Steel Flight [Completed]

Chapter 45: Shadow

~Skai

I backed up against the door, mouth half open in a silent scream. No. The magician couldn't be here. Not now! I swallowed, pulling myself together, and held out the canteen of Flight with a trembling hand.

"We retrieved it for you."

The magician smiled wickedly. "You did, didn't you?"

I slowly lowered the flask when it became obvious he wasn't going to take it.

"What more do you want of me?" I whispered, though in my leaden heart I knew the answer.

"What indeed?" He clasped his hands behind his back and began to pace. "Yes. What indeed?"

I raised my eyebrows, waiting.

"I tried to take it from you once," he said with a sly sideward glance.

"What?"

"Months ago. Back before anyone had found you, despite our combing this city five times over. You had just. . . disappeared.

"That day I was sitting on a curb, waiting. I knew I would be the one to find you and take back my father's crowning accomplishment."

His eyes grew hungry as he looked down at my boot.

"Your father's. . ."

"Then you came, a young girl merely staring at the wreckage of Blacksmith Nicholson's home. I was ready to apprehend you, but when you brought out the Semper for me, I wouldn't even have had to do that. I could just take it."

"So why didn't you?" I whispered, feeling utterly cornered, sure I knew the exact day he was speaking of.

"You brought the Semper up high, as if you were challenging the whole world to come and take it, but then you cocked it back, and I was forced to make a split second decision. I knew that you were going to throw it, and my first instinct was to snatch it away from you. But then something else inside me took hold and instead I waited. I felt it- there was so much more going on there than I could see."

The memories of that day came back to me in a flash of anger and disgust and love. I believed the vial to contain mere water. I was angry at the foolishness of my father, and ready to fling away one of my last mementos of his.

But then I couldn't. I couldn't do it.

I stood there, arm cocked back, trying to gather the courage to do it, for more than an hour.

Finally, I'd lowered it and left, tears streaming down my face.

"It wasn't until I was back in Hoshaldri that what I had seen began to sink in. I admired your defiance, and your willingness to fling away your father's plans. And it hit me." He stopped pacing.

"I didn't have to stick to my father's plans." He began laughing, and the sound of it raised hairs on the back of my neck. He sounded like a madman.

I needed to get out of here. I'd done what I'd come to do. Now I needed to run.

"I'd always understood he lacked ambition. But suddenly I knew that I could rise above his foolishness. I could rise above him."

"And do what?" I feared his answer, but I also had to know.

"He created it out of curiosity; a need to study and tinker and understand. He would just have traded it away to someone else when it was found, when in fact he would have been holding in his hand all the power in the world. I will not make his mistake. I will drink it and become invincible."

I knew I should have been searching for a way out, but only one thought was in my mind. "What did my father agree to give your father for the Semper?"