No More Choices (Void and Light Book One)

Chapter Sixteen

~Akiriya~

    I looked at Calvin and tried to calm myself down. I could be a scary mother trucker when I wanted to be, but it had always freaked me out. Calvin was giving me this look but I wasn't going to take the time to analyze it. I needed answers now and with my aunt missing, I didn't want to go into panic. All of this was starting to push me to my limit and unlike some people, I can not do this all day.

I motioned for him to sit and he cringed, but reluctantly sat down after dramatically kicking some things out of the way.

"What's your first question?" he asked it like you would ask a child something, as if he was entertaining the conversation but was truly disinterested.

I clenched my jaw, "Why did you all come here?"

He rolled his eyes but answered, "To find you."

"That doesn't sound true, you didn't come here for specifically mean. You just ended up here. What is it that you were told when you started looking for whoever it is that you are searching for?"

"We were told to look for... a source of magic that was, how should I say this, unguarded, wild if you will." Something about that answer set me on edge. He was leaving something out.

"How did you determine that it was me?" I glared at him, twirling a knife behind my back, in my right hand, my left holding my right wrist so that it looked as if I was merely clasping my hands.

"We figured it out by the amount of magic you were using, it was just flying around asking to be noticed." he scoffed at me and I was a bit taken aback. When this encounter had begun he'd been at least a little more polite. It must have been the germs that coated the area, it hadn't been hard to figure out that he hated germs. At every encounter that  we'd had he'd always been wiping something off or changing the way that something was, aligning it to be perfect. I knew his weakness and yet didn't know him.

"But I don't use magic, I hadn't even believed in it until I disappeared from sight that night that I jumped out of your window." I lost myself in the memory of that night and looked back at the ring that I left on, the onyx gem sparkling in what was left of the day's light.

"You don't have to use magic to have it flying around everywhere," He laughed, "So that's how you got away! No wonder." his eyes zeroed in on the ring that wrapped around my middle finger. "What's that?"

I quickly moved my hand behind my back, "Nothing. Moving on, what am I?"

He blanched at the question and began shaking his head.

"Fine, but this won't be the last time that I bring this up." I huffed. I tried to think of something that I needed to know then a question struck me. "Why was Atiyama so angry when that sword appeared?" From the shadows. As soon as the thought struck me a shiver clawed its way up my spine and through my shoulders all the way down my arm sparking at every fingertip except for my middle finger where the ring sat. Strange. 

"That's a bit harder to explain but to put it simply, the blade you held appeared from the shadows and disappeared right back into them. Only nightmares can pull things out of the shadows, well them and wraith shifters, but they don't exist anymore."

"The wraiths?"

"Yes, they were wiped out in the Moon War."

I raised a brow, "Moon Wars?" I laughed "what? Did they fight for who was going to put their flag on the moon first?"

He cracked a smile. "Well something like that."

I balked at him. "You're joking right?"

He closed his eyes and rested his head against the wood behind him. The way that he looked so beautiful hit me like a ton of bricks. The suns last few rays shone brightly in the alley. Even with the distance between us I could still see and appreciate the way that his lashes fluttered on his cheek bones. The cut of his jaw was sharp and his hair, which was a mess all on its own rather than the way he intentionally styled it, flamed is face like  a dark halo. His shoulders no longer held the tension that this space had brought him and I wondered if for just a moment he had become calm. Sitting here for so long would do that to you.