To Learn To Fall (Sequel to the Other Side)

Chapter Eighteen

"Nothing."

"Mmhmm. Oh, guess what!"

"What?"

"I have to go back to Avionerra soon."

"Yeah, you said."

He gave me a strange look but didn't question it. "There are a few things I'd rather do than go home, but my mother is being very pushy."

"Are you going to see if you're going to be the next lord? Through the tree?" I asked, to which he nodded slowly. I could sense his discomfort with the idea, so promptly dropped it.

I was expecting us to stop outside of Thomas's bedroom, but we passed right by it and headed towards the end of the hall. Thomas's grip on my hand had tightened, and his jaw had set. This only added to the recent anxiety and the constant dejection he had only recently started to display.

"Thomas? Is everything okay?" Something was going to happen, wasn't it? Something bad. I had to stop it.

He didn't respond. We stopped right at the end of the hall, and his head lowered for a second. Hanging against the wall was a painting depicting some scene of a forest with a plethora of birds. Thomas raised his hand, his fingers hovering over one of the blue ones sitting in a pine tree. He looked over at me, and I smiled in return. Any trepidation he experienced quickly fled as he matched my smile and touched the bird.

A door opened, revealing an incredibly promising—and borderline scary—hallway cloaked in shadows.

"Woah," I said. "That's really cool. I didn't know you could do that."

"Yeah, well. I have a thing for being dramatic, right?" He nodded to the doorway, his other hand curling up into a fist. "After you. It, uh, it closes after I walk through."

The nerves that were so obviously plaguing him slowly spread to me, but I swallowed them down and stepped through. I couldn't make out anything ahead in front of me, and a dawning panic rose into my chest. I held out my hands, and when each one brushed a wall without having to fully extend, my breathing only spiraled out of control.

"Alexander?" Thomas asked slowly. When I turned to look back at him, the door was closing behind him and leaving nothing but a fine coat of darkness. I felt the warm brush of his hand against mine, and I clung to him like a child to a life preserver as the ocean tried to pull them away. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, yeah. I'm good."

"You don't sound good."

"I just...I don't really appreciate the tight hallways, you know? Too cramped." I laughed, and, in a desperate attempt to seek humor, added, "But I'm not the one who has wings, so."

Thomas didn't find it funny. "Take the cuff off of me."

"I can't—"

He didn't so much as falter. "Please?"

It was the please that got to me. I undid the clasp of the cuff, and the sound of the metal hit the floor. "I thought you could take it off yourself?"

"I can." He offered no other response or explanation. A light appeared in the palm of his hand, bright enough so that I could see where I was walked towards. The walls seemed to pull themselves away from me, and I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a little relieving.

"Thank you," I breathed, making a note to study those two spells, particularly the one with the walls. "Now, what do you have to show me?"

"You'll see," he said quietly.

"I'm starting to get worried. You aren't going to murder me, are you?"

He playfully frowned as if he was considering it. "So what if I am?"