The Ritual of Blood and Bone

Chapter Thirty-Six

Seraphina and Nysa lie on Seraphina's bed, staring at the ceiling.

Seraphina lets out a long sigh and turns to face Nysa. Her eyes are heavy, but sleep evades her after the 'dream' she just had, despite Nysa's comforting presence. Cora and Ari have yet to return to their room. Seraphina feels grateful for that. She's too exhausted to have to explain and lie about the weirdness going on with her. 

Seraphina shuts her eyes. Immediately, she is bombarded with images of the forest. She snaps them open, her heart racing in her chest.

"Fuck," she mutters.

"What?" Nysa asks.

Seraphina clenches her fists and bites at her lip.

"Everyone keeps telling me to grow a backbone," she snaps, "to stop being pathetic and timid. Nathanial especially. But I can't just turn it off."

Nysa sighs and purses her lips, ready to talk. Seraphina speaks before Nysa can.

"All my life, it has been me and Calla in those woods. Before the day the general found me, I had never met anyone else - well, with the exception of the rider a few days prior. But that's a whole other story. What I'm trying to say, is I've gone twenty-three years of my life knowing only one person and never venturing further than ten miles away from my home.  Then, suddenly, I'm being whisked away into a society that I've never been a part of and that I've only ever learned about through books and second-hand retellings from Calla. In the space of what, two months? I discover a member of my family who Calla has spent my whole life warning me against, I fight in a deadly colosseum against monsters whilst all of Ethereal high society judge me, with powers I barely understand! Then, I finally arrive at this place, where I have to worry about politics and bullying and I'm expected to react with no fear, despite, may I remind you, having grown up in completely solitary. To make matters worse, I get followed by shadows, I hear strange whispers in my head, I'm magically bombarded and threatened by Nathanial, and then somehow magically transported into a forest so dangerous that no Ethereal or Basilisk rider would even step foot into it. Yet, somehow, despite all of this, I'm expected to react as though none of this terrifies me and that my fear is somehow unfounded. Fuck that. This is all fucking terrifying. I'm not some badass, emotionless warrior. I'm a twenty-three-year-old woman whose whole life has been flipped upside down and who has what feels like the weight of the world on her shoulders. My reactions, my fear, my 'meakness' as Nathanial likes to put it, is a perfectly reasonable response to the hand I've been dealt."

By the time she's finished her rant, Seraphina is breathless, and shaking with anger. Nysa just nods her head. Then, she reaches out and touches Seraphina's shoulder.

"You're right. You have every right to be scared, no, terrified after everything that's happened. Trust me, I know how it feels. I lived my whole life shielded from this wicked society, away in the wilderness. I know how it feels to be thrown into a completely new world. But at least I had my tribe's people. It wasn't just me and one other person. I also grew up with the threat of monsters, so none of this strange magic surrounding you feels new to me. In fact, it is the most familiar part about this academy." She chuckles humourlessly and shakes her head. 

Seraphina swallows a lump in her throat, not sure how she's feeling. Relieved at someone finally validating her emotions, angry at everything that's happened, missing Calla. Tears sting her eyes and she looks back up at the ceiling.

"Seraphina," Nysa says, her voice soft. "you've got to understand, in some ways, Nathanial is right."

Seraphina closes her eyes and gulps, her jaw clenching tightly.

"You can't be weak, or scared here. It will get you killed. It would be nice if we lived in a world where we were allowed to show our fear and our weaknesses. But we don't."