She awakens to find that the Head Sentinel is gone. She sits up in his bed, blearily staring around the room, before tearing the blankets off her body and darting to the windows. She tries pulling open the shutters. They resist her, groaning at the force she exerts on them, but as he promised, they're locked tight. She goes to the doors next, banging upon them with her fists, screaming bloody murder. After, she presses her ear to the wood, hoping to hear footsteps or the sound of voices. Her heart sinks into her stomach when she hears nothing at all.
Malina backs away slowly. Her hands dig into her hair. She lets out a cry of frustration.
"Damn it!" she shouts. "Damn it, damn it, damn it!"
One of her hands goes to her left eye, covering it to see better with her right. She looks over the crisscrossing strings of the weave, zoning out the walls around her, the floors, and everything in between. Suddenly, everything beyond the glittering strings is an endless black void. Far in the distance, the strings twitch and overlap each other with the echoes of life, too far in the distance.
She backs up. Her legs hit the edge of the bed and she topples backwards, the breath flying out of her when she lands. The scent of pine needles erupts around her, stronger than she remembers from last night. Her hands search the sheets until she finds what she's looking for: the handkerchief the boy gave her, her blood staining it in shades of rust-brown, his initials embroidered in the corner.
"VJCH," she says to herself. "VJCH..."
She gets to her feet again, crossing over to the desk set in between the windows. It's made of what looks like mahogany, and sturdy enough that it doesn't shake when she pushes it. The top has been cleared, perfectly polished and shining in the morning light that streams in from the shutters. Malina yanks open the first drawer, wide and short. Pens rattle within, all the same kind and colours, black and gold. A stack of blank parchment scatters at the sudden movement.
Malina goes to the left side of the desk first, moving on. She pulls open each drawer, top to bottom. In one, she finds a map of the city folded up, covered with lines and boundaries that go over every single district. In another, she discovers a journal, though when she flips it open, rifling through the pages, all she finds is a pressed winter rose in the middle.
In the bottom drawer, Malina pulls out a picture of a pretty girl sitting on a wicker chair, long hair pulled up into a swirling updo, hands settled demurely upon her lap. Her smile tilts in a way that makes her seem like she has a secret. Beneath the picture is a handwritten note that Malina puts up to her nose. She quickly draws away from it; the strong scent of perfume clings to the paper. She settles for reading it instead, the letter dated a few months prior.
Dearest Valentine,
I trust that you are doing well in these cold winter months while out on patrol. I have enclosed to you a coat insulated with furs from the elusive Wilshorian fox, which will be sure to keep you warm even on the chilliest of mornings. Do be sure to pay me a visit whenever time permits. I miss you nearly too much to bear.
Truly and forever yours,
Rufina
Malina looks down at her left hand, where the handkerchief is crushed in her palm. VJCH. Then she glances back to the letter. Valentine.
"An odd name for an Edeiran," she mutters to herself.
She tosses the letter and the picture back into the bottom drawer and moves to the right. Drawer after drawer reveals nothing of note besides bound stacks of what look like reports on the daily happenings of the city. It isn't until she reaches the last drawer that she pauses. She digs her fingernails into the space between the drawer and the desk, pulling it free, and comes upon another picture.
It's wrinkled at the edges, the paper fraying away, white spots graining up the image. She recognizes the small boy in the image immediately as the young Head Sentinel, though it's hard to reconcile the child in the picture with the man that threatened her with death last night. The little boy's toothy grin awakens something in her, memories of a happy childhood she barely got to live. He's dressed- quite charmingly- in a sailor suit, dark hair loose and free about his face, shoes polished and shining. A hand rests lovingly on his shoulder, and Malina's gaze trails from that hand, up the arm connected to it, to a shoulder and a neck and then a face that's as beautiful as it is melancholy.
Pale hair hangs about her slim face, freckles dotting her skin in every place imaginable. The point of her chin is cutting, and though her smile is weary, it is genuine. Something about her eyes is familiar; when Malina looks back to the child's eyes, she finds that the shape of them is the same: narrow and watchful.
She turns the picture over. It's dated on the back as 7 agosto, 1886. Below that are two names written in looping script: Lady Freya Aveline Hanover, and then Don Valentine Julián de Casillis y Hanover.
Don. So, the young Head Sentinel is Edeiran nobility. Malina turns her nose up and snorts. No wonder he so carelessly tossed her his handkerchief last night. He probably had countless others at his disposal. Still, she takes another glance down at those names. Lady Freya Aveline Hanover. She swears she's heard that last name before. She sits back on her heels, and it comes to her like bubbles of sea foam rising to the surface of the ocean. In her lessons on the world with her uncle Paolo, he taught her of the Wilshorian royal family, House Hanover, its decline, and the oldest surviving heir, Tamsin, becoming an Edeiran queen.
She eyes the names with some interest. He's not just nobility, but some sort of foreign royalty too. The gods must've tapped him even before birth, knowing he would be someone of great importance.
With a sigh, she puts the picture back where she found it. As she sets it down in the drawer, her fingers brush against something cold. She reaches in further, grasping it, and pulls out the object.
It's a dagger sheathed in a hilt inlaid with real gold. Malina removes it from its sheath and gapes at the craftsmanship, marveling at the glint of the sharp blade, filed to an exquisite point. Where the dagger shines, however, it transitions into dull flecks of what look like rust at first glance. Malina runs her fingers over the rust- only for it to flake off without warning, parting from the blade with barely much resistance.
Blood. She's been familiar with it for years. She stares at the fine, red-brown powder on her fingers and wipes it away on her silken underclothes.
A click sounds from behind her. She springs up, dagger at the ready as one of the doors swings open. The Head Sentinel strides in- Don Valentine Julián de Casillis y Hanover- and Malina charges at him, dagger raised high in the air. She gets close enough to see his eyes narrow before he redirects her, spinning her around, knocking her into the door so hard that it slams behind her. He presses her back into the wood, gloved hands closing over her wrists, her skin tingling where he touches her.
"I guess I wasn't quick enough for you," she grits out.
He shakes his head. "Don't try that again."
His hand tightens around her right wrist, hard enough that her fingers spasm and the dagger falls from her grip.
"You went through my things to find a weapon." He looks down at the dagger that now lies by their feet. "Out of all things, you chose that."
"You keep this room hopelessly bare. What else would I have chosen?"
He stares her in the eyes. His gaze lingers a beat too long on her right one, drawn to that pool of quicksilver. "Nothing else would have been more fitting."
He lets her go, stooping to pick up the dagger, leaving himself unguarded. She thinks about bringing a fist down on the back of his pale neck, but the thought leaves her when he stands again, going to his desk and sitting down at his chair, holding the dagger in his hands.
Malina keeps close to the door. In his moment of distraction, he's forgotten to lock it. She reaches backward, slow enough that no normal person would ever suspect it-
"Don't," he murmurs, startling her. "If you go out there and wreak havoc, I'll have no choice but to execute you."
"How do you do that?" she demands. "You weren't looking at me at all!"
"You're telling me that you can't?"
She blushes under his scrutiny. "I didn't think anyone could."
"It's easy if you've been trained."
"The closest thing I've ever had to a teacher is-" She catches herself at the last second, frowning. "Never mind."
He nods and returns his attention to the dagger, holding it gently, turning it over in his hands. He avoids the blood crusted onto the blade for the most part, but when his fingers glance over it briefly, his takes in a quiet breath and his face hardens.
Questions eat away at her, bit by bit. What are you going to do with me? How long will you make me stay here? Who are you to keep me under lock and key? Why have the gods brought us together like this?
The more she looks at him, the more those questions melt away until she has but one left.
"Who's the woman in the picture?" she asks. "The one in the bottom right drawer?"
His grip on the dagger tightens. "My mother."
"Why were you keeping that blade in the same place?"
"Because," he whispers, "this is what killed her. This..." He bows his head. "This is all I have left of her."
Malina's lips part. She's sure that the sympathy she feels is nonsensical. This stupidly powerful boy chained her up. He's threatened her with her own death. She should laugh at his sorrow. She tries to force a giggle out of her throat, but it doesn't come.
She frowns at herself before saying, "I'm sorry."
He lifts his dark head, glowing eyes boring into her own. They're dry; expressionless.
"Why?" he asks.
She hesitates. He continues to stare, ever so patient, sitting still enough to make her believe he could wait for her answer forever.
"Because I lost my mother too," she explains. "I've been told I tore her up on my way out of her the day I was born. She died without even having held me. Sometimes I..." Malina looks to the side, squirming with discomfort at her own admission, at the simple thought that she even feels sorry for this boy at all.
"Sometimes you...?" he prompts, moving onto the edge of his seat like he's eager to hear more.
"Sometimes I'm sure that it was all my fault that she died." She shifts her weight from one foot to the other. "Most of the time, actually."
He continues to stare at her. "I feel that way too," he breathes. "What of your father?"
Malina's hands ball up into fists. "Why do you care?"
He lifts his shoulders in what's almost a shrug. "I'm just trying to figure you out."
"He's dead. Murdered, actually, by a madman. Are you happy now?"
The boy shakes his head. "No."
She takes a step towards him. "I could run right now."
"You could."
Another step. "I could make everyone in this building fall to their knees."
"I'm aware of your powers."
"I could force them all to attack you. Don't you realize that? I could have them kill you." She comes closer and closer still, standing over him. "You would be dead before you could even touch me."
He glances at her hands. His mouth twists, and she nearly misses it.
"I would catch you before you even got through that door," he tells her. "You're at an extreme disadvantage."
"You must be forgetting how fast I can run."
"And you must be forgetting that I can touch you. That we can touch each other." He's blinding her with his unblinking gaze. "I wouldn't flinch away. I could never hurt you."
She puts a hand up to her chest to stifle her pants. How didn't she realize she was breathing so heavily until now?
"What do you want with me?" she asks him forcefully.
"It's funny that you should ask me that."
"I don't see you laughing."
He looks at her like she has green antlers and four eyes. "I don't laugh at all. It's a figure of speech."
"Just answer me!" she snaps.
He stands, and now he's towering over her, massive and pale with eyes glowing like a full moon. They're as close as they were last night, barely a breath separating them.
"The gods don't bring people like us together by accident. There is always, always a reason. If they've given me a chance like this, I want to take it."
"What," Malina hisses, "are you talking about?"
"Please," he says, and out of all the things he's just said, this is what takes her aback the most- this big, hulking blanco boy pleading with a lowly girl like herself. "You... you have to know what living like this has been like. If I could at least have someone- anyone- that understands..."
Her brows furrow, because of course she understands. Of course she knows what living like he does has been like, because she has lived this way nearly every day of her life. The fear, the panic, the phobia of hands and a simple human touch, but more than anything, the longing that never subsides. The wish to be something less than what she is, at least for a day, and if not with the rest of the world, then at least with someone else who knows her pain.
She stares at him, and she swears the fibres of her, the strings of her, are being pulled towards this boy with his melancholy mouth and his silver epaulets and his gloved hands that say so much and yet so little. What do you want with me, she asked him. He was probably asking himself the same thing.
She stares at him, and they don't even have to say a word to each other. Everything is there, drifting in the silence.
Lower lip quivering, she brings up one of her hands, palm facing him. He gazes at her for only a moment before he pulls off one of his gloves, baring one of his pale hands for her to see. Slowly, slowly, slowly, that hand comes towards hers, heat flaring on her palm, until they touch and the both of them suck in a desperate gulp of air.
"My name is Valentine," he tells her, and she knows his name, she knows it, but hearing him say it to her like a secret he's told no one else makes her heart skip a beat.
Her eyes water. Her knees shake. She's staring at him, and the more she stares, she sees those same canid features she noticed last night: the triangular jaw, the piercing eyes that tilt up the slightest bit at the outer corners, his full brow ridge and dark head of hair.
Beware the wolf, says lola Diwa once again, brandishing that pot lid with the wolf made of black ashes imprinted upon it. Her ears are filled with the sound of the old woman's joints popping, her lungs inhaling the stale scent of Diwa's breath, her eyes flitting back and forth over the wrinkles and the spots that covered her great-grandmother's brown skin. Aren't you listening to me, my little eagle girl?
Her hand spasms against Valentine's, and in response, he tentatively threads his fingers through hers, clasping their palms together.
"My name is..." She shakes her head, trying to clear it, but the dread remains. She speaks before she can rein in her own mouth, her whole body pulling taut like she is the one being controlled for the first time. "My name is Malina."
A chorus of voices whisper it over and over again in her ears- beware the wolf, beware the wolf, beware the wolf- and Valentine doesn't hear it at all. His hand grasps hers firmer, unwilling to let go, echoing her name with the velvet of his voice.
"Malina."