Chapter 105 Chapter 105
“Maybe,” Valerie replied hesitantly. “If I can make time.”
Naomi’s face fell, knowing full well that this was Valerie’s way of saying no. She shared a worried glance with Hope who had been keeping an eye on her this entire time, noticing something she didn’t like.
“Are you eating properly? You’ve lost weight,” Hope said.
Valerie tensed but kept a smile on her lips. “I’ve just been trying a new diet. Looks like it’s working,” she replied and shrugged, not appearing very convincing to Naomi and Hope.
“At least finish your cupcake,” Naomi added.
“I’m not hungry right now,” Valerie said evasively, shifting restlessly in her chair. She had a sudden urge to get up and run from the café, but she couldn’t do that to her friends. It would have been incredibly rude after she had already avoided them for the better part of a month.
“If something is bothering you, you can always talk to us. I hope you know that,” Hope said, gauging her reaction carefully. The slight tremble of Valerie’s lower lip drew her attention, making her frown. “We’re here for you. I know it has been tough for you since he left, but if you keep shutting everybody out, you won’t feel any better. In order to move on, you need to let go of him and focus on other things. Maybe going out more often and meeting new people would help.”
Something in Valerie shattered. The telltale burning in her eyes was there again, her throat tightening. “I don’t want to move on,” she muttered. “I can’t. You wouldn’t understand.”
Her hand moved to her heart, clutching the white fabric of her blouse. He had clipped her wings when he had broken the bond. He had ripped the happiness right out of her chest and it still hurt. No matter how much time passed, the wound didn’t heal and the hole within her heart didn’t disappear. It would stay until she died, and a part of herself hated him for burdening her with this curse. However, the bigger part of her longed to see him again, and knowing that he was out there somewhere, probably not even far away, made it all the harder to endure.
If only she knew why he did this to her. If at least Thorne had given her some answers…
—
After the meet up with her friends, Valerie ended up walking through the empty streets of an abandoned company site. She regularly came here to practice her magic since she could be sure that nobody would see her. The site was quite large, surrounded by a fence with many holes in it, so it wasn’t hard to get in. She walked over the gravel on the ground and entered a dilapidated building that had once housed the offices of the company. It had three stories that were connected by old and dusty stairs. All the windows were broken and the paint was peeling off the walls in many places. Some rooms smelled moldy and Valerie tended to avoid those.
She crossed an empty hallway and moved up the stairs to the next story where she ended up in a large room with a high ceiling. Since the sun was slowly sinking, it was rather dark in here, but that didn’t bother her.
Letting her magic flow freely, it became visible in the form of golden threads winding around her hands. Their soft light illuminated her form, bathing her in an ethereal glow. She had learned a lot about her magic in the past month and it wasn’t hard to control it anymore. On the contrary, it had become second nature. She no longer needed to think about what she wanted the magic to do; it worked intuitively like moving an arm or a leg.
Since she was human, she had to be careful not to use demon magic for too long, but she was fine when she practiced for only a short while. As she let golden spheres appear around her, she suddenly became aware of something unsettling. Faint traces of powerful demon magic were sprinkled throughout the room. She sensed them everywhere in the area, and she was pretty sure that it was the very same kind of magic that Zane had used, belonging to the element of darkness.
Growing uneasy, she stopped the flow of her magic immediately and hid it, making it disappear.
“I should leave,” she whispered, her heart pounding in her chest. Her encounter with the creepy demon was still fresh in her mind and she didn’t want a repeat of what had happened last time, so she quickly headed towards the doorway, intending to run back to the ground floor.
Unfortunately, it was too late. Someone had noticed her magic even before she had hidden it. She sensed a powerful presence near her, the strong magic making her body tremble in fear. It had to be a high-class demon… and whoever they were, they were in the building already. Other than her, the demon did not hide their magic at all, letting it flood the building.
It was wild and furious, radiating off them in waves which made it easy for her to sense where they were. Their arrogance was infuriating, but it also told her that she shouldn’t mess with this being since they seemed to be out for blood. After nearly losing her life to Zane the other day, she knew that she couldn’t fight a high-class demon on her own. It would be suicide.
She needed to be careful now and get away from this place without alerting them to her hiding spot. Crouching low next to the door, she sensed that the demon was walking through a hallway below her. Directly below her. She tensed up and hesitated, eyes darting to the end of the hallway where she saw a stairway leading down.
Of course, she needed to get down, but she wasn’t stupid. It appeared like the being was waiting for her to panic and run right into a trap. She could not take that stairway, had to find another one, so she turned and walked in the opposite direction. Her sneakers barely made a sound on the concrete ground. The thundering of her heart in her chest was all she heard as she made her way to the other side of the building where another stairway was located. She passed countless open rooms, all of them empty. The entire building was vacant, safe for her and the dangerous demon one floor below.