Page 9 of Keldori By Daybreak

He was annoying me more than usual, which was honestly impressive as he usually annoyed me quite a bit. Maybe it was the fact that he got access to my head while I wasn’t allowed to know something as simple as his full name.

“What is she talking about?” The fire Sabrina played with in her hands matched the glow of her eyes. She had a cowl like Ciarán’s, and freckles played across her nose just above its hem.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s a nocturmancy thing,” Ciarán assured her, and I swiveled to glare at him.

“How intimate.” Sabrina’s orange light burst in my periphery.

Magick and Skal buzzed in my hands, begging to be let loose. I tried to imagine the strapped handle of a shield forming in my grip, and blue light expanded around my expectant fists before solidifying into yet another flail.

I swung it at Sabrina’s attack, and her Magick collided with mine. Heat seared across my face and chest, and the ice welcomed me back into its frigid embrace while the stars and two moons spun overhead.

“Sabrina.” Ciarán’s warning needled me in a way I didn’t expect.

“Tree,” I growled at him in my head. “It is an order this time.”

He snickered as he turned to face the bark.

“What’re you—” Sabrina started.

“It’s a nocturmancy thing.” I parroted Ciarán’s words back at her and struggled to my feet. I tore Orla’s goggles from my face to welcome the cool mountain air against my eyelids.

“We’re not finished,” Sabrina said.

“I can’t concentrate with them on.” It was a flimsy excuse. I had never worn goggles as a Nightmare, and even then hadn’t been any good at creating anything other than flails.

“Your retinas will burn without them,” Orla reminded me. Frost clung to her short hair, and she pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders.

“And then what? I’ll end up looking like them?” I glared at Sabrina, who blinked her black and orange eyes back at me.

“No, you’ll go blind.” Sabrina deadpanned.

“Our eyes don’t look like this because we don’t wear goggles, Blue,” Ciarán said, still facing his tree. “They look like this so we don’t have to.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Permission to turn back around?”

“Fine.”

Snow crunched under his boots as he pivoted away from the tree. Even with his cowl on, the set of his brow told me he was smirking under the dark fabric. And his eyes—

My heart twisted.

His dark sclera had faded to white and the glowing orange of his irises were now a warm, honey brown.

They were Liam’s eyes.

“Goggles are inconvenient, and they break.” He strode forward to meet me in the clearing and took Orla’s cracked goggles from my hands. I stood rigid, holding his gaze, unable to look away from the eyes I’d known to be Liam’s. “So we use our Magick to construct tiny barriers inside our eyes. It protects our retinas and allows us to see better in the dark.”

Ciarán threw the goggles into the snow at Orla’s feet, then blinked, and the dark sclera and glowing irises returned.

“That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Skalmagick burns your retinas so you counter that by putting Skalmagick directly in your eyes?”

“Not all Skal constructs glow, Blue,” he chuckled. “You should know that better than anyone here. As a Nightmare, how often did you emit light?”

“Your eyes are literally glowing, so obviously this construct does glow.”

“That’s only part—”