

I notice that her words are quieter, a low whisper, and her head turns slightly as if waiting for a response even though she doesn't directly look at me.

"One Master," I clear my throat, glancing at her frame momentarily, "I have only seen one.." I respond, a crease on my forehead.

What is this about?

Have I done something wrong?

Has she found out that I have disobeyed her warnings? That I bravely hold conversations with a master and look him in the eye, and my mind has envisioned him even in my dreams—

I press my lips at that thought, ridiculing myself for my irrationality.

Of course, the Madam does not know my dreams.

I, myself have told myself to hurry those images. And the thoughts that accompany it.

She turns around mid-way and I almost run into her at her abrupt stop, but I manage to stop in time, a hand across my ribs to keep the book from falling, my heart a nervous mess.

I hope she does not pay too much attention to it.

"And," She pauses, her eyes search mine, "Has this master spoken to you?" she grits, her eyes dashing behind me for a moment, before locking in my gaze.

I swallow dryly.

The Master and I agreed that no one was to know of our friendship. And I was certain Madam Catherine would frown upon anything of the sort.

No, She will do much more than frown.

I am at a crossroads, and I hesitate.

Madam has got eyes that remind me of AMA. AMA's eyes know when I lie.

Madam Catherines' eyes are older and wiser and still, familiar.

I shake my head slowly, "He has spoken once..." I begin, "To ask my name, that is all," I quickly ramble "and how it is a Keffer comes to be in the Night Court. After, all he does is read, and watch me while I work. He ensures that I clean well," I reply.

Her eyes study my face, and a moment wastes.

I hold a breath in when she suddenly takes a step forward so we are close. Her voice is a whisper against my ear, her breath is cool as she leans down to speak.

"Do not be so quick to trust. Has Austria taught you nothing? Look with your eyes, Child. "

I freeze at her words, my eyes blurring for a moment at the mention of AMA's name.

I can not even form words to ask, I am too bewildered. There is no time to speak as the clank of metal is heard again and the guards round the corner.

Madam steps away and I watch as she walks off.

My heart is thundering. And the hairs on my body rise as a shiver rocks my spine.

The guards approach and I return to normal, quickly following after her.

----------------------

Barnabas takes a swing of his beer as we watch the fires and sweat drips off our brows.

My mind replays Madam Catherine's words. She knows of AMA. How?

My eyebrows draw together. She knows AMA somehow. Her words tell me she knows AMA well.

Is this the reason Vale and I were spared?

Is this the reason why she warns me, always of something that seems to Elude me?

Do not be quick to trust.

Does she know about the Master? Did she see the lie in my eyes? Or does she speak generally for all Masters?

She can not possibly know which master watches me, Can she? Or perhaps she has observed him enter the Library.

He is the only Master I've ever seen, it can not be difficult.

But- the Master I know is— well....

I watch the flames crackle, thinking of him.

He is certainly brass and pointed. Whilst I feel there is something he hides from me and some things he does not speak of, he does not strike me as dangerous enough to be feared.

He has told me of his childhood, and why he is misunderstood by the others. Perhaps that is why no other master ever dares venture in the Library. Do they hate him that much? And he is not in the library always, they must need the books to study, and yet, they never come.

And Madam Catherine does not speak of Fear. She speaks of trust.

She asks me to Look. To look with my eyes.

The Master does hide something in his eyes. That I am certain. But is it so wicked that even Madam Catherine warns me?

"Are you to escape soon?" a voice mumbles.

My gaze flashes to Barnabas. The image of the fire reflects in his eyes when he looks at me, "You appear to be in deep thought. Conjuring ways to implement your escape?" he asks.

My hand restsover my belly, feeling the edges of the book beneath my clothes. It has been hard to hide it whilst I throw coal into the furnace, but I have kept it well hidden.

"I told you, I have no such plans," I huff,gaze returning to the furnace.

He grunts at this, "And I am a blind man who works near the fire," he scoffs.

I purse my lips, my gaze floating to Barnabas. I still do not trust him, I only trust my sister within these walls.

My thoughts flash to the Master.

Trust.

I think of his abrupt leave. The look in his eyes.

I glance at Barnabas, "You have been here for years, haven't you?"

He sighs, sitting forward, "I have been here long enough to know that tomorrow will be a dark day," he scoffs.

"How?" I chuckle, lThe week has been nothing but good so far. The sub has been bright."

"And that is why it will be bad for longer," he grunts.

He lays back, and finally looks at me, "That is the thing about this place," his eyes shift to the space around us, "Happiness is fucking illusion, a stupid myth. Nothing is ever as it seems."

My eyebrows draw in at his statement, and my throat grows dry. My hand rests over the book, and I turn to him, watching as his eyes close and the fire crackles.

"Have you seen the masters in this court?" I ask.

He hums, "'Masters are always busy. If they are not studying wretchedly, for fear of the Night Wolfs' wrath, or tending to matters of court, then they are only asleep," his head rolls to me, "It is the only alternative." he grins.

"And they study... In the library?" I ask quietly.

He lets out what sounds like an irritated breath, "Where else?" he mocks, "What sort of questions are these?"

I nod along, my eyes narrowing at nothing in particular as I think, "I ask only because I am tasked to clean the library, but even after all this time, I have yet to see the masters. I think I am just curious. I thought they would be many."

"They are many," he huffs. Then his gaze suddenly flashes open, and his eyes meet mine, "You clean the library?" he echoes.

My body grows stiff from the look in his eyes, and I nod.

A breath is trapped against my lip, "Yes.." I find myself whispering for some reason.

His eyebrows arch, studying me for seconds too long.

He then shrugs with a short chuckle, and then he turns and stares at the roof, tucking his arms beneath his head, as he rests.

"I would think Madam Catherine would hide you, not thrust you amid Masters who do not care to be in the presence of a slave, talk less a keffer," he states, more to himself than to me.

It is not that I've never thought it strange.

But Madam Catherine has brought me this far, she would not try to simply kill me, not whilst giving cryptic warnings. And now that I know she has certain connection to AMA.

"And you say they have not seen you or sensed you yet?" he asks, eyes still closed, "You do realize you are not easy to miss."

I understand what he means.

I stand out like a sore thumb. It is everything I am. My appearance and my scent.

"Count yourself lucky then," he pauses and his eyes open, and he seems to ponder something intensely, "You are different, Shade. Despite what you are, You defy all odds and remain lucky," he humsthus, "it is remarkable and strange."

I pause for a moment because I am not sure if I hear right. That Barnabas compliments me.

It makes me smile for a moment, but I catch myself, shaking my head quickly to return to the conversation.

"I guess it is more that I haven't seen them as opposed to them seeing me. Not many at least." I add, then quickly ramble because for some reason I feel I must protect Madam Catherine, "And Madam did warn me to stay in the shadows. She said if I am quiet, they would not mind."

He scoffs at this, "Mind? Masters believe themselves to be Alpha's. They believe they are better than many because they were chosen to work for the Night Court. I am painfully familiar with how they treat servants,"

He turns showing me the other side of his face and pushes a bunch of his mangled hair to reveal his ear, and for the first time, I realize, that Barnabas has a stump where his other ear should have been.

"That is from a slate thrown whilst I tarried to fix a table for Master Paul," he scoffs taking another swig of his beer, pushing his hair back into place, "and it is better than the way they treat Slaves," he glances at me, "I do not think hiding makes a difference. It is certainly luck of the highest kind that you continue to clean the Master's Archives, with breath still in your lungs."

My heart pounds softly within me.

Barnabas lays back and shuts his eyes, "Unless you only work on a Dark day, and keep to the shadows out of the light of torches, you must know that even the tone of your skin, Shade can not hide you from the light that strays through the windows when the Sun is high and mighty."

I purse my lips at this.

For a moment I am glad that I have not met any other Master for whatever reason. I guess I should think of them as vile beings. Isolating the master simply because the Night Wolf shows him more favor than others.

My fingers tremble slightly and I lean backward, "Then I thank Selene the Library is always dark regardless of whether it is a dark day or not, and the window is so high," I breathe.

Barnabas chuckles, "Dark? Are you blind keffer? With over a dozen windows?" he sighs, "Sadly, the masters know they need to breathe if they should stand to be in each other's presence or risk suffocating beneath their own egos.," His head rolls back, "I have never seen a place so fucking bright."

I stare at the side of his face for a moment.

I am Frozen for a thought hits me.

There is only one window in the Library.

-------------------------------------------

My fingers quietly sift through the pages of the old Kings' journal, Xiirian Adonis Prime, The 8th Night Wolf.

The sound of the slight brushes of pages and my small breaths are drowned by the snores of the other slaves that are already fast asleep, against the silence of midnight.

It is well into the night, but I can not sleep. Not when Night Wolf's words seem to bleed through the pages.

He lived a life more cruel than I ever imagined.

His grief. His loneliness.

I thought it was parallel to mine, but is far different. It is deeper and vast.

When Xirrian writes, his words call to me.

For a moment it feels as if he lays beside me and whispers it to my very heart, and my heart responds with a shallow beat of the farthest loneliness, one that it remembers even after all my attempts to bury it alive in the deepest pits of my mind.

I thought by now I had been over this feeling. That I had buried it so deep within me, it did not dare to wake anymore, but his words remind me and reignite the sadness hidden inside.

The feeling of wanting to be loved, and loved exclusively by someone, with all their breath, with all their soul.

To simply utter their name and even others can recognise the immediate radiance that brightens your face.

As AMA does when she tells stories of Beta Samuel, or as I have seen when hiding behind trees in my old forest and I catch the laughter of mated couples seeking exclusion from the world in.

I stare at the old paper, and though the cold wind through the one window breezes in the chamber, it is not as chilling as the feeling that i find myselg emerged in.

And the world is not as dark as it had been for Xirrian Adonis Prime.

I emerge myself in his words.

                                                     ***

"I have cried to the moon who despises me. I beg for her mercy. Yes, beg, for I will fall on my very knees if that means that I can have her by my side.

I will kiss the ground, I will sink in mud, I will shave my head, rip my flesh off my bones, and starve if she says it is the price. That is the depth of my longing. That is the breadth of the chasm that has split my heart in two.

I pray thee, give me but a sign Selene. Reignite my hope, so that I may live again."

                                                  ***

The pages that I flip through, one after the other, have nothing but months that change to years and decades of sorrow.

My fingers trail along lines that have been canceled in deep black crosses, or paragraphs that have been blotched by ink, and the jagged edges of pages torn from the book.

I realized it was because he could not bring himself to read through his thoughts any more. That it caused him so much agony and distress he tore pages, as if some thoughts were too personal to even even read, even if it was only his eyes that saw them.

As pages flipped by and his sorrow grew, I started feel hollow and empty inside, a mirror of he descrives himself. My gaze shifta upward at the dates and I realize that sometimes the King fell into such dark despair that he did write an entry for months.

I know lonely. It has been a friend and a confidant in my life. He is closest companion.

I am not familiar with romantic love, she has been a stranger all my life.

But I am familiar with longing, and although we have talked, I have learned to avoid her.

For there is also hope, and she assures me there lies fulfillment beyond the borders of Valcane. In the arms of a human man who will not care about wolves and scents and bonds designed by gods.

If there should exist a glow for Keffer. Then it is this.

But Xirrian? Loneliness and longing are conjoined to him. And though he begs for hope, silence is what responds.

And silence is cruel.

She gives him a fate crueler than even mine.

No hope, only despair.

Tears fill my eyes and I quickly peruse through the pages trying to find relief, that perhaps his longing came to an end, in someway, or somehoew but pages flip by and by and the dates tell me 10 years have passed by and his heart has only grown colder and darker.

I shut the book and lie on my back, staring into shadows as tears trail freely down my face.

I do not know why I am crying.

It is not my life and yet it is.

The Master told me of Criston the Cruel. He too was cursed without a mate.

I did not understand truly why he cursed the world into an EverNight, but if he endured forty years of this cruelty, perhaps there is more to him than what the books say.

I remember the images the master showed me. The loneliness in his eyes and more tears fall, and I weep as if the heart tgat is broken is mine, quietly into the shadows.

And when my eyes refuse to cry, they close and darkness consumes me.

•|•|•

I hope you enjoyed the update! Please leave a    comment and vote. The next chapter is available on Patreon!

I will soon be sharing more pages off of Xirrians notebook on my discord in the spoiler channel. If you would like to read, all links are in my bio. Note: It is just a fun addition if you would like to read pages out of Xirrians journal, not reading it won't take anything out of the story.

•|•|•