Shadowlark by Meagan Spooner Page B

I asked Tansy before glancing up at Oren, who had leaned forward and was resting his face against the bars, eyes closed. “I can keep trying for a while if you can sleep.”
    “I think I could sleep standing up in the middle of a forest fire right now,” Tansy admitted. “Wake me up in an hour or two, if those guys haven’t come back by then.”
    She retreated to the back of the cage, as far from Oren as she could get. She settled down and propped herself up in a corner, then closed her eyes.
    I kept at the lock for a while, though I knew how pointless it was. The knife simply wouldn’t reach. Oren stayed silent, motionless. Eventually I conceded that all I was doing was blunting the tip of the knife, and stopped.
    “I remember a light.”
    Oren’s voice cut through the gloom, soft and quick. There was a tremor in it. I looked up—he still hadn’t moved, forehead pressed against the bars.
    “I remember darkness and fog and a terrible hunger. And that I was supposed to be looking for something. And then, suddenly, there was a light. And I knew where to go.”
    Tansy’s magic , I realized. In the alley. I kept silent, remembering how good it had felt to strip her magic away from her, take it for my own, let it pool warm and golden inside me. I tried to block out the sound of his voice, fixing my eyes on the lock again.
    Oren pushed away from the bars and turned, sliding down to sit on the ground. He let his head drop forward, hair falling into his face. “Why is it that I always end up caged when I’m around you?”
    I gritted my teeth. It’d be easier to keep him at a distance if he’d stay confused, only half-himself. It’d be easier if he’d never come at all. Then he could stay a monster, someone who betrayed me. Someone I never wanted to see again.
    I held out the knife, gripping the blade and offering him the handle. “This is yours,” I said shortly.
    His gaze lingered on it for a moment, then lifted to meet mine. I jerked my eyes away, but not before he would’ve seen the hurt there.
    After a silence, he retreated back against the bars. “It was a gift,” he said quietly. “It’s yours.” He fixed his eyes on the back wall, not looking at me. “Besides, you may need it.”
    “If I run out of magic and you try to kill us both, you mean?” There was still a little of Tansy’s magic left—I could feel it, tingling, singing through my veins. Tansy herself had fallen asleep as soon as she stopped moving. I could hear the soft sounds of her steady breathing coming from the back corner of our cell.
    “You had the chance to get rid of me,” Oren said. “I asked you to kill me.”
    “Just because I’m not capable of cutting your throat doesn’t mean I want you here.” The words were out before I can stop them. Anything to keep him at arm’s length.
    “Lark—”
    “We’re not a team, Oren.” I glanced at Tansy, who stirred in reaction to the sharpness of my voice but didn’t wake. “It’s not like it was. It can’t ever be again. You know that, right? You shouldn’t be here.”
    “I didn’t want to be here,” he hissed back. “I don’t control it, when it takes over. I can’t tell it to leave you alone. It—that thing—isn’t me.”
    Except it is. Because I could see the ferocity of the monster even now, the brilliant gleam in his eye, the strength in his shoulders and in the grip of his hands as he balled them into fists.
    “You’re not even human.” I turned away.
    “And you are?”
    The words hit me like a blow. The silence drew out between us, tense like wire. Then my lungs remembered how to work again. “I’m human. I’m—I’m me, all the time. I make my choices. This power, this is something that was done to me.”
    I could feel Oren’s eyes on me. Only, where they’d once made my spine tingle and my stomach tighten, now they made the hairs on the back of my neck rise. He didn’t move, but it was like I could hear him anyway. I could feel the shape of the