Chapter 27 Maren
I call her between Ability Theory and Combat Fundamentals, standing in the narrow corridor behind the east stairwell where the signal is somehow better than anywhere else in the building and the foot traffic is low enough for privacy.
My hands are steady.
My hand is burning.
The phone rings three times and then she picks up and says, "Veyra," before I've said a single word, and her voice is low and warm and familiar in the specific way of something you've never heard but recognise anyway, and something in my chest cracks open so fast and so completely that I have to press my back against the cold stone wall to stay upright.
"Hi," I manage.
A pause. Soft and careful. "Hi, baby," she says.
I close my eyes.
We're quiet for a moment, both of us, just breathing in the same phone call for the first time in eighteen years, and it's the most enormous small thing I've ever experienced.
"Corvyn told you I was here," I say finally.
"When your acceptance letter processed," she says. "Yes."
"You've known for months," I say.
"Yes," she says, and there's an apology in it that doesn't try to dress itself as anything else.
"Why didn't you reach out?" I ask, and I keep my voice even and I'm proud of that, the way I keep it even.
"Because I wanted you to find your feet first," she says. "I wanted you to walk into Northveil and begin to understand what you are before I tried to explain what happened to me. I was afraid that if I contacted you too early, I'd put my story in front of your experience and you'd see everything through my version of it instead of your own."
I think about Corvyn saying almost exactly the same thing about telling me what I was before my ability presented.
"Everyone keeps making decisions about what I'm ready for," I say quietly.
"I know," she replies. "I know, and I'm sorry. It came from love and it was still wrong and I'm sorry."
I breathe slowly.
"Your ability is presenting," she says softly.
"Fast," I confirm.
"It was fast with me too," she says. "The Calladine line carries it strongly when it wakes up." A pause. "You've bonded?"
"Yes," I say.
"Tell me about him," she says, and her voice does something careful and deliberate around the him.
"His name is Rhydan," I say. "He's nineteen. He's the hockey captain here." I pause. "He was not kind to me when we first met."
"Hmm."
"He's getting better," I add.
"They usually do," she says, and there's something in it that carries twenty years of complicated feeling, not bitterness exactly, something more nuanced than that.
"His father contacted me this morning," I say.
A long pause.
"Aldric?" she asks, and the way she says his name is its own entire story, two syllables carrying years of something unfinished.
"He gave me a file," I say. "Documentation of what Elder Valecrest did. The council petition. The ruling. The binding arrangement with the Vance family. All of it." I pause. "He's been building it for fifteen years."
Silence on the line.
"Maren," I say, and using her name feels strange and right simultaneously. "The bond. Yours and Aldric's. Is it..." I stop, trying to find the right word. "Is it still active?"
A very long pause.
"Yes," she says quietly. "It never stopped being active. That's not something that stops."
"Are you okay?" I ask. "Have you been okay? With it unresolved for twenty years?"
"I've been managing," she says carefully. "Some years better than others." She pauses. "Knowing you were coming to Northveil made this year harder. The bond responds to you, to your ability, even at a distance. It's been..." she stops. "Loud," she says finally.
The same word Aldric used this morning.
The bond makes the distance loud.
"He said that too," I tell her. "Loud. He used the same word."
Another pause, longer this time, and I can feel the weight of what that lands like for her across the phone.
"Corvyn is filing with the supernatural council today," I say. "The contempt charge. The full documentation. It should protect us from Elder Valecrest moving against us the way he moved against you."
"Good," she says, and there's something fierce underneath it that I recognise because I've felt it in myself.
"I want to see you," I say. "When it's possible. When this has settled enough."
"Yes," she says immediately, no hesitation. "Yes. I want that too." Her voice does the cracking thing that she controls quickly, the same way I control it, and I recognise that too.
"Okay," I say.
"Okay," she echoes.
We're quiet for a moment.
"Veyra," she says.
"Yeah?"
"The bond," she says carefully. "With Rhydan. Don't run from it the way I ran from mine. I understand why I ran and I would probably run again given the same circumstances and the same threat. But if you can fight instead of run, fight." She pauses. "What you are is not a liability. It never was. My biggest mistake was letting someone make me believe it was."
I press my hand flat against the cold stone wall and feel the warmth pulsing steadily in my palm.
"I'm not running."
"Good," she says softly.
We say goodbye carefully, the way you do with something fragile that you're planning to pick up again soon, and I hang up and stand in the narrow corridor and look at the ceiling and breathe.
My hand is so warm it's almost uncomfortable.
I push off the wall and head toward Combat Fundamentals and I'm halfway there when Rhydan falls into step beside me from a branching corridor, like he was waiting nearby, like he timed it, and I look at him sideways.
"How was it?" he asks quietly.
"Hard," I say honestly. "And good. Both at once."
He nods.
"She said don't run," I tell him.
He looks at me sideways. "From the bond?"
"From any of it."
He's quiet for a step or two.
"Good advice," he says.
"I thought so," I agree.
We walk into Combat Fundamentals together and Cassian sees us arrive side by side and his eyebrows go up and he opens his mouth and Rhydan gives him a look that closes it again immediately and I hide my smile in my notebook.
Some things are getting easier.
Not everything.
But some things.