Chapter Text
A ghost in the rafters. Fabian goes on an adventure.
or. A child raised in a powder keg will always explode.
~~~
Adaine was not afraid of ghosts. At least, not practically. The ghosts of stories and myths and legends were scary, she could admit that, but they weren’t real, they couldn’t actually hurt her. Real ghosts were simpler. She understood the science, both the arcane and physical, of what actual ghosts were and what they could really do.
She knew that the soul was as corporeal as the body and that just because the body had been destroyed didn’t mean the soul had been too. She knew that it took tremendous effort to stay in the mortal plane and that, practically, most ghosts were not powerful enough to enact anything on the physical world around her. She knew this because, despite whatever her family might believe, Adaine was especially clever, because she helped Fabian with his homework and even though she wasn’t perfect, not like Aelwyn, she was still top of her class at Hudol, and she understood that there was no reason to be afraid of ghosts.
Still, Adaine was petrified of the one in her house. It started just a few days after the run-in with her mother, who Adaine was still unconvinced had not been replaced with a monstrous amalgamation of her, with a scratching at her door. At first, Adaine had watched the bottom of the wood for shadows, for the offending creature to move into her line of sight as she wished desperately that her door had a lock on it. It wasn’t until four nights in that a fleck of white paint floated to the ground and Adaine realized that whatever was doing this was inside her room.
Every night she watched harsh lines get dragged across her door, her walls. Always too close for comfort but too far away to pose a real danger. She’d just had to watch, frozen, from her bed and pray that the scratching didn’t come any closer.
She had not been trancing lately.
Fabian had been worried about her. She knew she was not handling this restlessness particularly well. She’d become broody and snippish in ways that made the space in between her joints contort in uncomfortable ways. She always felt bad the second the words left her mouth. A voice in her head that sounded distinctly like her mother’s always followed, this is not how proper girls act. Straighten up, Adaine. The snapping of her tendons kept her from apologizing.
Her mother had begun to end afternoon tea short. The past few weeks she had appeared at Seacaster Manor’s doorstep, eyes alight with a new hunger that had followed her back from Fallinel, to pluck her from whatever she was doing––these days, sparring with Mr. Seacaster (Captain Seacaster, he kept having to remind her) as she was too keyed up to do anything else really––and bring her home.
That was the most unsettling part, Adaine thought. Her mother watched her now. Her mother had looked at her before, a disinterested, appraising gaze, flitting between her and Aelwyn and finding what she found in Adaine to be distasteful; a cursory look, dismissive before Arianwen even found the words to scold her. But never like this: long stares at the breakfast table, studying every strand of hair out of place from her braid, every fine line in the growing shadows under her eyes. Scrutiny after school, when she and Aelwyn were relegated to private arcane study, Arianwen looming over the books in Adaine’s lap, the diagrams scribbled into parchment on the table. Sometimes, she even helped. Something was terribly wrong with her mother.
It took five weeks for Adaine to reach her limit and, really, she thought she deserved to be applauded for holding out that long. She had been feeling like a taut wire for days, every brush enough to make her snap back, a whiplash of targeted words and spells with reverberations just as violent. At home, this was directed towards Aelwyn, as they always pointed their anger towards each other, long since having lost the ability to sand down each other's rough edges.
She’d only managed to embarrass herself at Seacaster manor, one wayward comment to Cathilda of all people and the stern look that followed enough to send the tears that simmered below the surface, too afraid to spill over while the ghost dragged its talons across her walls, cascading down her cheeks.
At school she’d recoiled like a snake. Her relationship with her classmates at Hudol was tenuous on the best of days. This was not entirely her fault, it simply was the nature of her status. The Abernants had always been off-putting to the other Hudol students: too proper, too rude, too smart. Hudol had always been a poor approximation of the magic colleges in Fallinel, where centuries could be spent studying magic and still there would be more to know, but the Abernants were real High Elves, plucked from the capitol city, Stellemere, itself.
For Aelwyn, this manifested as untouchability. Her sister had been blessed with a magnetism that made people stumble over their own feet to impress her, even if they knew it would still not endear them to her. For Adaine, this manifested as disdain.
Adaine was sure that she had charms, but she was still the same girl in the pirate’s quarters on the ship from Fallinel, refined and honed in the walls of Seacaster Manor. Adaine knew how to bite. Most of the time they left her alone, but sometimes they pushed, egged her on, donning aggression like an overgrown jacket.
She wasn’t really paying attention to what Brixelby Timmons, a human boy who lived a few blocks away from her, whose parents were adventurers or worked for the Council of Chosen or something else important that made Brixelby think he was important too, was saying. It had something to do with how stuck up she was and how much her family must hate her, nothing new. It was true, which meant it wasn’t hurtful. Things that were real simply were in Adaine’s experience. If she allowed them to be hurtful, she’d be in a lot more pain than she was now. But she was tired and so scared it enraged her and it felt good, at least for a moment, to twist that ire back towards someone else.
She looked up from her book where she was sitting on a bench in the Lower School’s main courtyard. Late fall had fully settled in, and a harsh cold breeze ruffled the pleats of her skirt. Brixelby was alone, but she could see his cohort of similarly self important friends farther behind him, all listening in to see if they could take some credit in knocking Adaine down a peg. She set her hand beside her, smoothing her palm on the grey plastic.
“I think,” she said coolly, rolling the words on her tongue and feeling awfully like Aelwyn in this moment, “that you try to put down others to cover up that feeling in your gut that you are nothing and will amount to nothing. Perhaps if you focused more on your studies you wouldn't have to bully people into making your mommy and daddy love you.”
Upon reflection, there was no “feeling” about it, she’d taken that one from her sister word for word. Surprisingly, it hadn’t been directed at her.
Guilt ebbed at her as soon as Brixelby sprinted towards the school doors, his eyes already reddening as he left to go tattle. That was okay––for better or for worse the staff at Hudol preferred to let their students air out their differences amongst themselves––Adaine had not cast a spell on them, never needed to, so she would be fine. She did not actually like hurting people, despite how easy it was, just that under her skin was a roiling current as unforgiving as the sea and sometimes it just . . . spilled out.
That guilty feeling pulled at all her skin like rubber through the rest of her lunch period, well until she sat down in her seat for her Intermediate Abjurative Theory Class. It wasn’t until an exam was pressed face down on her desk that her concentration was startled.
Only then did her mind helpfully supply that the test her professor had droned about was today and not next week and really, all she could think about was the irony of the situation. Because of course it was an abjuration exam.
Adaine didn’t get abjuration the way that her sister did and no one in her life let her forget it. It didn’t matter that Aelwyn was as close to useless as was acceptable in their house in divination magic, just that Adaine’s lopsided, half-baked understanding of shields and protections was a failing and Aelwyn’s was not.
She opened the booklet and didn’t even have a chance to try and understand the questions before her vision started swimming and her face started getting hot and her mind ran on the same loop over and over again.
1. A Mage casts a spell using somatic, verbal, and material components. Three gold coins are––
Her eyes slid over the question and it refused to stick in her brain. She was painfully aware of her body––the feeling of the rough speckled plastic chairs muffled through the fabric of her skirt, her hand pressed into her desk, the prickling roughness pulling at the soft planes of her palm. She shook her head.
1. A Mage casts a spell using––
Adaine often felt there was a wall in her mind, and sometimes, when it really hated her, that wall slammed down and didn’t let anything in or out. Her breath rattled in her chest. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, leaving a hot patch of condensed sweat on her desk.
1. A Mage––
A strange keening sound was distracting her. Low, hunted. Her breath quickened. She couldn’t think, all she could focus on was the chant of failure failure failure and the punishment she knew was waiting for her when she got home.
A hand was laid on her shoulder and Adaine flinched so violently it almost threw her from her chair. The sound stopped and she realized, mortifyingly, it had been coming from her. Her own gasping thundered in her ears, blocking out whatever the professor was saying, thinning to a dull shriek, sounding dreadfully like the talons that scratched and clawed and taunted her and––
The rest of the day blurred.
She came to herself in the back seat of her mother’s car. Aelwyn was nowhere to be found. Adaine peeked out the window, the streets of Elmville rolling past them, the pink sunset tinged blue by the tinted windows. She must have needed to be picked up late. Her mother noticed her shifting and her gaze shot to the rearview mirror. Her mother’s eyes were a deep blue, darker than the near glacial ice of Adaine’s and her father’s, like Aelwyn’s if Adaine squinted. Adaine shrunk under its weight. Now this was familiar: discontent and disappointment. In a way she was relieved.
The silence stretched around them as Adaine tried not to look away. It would be easier if she faced her head on.
“You’re grounded for a month,” she said, in Elven to make sure that Adaine really understood. That was the worst part of moving to Solace, that Elven had become the language of punishment. “You have disappointed this family greatly today, Adaine. I hope you’ll use this time to reflect on your failings and stop, well, really, Adaine, stop throwing tantrums.”
Adaine bit her lip so hard she felt the soft flood of iron in her mouth. She nodded.
“If you did not have the foresight to study for an exam, you should have faced your failure outright, rather than crying and hoping you’d get your way,” Arianwen admonished. Adaine’s hands twisted over her seatbelt. She had pushed herself into the small space between the seat and the door, pulling the seatbelt across her neck like a shield. “Which you won’t. I spoke to your professor, even if your manipulations swayed him, your grade will be the one you earned.”
She hadn’t even thought about the possibility of making her exam up, the dream birthed and killed in her mother’s mouth. She nodded anyway before finally breaking eye contact. The car was warm, buffeting the encroaching winter air.
“Can I–– Can I still study at Seacaster Manor,” she ventured, words stilted. It was a shot in the dark but it was necessary, those few hours in a place where the walls were not riddled in tears only Adaine could see. “I only ever read there and I can make sure the maid keeps you updated on my studies and––”
She caught her mother’s eye once more and her voice died in her mouth. Arianwen looked hungry, her pupils blown wide and a little wild. Her mother tilted her head to the side. Adaine had made a mistake, shown her hand, proved that Seacaster Manor was something that mattered, that was worth taking from her and gods above her parents loved to take from her.
“No,” she said. Arianwen’s tongue flicked across her lips, leaving the glint of sharp canines in its wake. “In fact, you will stay with me.”
~~~
Fabian Aramais Seacaster was not a hero. This was not anything special. He was still only eleven and even his papa said he was going to write his name upon the world, not that he was ready to. What was special was that he did not want to be a hero.
He wasn’t like the other kids in his class, whose parents read them bedtime stories where good always won and knights in shining armor rescued princesses from dragons. Actually, Adaine had been scolding him lately about always having to be the princess. So maybe princesses in shining armor rescuing other princesses from dragons. Or knights in shining armor who happened to be women rescuing princes from dragons.
No, Fabian was raised in a home that knew the truth of the world: only the strongest survived and neither good nor evil had a say in that. His papa certainly wasn’t good. Fabian was still a kid but he wasn’t stupid––he knew the tornado made of gold and guests with more scars than unblemished skin were criminals, even if they showered Fabian with affection and brought him toys and trinkets from their travels. He knew from the way some of the kids in his class gave him a wide berth, their uppity parents warning them that he wasn’t safe to play with, that his papa had done bad things.
Papa certainly wasn’t evil either. He loved Fabian and Mama and Cathilda and in his own strange way he loved Adaine too. He gave Fabian anything he could want and then some and told him, every day, that Fabian would be great, better than great, even.
But Papa was strong and that was why he was still alive and so many of his enemies weren’t. That was what mattered. Papa was strong enough to survive and kill and protect those he loved or deemed worthy and it didn’t matter if he was good or evil he just was .
Fabian did not wish to be a hero because one day he was going to be a pirate. He was allowed to fight with real swords now and in his free time he studied battle strategy. Adaine taught him Blooming Blade and Green Flame Blade and the two worked out their energy or arguments or just plain had fun in matches that ended with them both exhausted, sweaty, and bloody. And one week out of every year his papa took him to Leviathan to get a taste for the sea and every time something in Fabian’s chest thrummed, a tenor of anticipation. He was going to be a pirate one day.
Despite that, he wished, now, that he were a hero. If only so it didn’t matter that he wasn’t strong enough yet, he could fix whatever was happening to his best friend.
Fabian knew, in the loosest of terms, that Adaine’s parents did not treat her the way his parents treated him. It was why she came alone every week, long before Cathilda thought she was old enough to do so, and why conversations about them (and after one blow-up fight when they were eight, Aelwyn) were off limits. To Adaine, and by extension Fabian, the Abernant name only existed outside the hull of Seacaster Manor.
Fabian made it a rule not to pry, mainly because it made Adaine sad, and Fabian had never known how to fix that, the duality of which twisted something sharp in his stomach. Partly because Adaine’s sadness always eventually became anger and Fabian had experienced the unpleasant development of Papa teaching her how to hit things firsthand. And a little bit because Ms. Abernant was still a close friend of Mama. Supposedly.
But he didn’t know how to fix this without prying. The volatility had been one thing. It smarted, yes, that the Adaine who leaned on his shoulder after a match and explained the more complicated questions he had quietly and slowly had shrunken away, but Fabian could deal, it was only temporary. Adaine could be mean, but it didn’t set him off how it normally would, not when he could see just how sick his best friend looked. Besides, Fabian was mean too, and had a playground rap sheet to back it up, so when she started snapping randomly at him, they fought it out like they always did and by the end, it felt like her bristled exterior had loosened just a notch and that everything would be okay eventually.
Even if it was tense, and Adaine had cried after yelling at Cathilda and her visits ended with them both bleeding more often than not, her absence, Fabian surmised, was decidedly worse. She was still his best friend. She’d taught him magic. They played together all the time. He missed her. Adaine hadn’t been to Seacaster Manor in three weeks and Fabian was almost to the point of knocking on the Abernant door just to get confirmation she was alive.
He knew that was silly. Of course she was alive, she was a kid and the daughter of a pretty important diplomat, and if she was dead, if she was even missing, her name would be all over the news before Fabian even had a chance to wonder if something was wrong. But that was still where his mind jumped. He even made Mama send a note to Ms. Abernant, asking if she was sick and when she’d be coming back.
Silence.
He waited, impatiently, every week for a knock at the door that wouldn’t come. Even his parents seemed concerned, Mama fretting over whether or not Adaine had decided she didn't like tea time anymore and Papa musing if she'd gotten herself jailed for her exploits yet, and they never worried about anything, ever. So the next day at school, Fabian hoisted his backpack over his shoulder, and while his classmates ran onto the concrete during lunch and his teachers broke up a fight, he slinked away towards Hudol College.
He was old enough to know that Hudol College was just its name and it wasn’t an actual university. Sometimes he still teased Adaine for it, because she was the smartest person ever, which always earned him a swat at the elbow, not hard enough to hurt just enough to be there, but he knew it was just a way for a fancy private school to seem fancier than it was. Adaine said wizards were just Like That.
Hudol College did, however, look like a college. He’d seen a few on fantasy TV on the rare occasions he and Adaine decided to watch a movie, something she was not allowed to do at home, apparently, and they looked eerily similar. Tall stone walls, spiraling towers, arched doors and windows that reminded him of the cathedrals across town. Fabian loitered across the street from the main entrance and watched crowds of students from the Upper School spill on to the main lawn.
The Upper School was let out a full half hour before the Lower School, Adaine’s school, was. Aelwyn was a first year in the Upper School this year. Fabian briefly debated tracking her down. Aelwyn was, at her core, a ruder, worse Adaine, but Fabian didn’t really mind her. He hadn’t seen her in a few years, not since Ms. Abernant stopped coming by the manor, but Fabian remembered that she was funny. He wondered if she cared enough to make sure Adaine was okay for him. He didn’t like that he didn’t know the answer.
Instead, he ducked behind a car parked on the side of the road and waited for the Lower School to get out. Through the car’s window, he watched Upper School students mill about and felt his heart stutter every time there was a flash of blond hair.
When he finally spotted Adaine, one of the last lower students to trail out, her book bag slung haphazardly over her shoulder, his heart did not stutter. It threatened to stop.
Her hair was loosely braided over her shoulder, a display or plaits and twists too complex for Fabian to follow. It was a holdover from her Fallinese upbringing, she’d told him once, where braids were indicators of status and care and family. She missed Fallinel more than the rest of her family, he thought. It was apparent in the way her face lit up whenever they spoke Elvish together or the times Cathilda did her hair. Her Hudol uniform was neatly pressed, not a wrinkle out of place.
She looked as she always did, perfectly put together. Pretty. But Fabian knew Adaine better than anyone else. He had seen her happy more often than not, at her best practicing a spell or breathless after a fight. He had seen her angry many times, over her parents or sister or classmates. He had even seen her sad a few times, funneling into sharp words and picked skin.
Adaine looked haunted. Her skin was sallow, pulled taut over her cheekbones. Dark bags sagged under her eyes, which were sharpened to a point, darting across the main lawn.
Fabian was running over to her before he knew what his legs were doing, barreling across the street and onto the freezing grass.
“Adaine!” He called, stuttering to a stop in front of her. He swayed for a moment, arms raised slightly at his side before he rushed into her, squeezing her tight against him. Her clothes were cold, the frigid chill of the December air seeping into the fabric, but under that, she was warm.
Instead of returning his embrace, like she normally would, like she was supposed to, Adaine flinched violently, like Fabian’s skin was on fire. He let her go, something sharp pressing against the walls of his throat. Her expression was wide eyed and petrified. “I’m sorry. Are you hurt or something? I just––I hadn’t seen you and I was––well I wasn’t worried but Cathilda was and––”
Adaine’s face collapsed and she sprang at him, wrapping her arms tightly around his chest, her torso trembling slightly. Fabian gingerly cradled her shoulders, his breath tight in his chest. He didn’t know what to do. He was not good at emotion, never had been. Part of their connection was that Adaine was not either, they both stumbled over their words and relied on what was unsaid to keep them going. He didn’t know how to fix this.
“Are you okay?’ He offered lamely.
Whatever had allowed Adaine to collapse disappeared. She froze in his grasp and straightened, pushing a curly strand of hair behind her ear.
“Yes, I’m––” she licked her lips, glancing around nervously. “I’m fine, Fabian.”
Fabian knit his brows. He grabbed her hand. “But––”
She wrenched it away. Her breathing quickened as she backed away. “I’m just grounded. I need to go.” She craned her neck around his head, he followed her gaze and recognized the sleek black of Arianwen Abernant’s car.
“Adaine, what’s going on?” He pleaded with her. All he needed was something, then he could go get Papa or Cathilda or someone who was strong and powerful to do something.
“I’ll see you soon, I promise. Please don’t come back.” Adaine sped away, throwing herself into the back of the car, which peeled off immediately, Fabian left breathless in its wake.
He wandered home, defeated, a few minutes later, the interaction replaying over and over again in his mind. She had been right there. He tried to think of what his papa would do. Kidnap her, probably. Skewer Ms. Abernant’s heart where she stood. Hell, even Cathilda would have grabbed Adaine’s wrist and dragged her back to Seacaster Manor herself. It was Fabian who couldn’t do that. Who’d stood there, uselessly, while Adaine trembled in his grasp and remained frozen when she escaped.
A hero would not have frozen. A pirate would have ended the whole ordeal then and there. Fabian stood outside the front door to the manor. He gripped the hilt of his blade, freshly sharpened, painfully aware it had never been in a real battle. He wasn’t a hero, wasn’t a pirate. He was just Fabian.
He’d have to change that.