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He was meant to be my shadow, and he certainly looked it, all dark and foreboding as he was.
I had never seen his face, so I could only assume he was dark and brooding underneath, too. Possibly with scars or some other malady that required him to be covered.
I often wondered about it and had even asked about it a few times. But it wasn’t like he could give me an answer; he just clicked his tongue and stood straighter.
He couldn't talk, so that’s how most of our conversations had gone since the day he was brought to me days after my Catalyst was found dead. The day my magic died. Since the day I became nothing more than a liability to my family.
The Boy, the guard for the weak, magicless Princess, grew with me, so I knew he was about my age. Although he had surpassed me in height more than two years ago. His broad shoulders and low bark of a growl that sometimes pierced that veil told me he was a male. But other than that, I knew nothing about him. Everyone just called him “Boy.” The Boy, the princesses Boy, Boy.
“I can finally see a ‘first day,’” I sighed, placing my hand on the metal latch of the door. A second later, a leather glove curled around my fingers, a low growl of an exhale in my ear.
I turned to him, and he stepped back, his hand falling from mine.
“Don’t give me that look,” I teased, even though I couldn’t see his face. “You know I’ve wanted to see this. Now I finally can. We finally can.”
I turned back toward the door, and he took another step toward me.
“Stay here if you don’t want to come,” I said, lifting the latch on the door before turning to him and giving him my widest grin. “But I know you do. You love this as much as I do.”
I could have sworn he smiled as he shifted his feet.
“I knew you’d come around.” I grabbed his hand, pulling him out onto the high walkway with me before we both dropped to our hands and knees and he carefully closed the door behind us.
“Not like you’d ever miss a chance to come out here.” I poked him in the shoulder before we crawled our way over the long, high walkways to the turret that sat in the middle of the courtyard.
The old stone was dirty and forgotten save for a path of clean, smooth stone that was that way purely thanks to the fact that he and I crawled over this space at least twice a week. Even with that, a gritty combination of dirt and dust plumed as I shifted my arm, the musty scent of a forgotten war pluming around me.
I wasn’t supposed to be out there, and the Boy knew it, hence the show of trying to stop me. It was his job to keep me safe, but we both knew there was nothing dangerous out there, just things I was not supposed to see.
Forbidden magic.
“Besides, if you missed this what would we work on tonight?” I looked back at him, pretending he was rolling his eyes or saying something snarky. The way he knocked his head toward me and then gestured that he would beat me was snarky enough, even without words.
“You only beat me because you have real training.” Not the training where I imitate the things I see them do in the courtyard late at night when we were supposed to be sleeping.
It barely counted, but it still counted. I had no interest in being some wilting flower of an invalid princess and following Mother’s rules, no matter how hard she tried to make them stick.
No matter how much she wanted me to be the weak, dying princess she thought of me as it wasn’t going to work. It was all bull anyway. I wasn’t weak. Not having magic didn’t make me weak. It just didn’t make me what she wanted me to be.
“Over here,” I hissed as we reached the turret and the wide walkway that circled it.
The wooden stands that used to hold arrows and swords had long since rotted and fallen apart, leaving pieces that were still anchored against the stonework in a skeletal reminder of an ancient war. The notched wall on the outside was crumbling as bad as the wood, so it was even more imperative that I moved carefully. I had once sent a large piece of stone down to the courtyard and almost crushed a Catalyst. I couldn’t have a repeat, not on a day like today.
I crawled the last few feet to the far side of the turret, the overlook for the space of the courtyard that usually held the youngest of the trainees, the Tyro, that were brought to the castle to live each year.
Careful to keep myself hidden, I peered over the wall to the huddles of children far below, all of them paired off as they stood waiting. One of each pair was dressed in their nicest wear, the others in long red cloaks and scarlet tunics they tugged at uncomfortably. They couldn’t have seen more than ten years, even though some of the pairs were clearly younger than that. Each pairing moved together like one, hands clasped together as they waited for their class to begin. Their first class. I knew what they were, even if the red uniform of the lesser gave them away.
A Requisite and a Catalyst.
At the end of the Black War, when the Goddess ended the Fae, magic had been split into pieces. It was The Fae’s last attack against us. Now, as the descendants of the Lynar, if we were to wield the magic that used to be so plentiful in our kind, we needed to join the two halves of that magic together.
The Requisite, the person who wields the magic, and a Catalyst, the one who ignites it. Both were required for magic to work, and each pairing was unique and could never be replaced. If a Requisite lost their Catalyst, or a Catalyst their Requisite, they were… Well, they became me.
A Dri.
Magicless.
If Mother had her way, useless and hidden away.
