Vassal Sterling D'Este (top 10 books of all time .TXT) 📖

there?” Was it terrible that some part of her, the part mostly in agreement with Enyo, thrilled over the idea?

Delyth yawned and looked towards the tent flap. “I can’t imagine they’d have done it so quietly, but we should probably go check anyway.” The priestess stood and stretched, clasping her arms in front of her instead of reaching up. She turned and held out a hand to Alphonse to help her up. “Coming?”

Groaning, Alphonse slipped her hand into Delyth’s.

⥣          ⥣           ⥣

“I was eleven when I entered Moxous.”

Etienne was dimly aware of his companion’s eyes upon him, but he kept his own gaze down at the campfire between them. Already it was dark beyond the mouth of the cave, the sunset hidden by the mountains that sheltered them.

Choosing a story had been difficult for the mage. He did not think his life had been as exciting as Delyth’s or Tristan’s, and neither was it populated by the scenes of compassion that so exemplified Alphonse. He hadn’t been sure until his old friend had disappeared into her tent that morning, her hand red with the force of the blow she’d dealt.

“Already, I was hungry for knowledge. Moxous, for me, was a symbol of freedom, of status. The chance to study there meant that I would not live out the rest of my life like my father had: poor and unhappy.”

He knew that he had been too harsh with Alphonse the night before, but her earlier attack had only proved him right. She was losing herself, changing because of the Goddess. She had to remember what they’d come for, and he could think of no better way than to remind her where she had come from.

“I did not make friends easily at the school but kept to myself. It wasn’t long before I found the archives deep within the school’s library and turned there to study in the relative quiet.”

Etienne nobly ignored Tristan’s snort of derision.

“It was there that I met Theo. He was a few years older than me: slender and unassuming. He had a knack for turning up in the archives whenever I was there to discuss our studies, and quickly we became friends. We had the same interests, both studious and ambitious, and because he was older than I, Theo knew much more about magic. I learned more that first year from him than any of the school’s teachers.

“Compared to Theo, my peers were harsh and misunderstanding, and the more isolated I felt from them, the more time I spent with my friend. The archive came to be a sort of second home; every spare moment was spent there. I thought it a little strange that I never saw Theo anywhere but the archives, that he turned down my invitations to the dining halls and the grounds. I might have worried about this more, I suppose, if something stranger hadn’t happened first.”

The mage finally looked up, his eyes meeting Alphonse’s over the fire. He didn’t smile, for all that it was a sweet story.

“One day, while speaking with Theo in the archives, I looked up to find that another student had wandered into our domain. She was small and girlish but dressed as severely as a matron.

“I was angry at first, at being interrupted, but the girl seemed only vaguely curious. She stood calmly near my table, head cocked to the side, and asked why I had been speaking to myself. I was immediately affronted, but when I swung around to point out Theo, he was gone.”

Etienne let his eyes drop back to the fire, his expression bitter.

“That student could have laughed at the boy who’d befriended a spirit rather than his own peers, but she didn’t. She was kind and easy to be around. She looked after me and didn’t mind my rambling about the knowledge I had found. We became friends quickly and have not parted since.”

❀

As Etienne had started to tell his tale, Alphonse sat up straighter, watching him carefully. Her heart understood what his words didn’t say. He missed his friend. His only friend, really.

And perhaps he was sorry that he had been so harsh with her. So brutally truthful and blind to her needs, her experience. She hadn’t been oblivious all those years ago, seeing a young boy talking to himself. She didn’t think him odd or strange or insane.

She saw that he sat alone in the dining halls, and none of the other children chose to sit next to him in class. Whenever he did have a partner, they often resented how quickly he learned new techniques or were afraid of him when his spells went awry.

So she had followed him down to the archives, and when she saw him rambling on and on to thin air, Alphonse had decided he was lonely.

As she didn’t have many friends either, Alphonse had reached out her hand in friendship.

It wasn’t until years later did she realize that Etienne hadn’t made up an invisible friend to keep him company in those gloomy stacks of books, but rather had the rare innate ability to see spirits and souls of those long past.

When the masters had learned of this skill, they had been over the moon. That perhaps had been when they started to push Etienne harder and harder, putting him in more challenging and arcane classes.

Alphonse chewed on her lower lip as the story came to an end, and then, when Etienne finally looked up at her, she tried to smile at him. She, too, remembered that friendship. “Did Theo ever stop appearing to you?”

“Not exactly. Our long conversations were a thing of the past, but I saw him occasionally throughout our time at Moxous.”

“You can see ghosts then.” Tristan’s voice butted in. Etienne confirmed as much, but the rogue just shrugged. If he knew more, he wasn’t letting on.

“That was a sweet story,” Delyth said. “Do I have to pick the best one now, or can I think