He couldn't sleep.
Not because of the bed. The bed was the same thin mattress on a metal frame he'd had for three years. Lumpy in the middle, cold at the edges, springs that made a sound like a small animal dying every time he rolled over. He was used to the bed.
It was the screen.
The blue light hung in the dark about a foot from his face. Faint. He'd tried closing his eyes. It was still there behind his eyelids, dimmer but there. Like the afterimage you get from staring at the sun except he hadn't stared at anything and the sun hadn't been out in four days.
Bond I signature detected.
Source: Local.
Estimated window: 47h.
The number had changed since the courtyard. It was counting down.
Hart lay on his back and stared at the ceiling. Water stain above the window shaped like a hand. He'd named it Gerald during Year One because he was losing his mind from boredom and naming water stains seemed reasonable at the time. Gerald hadn't changed. Everything else had.
His dorm was a single room at the corner of the east wing. One bed, one desk. Window facing the Greymarch. The window rattled when the wind hit from the north. It was hitting from the north now. Outside, something howled. Far off. The Greymarch had beasts in it. Everyone knew that. Most people didn't think about it much.
Hart thought about it.
He sat up. The springs screamed. His shoulder was stiff from lying on the same side too long and he rolled it without thinking.
The screen pulsed.
Bond I signature detected.
Source: Local. Approaching.
Approaching.
That was new. That word wasn't there before. The source was Local. Now it was Local and Approaching. Which meant whatever a bond signature was, it was getting closer to his room on the second floor of the east wing of Graveston Academy at whatever time it was in the middle of the night.
His door was locked. Not because he was careful about locking it but because the lock was broken in the locked position and you had to jiggle the handle a specific way to get it open that nobody else knew. Small blessings.
Something moved.
Not in the hallway. Not outside the window.
In the room. On the floor. At the foot of his bed.
His shadow.
Hart's shadow was wrong. He was sitting up in bed with the grey light from the window behind him. His shadow should have been a shapeless dark blob on the floor. It wasn't. It was moving. Spreading. Getting darker at the edges the way ink spreads through water, slow, like it had somewhere to be and wasn't in a rush to get there.
His right hand went to his left wrist. Gripped hard.
The shadow pooled. It gathered into a shape at the foot of his bed and then the shape rose up out of the floor and Hart stopped breathing.
A wolf.
Not a wolf. Something that used the word wolf the way a hurricane uses the word breeze.
Black fur that wasn't quite fur. More like smoke pressed into the shape of fur, and it drifted at the edges even though the air was still. Silver eyes that caught the window light and threw it back brighter than they had any right to. Mercury eyes.
It was the size of a horse. Its head was level with Hart's face where he sat on the bed. He could see its teeth. There were a lot of them.
The screen flared.
Bond I -- Sable
Classification: Shadow Wolf (Primal)
Compatibility: 97.3%
Proceed?
The wolf pressed its head against Hart's hand.
His hand was still on his left wrist. The wolf's skull pushed between his fingers, warm and solid, and his hand moved on its own, settling on the ridge between its ears. The fur that wasn't fur was soft. Warm. Shadow should be cold. He didn't know why he knew that but he did.
He didn't flinch.
Three years of nothing does that. You run out of flinch eventually.
The wolf looked at him. Mercury eyes, close enough that he could see himself reflected in them. A skinny kid on a thin mattress in a room that smelled like damp plaster. Not an impressive reflection.
"You don't smell like fear," the wolf said.
Hart's brain stopped working. Not a thought. More like a hard reset where everything goes blank for a second and then comes back one piece at a time. Wolves don't talk. That was a rule. Big rule. One of the ones you don't question because it's been true since birth. Animals don't form words. Beasts don't form words.
"What," Hart said.
The wolf sat down at the foot of his bed. Like a dog. A dog the size of a horse with mercury eyes and fur made of smoke that had just come out of his shadow on the floor and spoken to him in a voice that sounded like a whisper coming up from the bottom of a well.
"I said you don't smell like fear." The wolf's mouth moved wrong for the words. Not lips exactly. The sound came from somewhere behind the teeth. "Most humans do. You don't."
"I ran out." Hart's voice was steady. He didn't know how. "Three years ago."
The wolf made a sound. Not a growl. A hum. The kind a person makes when they hear something unexpected and haven't decided yet if they like it.
"I remember you," the wolf said.
Hart's hand was still on its head. He hadn't moved it. The smoke-fur was still warm under his palm.
"You don't know me," he said.
"I remember..." The wolf paused. The mercury eyes went somewhere else for a second. Not focused on the room anymore. On something further away than the walls. "Someone. I remember someone."
Then the wolf changed.
Not slow. Not with lights or Essence or any of the things the textbooks described for transformations. One second Hart's hand was on the skull of a wolf the size of a horse. The next second his hand was on the head of a woman.
She was kneeling at the foot of his bed. Black hair that moved without wind, pooling on the floor around her knees. Pale skin.
Silver-mercury eyes, the same ones, the exact same, in a face that was sharp at the jaw and cheekbones. A scar ran across her collarbone. Thin. Old. The kind that comes from something that tried to kill you a very long time ago and almost got it done.
Shadows collected at her feet. The darkness in the room drifted toward her. Not fast. Just pulled, the way things get pulled toward something heavy.
She looked at him.
Hart pulled his hand back. Not fast. Just away.
"Right," he said. His voice sounded far off. "Okay."
"I am Sable." Three words. No explanation. Like that should cover it.
"Okay," Hart said again. He was saying okay too much. Couldn't seem to stop.
The screen pulsed.
Bond I -- Sable
Classification: Shadow Wolf (Primal)
Compatibility: 97.3%
Bond Status: Awaiting Warden confirmation.
"You're," Hart started, and his brain offered him several endings for that sentence and he threw all of them out because none of them applied to the situation of a woman with mercury eyes who had been a wolf who had been his shadow thirty seconds ago. "You're from the screen."
"I don't know what that means." Her voice was different in human form. Still quiet. Still like something heard from far away. But it had walls around it now. Warmer.
"The blue thing. The screen. In my." He pointed at the air where the screen hung. She looked at the spot. Her eyes didn't find anything there.
"I can't see what you see, Warden."
Warden. She called him Warden.
Hart sat on the edge of his bed. Feet on the cold floor. His shadow was back to normal.
The woman who had been a wolf was kneeling two feet from his knees and the screen was asking him to confirm a bond and he didn't know what confirming meant and didn't know what a Primal was and didn't know why she'd said she remembered someone.
"Is that my title or my name," he said. Stupid question. Not the question he should be asking. He should be asking what she was and where she came from and how she'd been inside his shadow and what happens when you confirm a bond. He asked about the name thing because his brain was broken and that's what fell out.
"Warden is what you are." She looked at him. No blinking. "Hart is what you'll have to earn."
Something in his chest. The crack from the ceremony. The one he didn't trust. It got wider.
"I have questions," Hart said.
"Later."
"I have a lot of questions."
"Later." She didn't raise her voice. Didn't change her expression. Just said the word again like saying it twice made it a door she'd locked from her side.
The screen pulsed. Awaiting Warden confirmation. He stared at it. Stared at her.
A wolf that became a woman. A Primal, whatever that meant with a capital P. She'd said she remembered someone. From how long ago. The beasts in the textbooks were described as ancient. Pre-Veil. Things from before the world broke.
He didn't know what he was agreeing to. Didn't know what any of it meant.
But for 1,096 days nobody had looked at him.
She was looking at him.
"Yes," Hart said.
The screen went white. Then blue. Then settled.
Bond I -- Sable -- Confirmed
Bond Level: 1/5
Bond Resonance: 67.1%
Skill Absorbed: Shadow Phase (Tier I)
Something moved through his body. Not pain. Not warmth. Something in between that he didn't have a word for. His blood humming at a frequency that wasn't there before. It lasted three seconds. Maybe less. Then it was gone and the room was quiet and Sable was still there and the ceiling still had Gerald on it.
"Okay," Hart said. Third time.
Sable's mouth moved. The smallest shift. Not a smile. Closer to the face of someone who'd been waiting a very long time and was trying not to let it show.
"You should sleep, Warden."
"I don't think that's going to happen."
"No. Probably not."
She moved to the corner of the room. Not walked. Moved. Like shadow sliding across a wall when a cloud passes. She sat with her back against the stone, knees up, eyes open, watching the door.
Guarding.
Nobody had done that for Hart in three years.
He lay back down. The springs screamed. Gerald was still on the ceiling. Sable was in the corner. The screen was fading, text going dim, patient and quiet like a thing that had all the time in the world to wait.
His right hand drifted toward his left wrist.
Stopped halfway. Hung there in the air between the gesture and the landing.
Didn't come down on either side.