The aftermath of Raven and Eva’s destructive battle had given way to an unsettling silence inside the dead mall. Plumes of dust and smoke hung in the air, billowing out from gaping chasms left behind by their careless and aggressive spellcasting. The view looked far more like a war-torn battlefield or a post-apocalyptic vision than a simple derelict complex. I could only imagine what an urban explorer or the demolition crew would think when they got a load of the mess.

  “Are you two absolutely insane?!”

  I exploded. The stunned and fearful awe that had paralyzed me during the fight had now turned into rage.

  “You two almost brought the entire mall down on all of us!”

  Eva was still on her knees, catching her breath. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me…”

  “I wasn’t only talking to you.” I snapped my attention to Raven—whose body was still weighed to the ground by Eva’s spell—and scolded her. “You attacked Eva entirely unprovoked and could have killed her multiple times!”

  “Shinsuke, I—”

  “Save it. I tried to give you a chance despite all the trouble you’ve been causing, but you went way too far this time. And for what? Rightfully confronting you?”

  “None of this was supposed to happen this way. Please believe me, Shinsuke...”

  Tears welled up and began to spill over her eyelids, staining her porcelain skin with a duo of perfect streaks.

  She’s actually crying…

  The devastation on her face threatened to fracture my frustration. She seemed genuinely distraught by my reaction even though it was beyond justified and should have been expected after what she did. That didn’t stop her desperate pleas, however.

  I peeled my eyes away from her to gather myself. Both anger and a bizarre sense of pity were duking it out for supremacy in my head, and I needed to come back to center before I could even think of what to say to her.

  “Are you okay?” Mizuki checked on Eva.

  “Yeah,” she replied, hovering a healing orb over her bloody hand. “I’ll be fine. But I want some answers from our favorite little stalker.”

  She stopped the bleeding and rose to her feet above Raven.

  “I’ve trained with the best of the best under the supervision of the Steylian Royal Army. In all the time I’ve spent doing so, I’ve never seen someone wield shadow magic the way you do, Raven. That’s odd enough to me, but what’s weirder is when you consider that the vast majority of shadow spells are lethal and take an immense amount of magical energy to cast. So, tell me. How are you capable of all this without being trained to fight?”

  Raven stared up at Eva with a look to kill. But catching me in her crosshairs seemed to throw cold water on her fury again, just as it had during the climax of their battle. I don’t know if I was reading her right, but it looked like shame was written in her features.

  “Okay,” she relented. “I promise I’ll answer everything on two conditions.”

  “You’re not really in a position to make demands,” Eva sneered. “But I’ll humor you. What are your conditions?”

  “First, let me get up. Second, I’ll only talk to Shinsuke. Alone.”

  “Absolutely not,” Mizuki and Eva refused in unison.

  They looked at each other, apparently startled by their simultaneous outburst but nodded in agreement.

  “It’s fine, let her up,” I said. All three of them gasped.

  “Shinsuke, you can’t be serious,” Eva whined.

  I studied Raven’s visage carefully, finding a desperate hope that told me all I needed to know.

  “You wanted answers, right? She won’t do anything reckless if she’s alone with me. Trust me.”

  “I trust you. I don’t trust her.”

  “Agreed,” Mizuki added. “She could attack you or try to run.”

  I shook my head. “She won’t.”

  Eva sighed and said, “if you really want to go along with her conditions, then I have one of my own.” She alternated her focus between me and Raven, making sure we both understood her terms. “The magic circle I painted on her stays there. If she tries to bolt or hurt you, call out to me and I’ll slap the gravity tether back on her immediately.”

  “That sounds fair to me,” I said.

  Raven nodded. “Fine.”

  Eva released the spell, and the dark-haired actress got back to her feet.

  “We can talk in there.” I pointed to the same empty store that Mizuki and I had sheltered in during the fight. Raven agreed and followed me inside.

  I sat on the counter and waited for her to speak.

  “Shinsuke… I’m sorry for all of this. None of this was supposed to happen.”

  “Well, it did. Stop apologizing and talk. We had a deal, remember?”

  “Yeah.”

  Her lips parted to expel a long breath.

  “I don’t know how to answer that girl’s question,” she admitted.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s complicated.” Her pale fingers clutched her arm. “My past, I mean.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I wanted to share these things with you after we spent more time together, but I suppose I have no choice but to tell you everything now.”

  Another sigh escaped her lips.

  “I was born in Osmela, a small, snowy country to the north.”

  “I know it. It’s one of the last few unclaimed countries in the world. I didn’t realize you weren’t born in Steylia.”

  She nodded. “I’m Osmelan. But that’s about as much as I can tell you about my heritage. I don’t know anything about my biological parents except that they apparently died when I was four. At least, that’s what I was told. I don’t remember them or their deaths. The earliest memory I have is arriving at the orphanage where I spent my childhood.”

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  She held her arm tighter as she recounted the memories flickering in her distant gaze.

  “Growing up in that orphanage was hell, Shinsuke. The conditions would have been horrific for anyone, let alone children. But Osmela is a poor country. People had no reason to care about a bunch of forgotten kids when they were struggling to survive themselves.”

  I felt my breath catch in my throat. Her story had gotten off to an unexpected start, and the melancholy on her face told me it was only going to get worse. I was already lost on what to say, so I hoped the words would find me as she continued.

  “The adults hated us. Physical punishment was the standard for any kind of misbehavior, no matter how big or small. We only ate once a day, and that was for those of us who were lucky enough to avoid being sent to bed hungry. Even kids are reduced to their basest instincts in those conditions. It didn’t take very long living like that to figure out that you could use the pain of others to ease your own.”

  I was afraid to ask what she meant, but I didn’t have to.

  “Some of it was just survival. A kid would steal food because he went to bed hungry, then pin the blame on someone else when the adults lined us up for questioning. But most of those kids were just as evil as the adults. Nothing more than sadistic bullies who enjoyed the pain and suffering of others because it entertained them.”

  “Raven… I’m sorr—” I tried, but she kept talking over me, her eyes blank.

  “I was an easy target, too scared to stand up for myself. When they realized that, everyone blamed me for their actions. Even the kids that were meeker than me. The adults knew they were lying, but they didn’t care. They just wanted a scapegoat to unleash their wrath upon.”

  She squeezed herself even harder, the pale flesh of her knuckles turning even whiter with the intensity of her grip.

  “There were these boys who used to talk a big game about sticking it to the adults, but whenever they landed in hot water, they’d just cry and take it like everyone else. They couldn’t be tough towards them, so they picked on me. They used to steal my food, pull my hair, and slap me around until one day I felt something change inside me.”

  An uneasy feeling washed over me as she spoke.

  “Those boys had just been on the receiving end of the adults’ ‘discipline’ and tried to take it out on me.” The corners of her lips curled upward, forming an eerie smile. “Something was bubbling up inside me, I could feel it. One of them tried to punch me, but I caught his fist. Before I knew it, this shadow formed in my hand, and he started screaming. When he pulled out of my grasp, his hand was gone.”

  “Gone…?” I repeated.

  She laughed, her inside voice slipping into her outside voice. A single bead of sweat streaked down the side of my face.

  “Poof. Just like that,” she hummed. “They were terrified. I was scared, too. I didn’t understand what happened, but I knew it was my chance.”

  The adults had come running, she explained. And when they arrived, she pinned the whole thing on the boys. The kid needed medical treatment, and the adults were terrified of what the authorities would do if they thought the staff was responsible. Whether they believed it or not, they went along with Raven’s story and told the authorities the boys got into a scrap that ended with the mysterious loss of the bully’s hand.

  “They took him away to a hospital,” she said. “And those boys never bothered me again.”

  My brain was a semi-functional contradiction. So many thoughts were flashing through my mind at once that it was effectively blank. All I could do was stare into the void that was Raven Blackwell.

  And she stared back.

  “I think I lost something that day, but I gained so much more. For once, I wasn’t the victim, I just pretended to be. Pretending saved me, so I continued to do it. I started acting.”

  She said the last part with wistful pride.

  “That wasn’t enough on its own, though. The only reason the boys left me alone was because I scared them. Because I defended myself. That’s when I learned the value of violence.”

  She didn’t know what the shadow she summoned was, apparently. At that point, she didn’t even know how to use magic or any spells. So, she poked around the orphanage until she found a dusty old spell book. She hid it somewhere only she knew to look and regularly snuck off to study its pages until she learned how to cast spells.

  “Once I knew how to use magic, I would show the other kids what I could do in private and threaten them to make sure they never told the adults or tried to bully me. It worked, and anyone stupid enough to test me regretted it.”

  She moved closer to me.

  “The ability to use shadow magic came to me on its own, before I knew what I was doing. I taught myself how to cast spells, and the amount of magical energy I have within me is the same now as it was then. It’s always been that way. So, I don’t know what to tell that girl, because I don’t understand it myself.”

  I shut my eyes and took a breath. I took a moment to process all that I’d just heard and prepared to respond but jolted when I felt her hand slide onto my own.

  “But Shinsuke, I didn’t tell you all of that just to appease her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Her eyes were naked, stripped bare into a complete and undeniable vulnerability.

  “I told you that I wanted to show you the real me, remember? That night at my penthouse, I was only partially honest about my feelings for you. I didn’t want to scare you away. But after what I just did, I need you to know everything, not just about my magic, but about my feelings for you, because I don’t want you to hate me—I couldn’t handle that…”

  I sighed. “Listen, I’ll give you a chance to tell me whatever else you want me to know. But only if you accept some conditions of my own with no exceptions.”

  Her hand grasped mine tighter, but not painfully so.

  “Anything, Shinsuke.”

  “I want you to apologize to Eva for everything. The attack, the horrible things you tried to do to her in that fight, and the things you said to her the other day, too. And I need you to swear that you’ll never try to harm her or Mizuki ever again.”

  “Okay,” she replied without missing a beat. “I agree to everything. I’ll apologize right now, and I swear I won’t do anything like this ever again.”

  I analyzed her closely, searching intently for any signs of deceit, but all I came away with was a dire sincerity that was as assuring as it was frightening.

  “Great. Then let’s go talk to them.”

  We exited the store, and I called out to Eva and Mizuki.

  “Hey, you two. Raven has something to say.”

  They looked at each other and waited cautiously for her to speak.

  Raven took a deep breath and clasped her hands together. “I apologize to all of you. I’m sorry about the trouble I’ve caused, especially this fight. And I vow never to do anything like it again.”

  Eva and Mizuki scoffed.

  “Oh, I guess it’s that simple, then,” Mizuki mocked. “One fake little apology and you’re off the hook, right? Is that what usually works for you?”

  “Fight? More like attempted murder. You tried to kill me,” Eva added. “And now your little ‘LOL sorry!’ routine is supposed to make me feel better? Get real. Besides, I didn’t ask for an apology, I asked about your magic.”

  Raven glanced at me, and I had the feeling she was trying to keep her composure.

  “You don’t have to believe me,” she conceded. “But I mean it. I went way too far, and I see that now. I want to atone for my actions.”

  “Right.” Eva rolled her eyes. “And how do you plan on doing that?”

  “By helping Shinsuke prepare for the next battle in the gauntlet.”

  That’s news to me!

  Eva looked almost insulted. “What? Why would he need your help? I’m teaching him everything he needs to know. You’re just looking for a reason to stay close to him.”

  “I can teach him about shadow magic. You said it yourself, right? You claimed you’ve never seen someone wield it like I did. I can show him what I know, and I’ll tell you everything I told him about my abilities.”

  “Forget it,” Mizuki interjected. “The answer is no.”

  “I wasn’t done,” Raven persisted. "I’ll also pay for anything he needs and take him anywhere he needs to go. My resources are his to use.”

  Eva couldn’t hide the interest in her eyes, even if it was heavily reluctant.

  “I hate to admit it,” she started. “But having access to her finances would be useful. And I want to know how she’s capable of wielding magic the way she does.”

  “But can’t the stupid princess take care of the money stuff?” Mizuki questioned. “Why would we need this psycho?”

  “Cynthia’s hands are tied up in a lot of red tape,” I answered. “What she can and can’t help me with depends on how much it interferes with her parents’ adherence to the White Knight Contract. That’s why she can pay for my suits but couldn’t appoint an instructor for me.”

  “Tch.” Mizuki looked away

  “It’s all on the table if you agree,” Raven offered.

  Eva turned to me. “It’s up to you, Shinsuke. I’m not entirely on board with this, but I know I can handle her if things turn sour. But she’s stalked and made life a pain for you. Are you really okay with this after everything she’s done?”

  I groaned.

  “I guess we can give it a shot.”

  “Really?!” Raven chirped.

  “I’m not okay with this. At all,” Mizuki complained. “But if that’s your choice, I have to accept it, Shinsuke.”

  She stormed up to Raven and got in her face.

  “If you ever lay a hand on Shinsuke or Eva again, I won’t be responsible for what I do to you. Get that through your delusional skull now and save yourself the trouble later.”

  “Noted,” Raven deadpanned.

  I could swear the auras emanating from both of them were identical at that moment.

  “If this is going to work, something needs to be done about the paparazzi,” Eva declared.

  “Even I can’t make them go away,” Raven sighed. “I’m sorry.”

  “Maybe not, but I have an idea. Give me your phone number. You kinda destroyed the P.I.’s phone, so I lost it.”

  The actress complied and the pair traded numbers.

  “Great. Now go wake up your bodyguards and head home.” Eva turned to me. “Shinsuke, I think this is where red tape might come in handy.”