by Lynette Noni
By those words alone, Bear made the presumption—or at least hoped—that Fitzy would remain focused, and he launched into his explanation, pulling out the sphere and expanding the holographic plans for Fitzy to flick through. He then shared his own designs for the spring-release device that would distribute the aerated solutions as far as possible from the detonation point. All of which would be contained within the space pocket inside each small black sphere.
Once Bear was finished, he looked at Fitzy, waiting with baited breath to hear what he would say. Long moments passed as the professor scoured through the various notes and fiddled with the prototype Johnny had stolen from the vault, but finally, Fitzy turned to Bear.
When he did, Bear froze upon seeing tears in his professor’s eyes. But then Fitzy blinked and they were gone, quick enough for Bear to wonder if he’d imagined it—as well as the pride he’d seen right there along with those tears.
“I’ll contact your brother Jeffrey first thing in the morning,” Fitzy said. “Together with his politician girlfriend, we’ll get started on all this at once.”
Bear didn’t bother to remind Fitzy about Johnny’s name—nor did he correct him about Jeera being a Warden who was dating Blake, not Johnny.
“Let me know if there’s anything else I can help with, sir,” Bear offered as he stood and started back towards the exit of the room. “If my presumptions about this device are correct, it could save a lot of lives. I’m happy to do whatever it takes to refine the design further and make it as effective as possible.”
Fitzy followed Bear over to the door, opening it for him and watching as he stepped through.
“You’ve already done more than enough, my boy,” the professor said. He then added, quietly enough that Bear nearly missed it, “I knew I could count on you, Barnold.”
Bear inhaled a sharp breath, his shocked eyes meeting Fitzy’s. Not once in four years had the professor managed to get his name right. And right there for Bear to see were the tears again, the pride splashed clearly across Fitzy’s features.
Reaching out an arm, the professor clamped a hand on Bear’s shoulder, giving a heartening squeeze. “Well done, Bear. Well done, indeed.”
And then the professor released him, sent him a smile and closed the door between them.
The breath Bear loosed was shuddering, full of unexpected emotion. But then he shook his head and a quiet laugh left him. Jeera, it seemed, had indeed been right about Fitzy’s acting game. What purpose it played, Bear didn’t know. But his professor was apparently just as sane as the rest of them.
… Aside, perhaps, from his choice of robe, shoes, earmuffs and mug.
Chuckling to himself, Bear started down the stairs, intent on heading straight back to his dormitory. It was now after curfew but he wasn’t worried—if anyone caught him, he could explain about visiting Fitzy and hopefully the professor would confirm his story. Even so, he kept his pace swift as he left the Tower and strode across the cold campus, the chill in the air making him almost wish for his own pair of googly-eyed earmuffs.
Bear was just rounding the food court and on a trajectory straight for the entrance to the dormitory building when a shadowy figure caught his gaze—someone moving away from the dorms.
At first, Bear wondered if it was Alex, given her secretive comings and goings of late. But upon closer inspection, the figure was much too large. Even if she’d donned thick snow gear, she never could have reached the height and bulk of whoever was slinking across the grounds. Indeed, Bear could only think of one person who was that size, and when the figure turned just enough for the moonlight to splash across their face, Bear knew he was right.
It was Declan—and he was clearly up to something, if his hurried pace and sketchy, late-night escape were any indication.
Because of that, rather than continuing on to his nice, warm bed, Bear instead turned and followed after the other boy, trailing him from a distance across the grounds and eventually into the Ezera Forest.
They continued walking long enough that Bear considered turning back, but with each step, his curiosity grew. Where was Declan going? Was he meeting someone? Was he just out for an evening stroll? Or… was something more sinister afoot?
No—given what Bear knew about the other boy, he didn’t think there was anything suspicious to be worried about. At least, no more suspicious than a middle-of-the-night walk in the asscrack of winter. That he couldn’t account for. But he was intrigued enough to continue onwards, careful to maintain a short distance between them to keep Declan from noticing he was being tailed.
Once they had travelled far enough from the academy that they were outside the wards, Declan finally came to a stop. But he only did so in order to throw a Bubbler vial to the ground and step through.
Bear had seconds to decide what to do, but his curiosity won and he ran forward, entering the Bubbledoor just moments before it disappeared from sight.
Five
“I think there’s a good reason why you never made it into Hunter’s Stealth and Subterfuge class.”
Bear flinched upon hearing Declan’s words the moment he arrived out the other side of the Bubbledoor—and upon seeing the other boy looking at him with an amused expression, complete with arched eyebrow.
“Uh, hi,” Bear said, shifting his boots through the lush grass underfoot—grass that crackled only slightly with frost but had no snow on it. “Fancy seeing you here.”
Declan snorted. “You’ve been following me since right after I left the dorm building. It’s hardly a surprise—to either of us.”
Bear was disgruntled to learn that Declan had been aware of him all along. But he knew there were much more pressing things for him to focus on—the main one being where they were now standing.
An eerie feeling settled upon him as he took in their surroundings, from the lightly rolling hills bathed in moonlight to the holo-trees swaying in an invisible breeze. Bear knew exactly where they were. Just as he knew they were alone.
… But they were also not.
“Why are we here, Declan?” Bear asked, fearing the answer. “Why are we at Hallowgate?”
Declan walked slowly forward, careful to keep his feet on the perfectly maintained grass. “I come here every year,” he said quietly. “On the anniversary of my parents’ deaths.”
Silence fell between them, with Bear lost for words as Declan continued leading the way along the manicured paths. At their feet were rows upon rows of circular glass plaques dotted further than Bear’s eyes could see. But he knew they weren’t just plaques.
They were headstones.
Glass headstones.
Because Hallowgate was a cemetery—the largest human graveyard in Medora. And surrounding Bear and Declan beneath the rolling hills and moonlit pastures were innumerable bodies of the dead.
Including, apparently, Declan’s parents.
Minutes passed as Bear followed the other boy along the grassy walkways and in between copses of holo-trees intermingling throughout the cemetery, offering an enchanted feel to the otherwise spooky scenery.
Bear had only been to Hallowgate once before, when he’d accompanied Jordan to visit Luka’s gravesite three years ago. It had been a rainy, miserable day—the very opposite of the crisp, clear night currently surrounding them. Then, Bear had been so cold that he’d been trembling in his boots, feeling not just the rain soaking through his clothes but also the all-pervading melancholy that not even the colourful trees could erase. The same feeling settled upon Bear now, but there was also a balminess to the air that had him considering removing his coat, for while the temperature was fresh, it was nothing compared to the wintry cold they’d left back at the academy.
Before Bear could decide, Declan came to a halt beside a single glass circle that was nestled in between two drooping holo-trees. He knelt down and ran a hand over the glass, brushing aside the flecks of grass and fine layer of dirt that dusted the transparent surface.
At his touch, the glass came to life.
What was before a clear, unmarred slab now had words rising up out of it. A holo-message.
IN LOVING MEMORY OF RANDON STIRLING FATHER, HUSBAND, SON AND FRIEND WHO WALKED IN STRENGTH AND SHARED HIS HEART UNTIL THE VERY END
Bear read the words twice before they dissolved in the air, replaced by four more words:
GONE, BUT NEVER FORGOTTEN
And then those disappeared, too, the space above the glass empty once more.
“Randon—your dad?” Bear asked, his voice barely more than a whisper.
“Yeah,” Declan replied, still crouched beside the grave. He pulled a knife from his belt and sliced the blade lightly along the pad of his index finger, holding his hand above the glass until a drop of blood dripped down onto the plaque.
If Bear hadn’t witnessed Jordan do something similar three years ago and seen what the bloodletting prompted, he would have cried out in alarm at what happened next.
Upon activation by a blood relative, footage rose up from the glass showing a three-dimensional holo-image of a man. From his dark skin, hair and eyes to his broad shoulders and immense height, there was no doubt in Bear’s mind that this was Declan’s father. And at Randon’s side—there was Declan himself.
No more than five or six at the time, Declan was staring up at his dad with a gap-toothed grin on his face—a grin that only stretched when Randon picked him up and threw him into the air before catching him again. The footage didn’t allow for audio, but the child-Declan was clearly giggling with glee as his dad threw him over and over again.
When a woman walked into the scene, Randon paused and held Declan still in his arms. As pale as they were dark, she was smiling widely at them both, her joy evident for all to see. Randon wrapped his free arm around her as she leaned in and kissed Declan on the cheek, the young boy’s beaming face revealing exactly how he felt while basking in the love of his parents.
Knowing that their story didn’t have a happy ending, Bear’s heart ached as he watched the recording play out once more before it faded like smoke, the glass plaque revealing nothing else.
“It happened when I was thirteen—just a few months before I started at Akarnae,” Declan said, still kneeling and staring down at the glass. “There was an accident at my dad’s workplace. Some cables snapped and—” Declan drew in a shuddering breath. “He was crushed. It was quick. Painless, they told me.”
Bear didn’t know what to do, what to say. He reached out and laid a hand on Declan’s shoulder, kneeling beside him, offering whatever comfort his silence could provide.
“Your mum?” Bear asked quietly. “You said—both of them—” He paused. “Is she… somewhere here, too?”
Only then did Declan look up from the plaque, blinking back tears that never fell from his eyes. “No,” he said, his voice shaky. “She’s not really dead. Just dead to me.”
Bear had no idea how to respond to such a statement.
“When my dad died, she couldn’t handle it,” Declan explained. “She tried—I know she did. But every time she looked at me, she flinched, until soon enough she stopped looking at me at all.” Another shuddering breath. “Jaxon said it was because I look so much like my dad that my mum couldn’t bear it. She loved him with all her heart, and seeing me was a constant reminder of everything she’d lost.”
Softly, carefully, Bear asked, “What happened?”
“She took off two weeks after Dad died,” Declan said in an emotionless voice. “I haven’t seen her in over five years.”
Cold seeped into Bear’s veins—cold that had nothing to do with the steadily falling temperature. “She abandoned you?”
“Jaxon did everything he could to try and find her. He’d lost his son, but I’d lost my dad and my mum, all within the space of a fortnight.”
“Did he ever—”
“Once. A year and a half after she left.” Declan’s tone was dark when he said, “He found her playing happy families with another man and his children, determined to forget the husband she’d lost and the son she never wanted to lay eyes on again.”
“Declan,” Bear whispered, but there was nothing more he could say. Nothing that could ease the pain he saw in the other boy’s eyes.
“The funny thing is,” Declan whispered back, “I don’t blame her. Even if I can’t forgive her for leaving me, I understand why she did. But Dad…” He trailed off, running his fingers over the plaque again, the holographic words rising up at his touch. Gone, but never forgotten. “I think about him every day.”
Three years ago, Bear had knelt beside a similar grave, with Jordan whispering the exact same words to him about his brother.
‘I think about him every day.’
Just as Bear had done then, he said to Declan now, “Tell me about him.”
And as Jordan had once shared, so too did Declan.
He told Bear how his dad used to grow their own vegetables and cooked pasta from scratch; how he would read to him every night before tucking him in so tight that he could barely roll over. Declan spoke about the vacations they’d taken, the dreams they’d shared, the life they’d experienced, the future they’d planned. He said little about his mum, but the love he felt for his dad was shining in his eyes as he told Bear all about his childhood, including the horrific day he learned about Randon’s accident.
“Jaxon might be a bastard, but he was there for me through it all, and I’ll always be grateful to him for that,” Declan said. “Especially when he took me in after Mum left. The last thing the old codger wanted was to take care of a young, grief-stricken teenager, but he didn’t leave me to fend for myself—even if he complained every single day.”
Bear was amazed to see a hint of a smile on Declan’s face. Despite his words, he clearly held some kind of affection towards his notoriously churlish grandfather.
“I’m… glad you have him,” Bear said.
Declan barked out a laugh. “You wouldn’t be saying that if you knew him.”
Bear’s own lips curled upwards. “I have heard he can be a bit… difficult.”
Declan laughed again. “Alex, right?”
“Amongst others.”
Mostly, it was Bear’s dad who had grumbled over the years about the cantankerous royal advisor. But even William somehow still managed to do so with the same kind of affection that Declan was exhibiting.
“He’s awful,” Declan said, straight up. “But for better or worse, he’s all I have. And I’m who I am today because of him.”
“That says a lot about him—and about you.”
Bear couldn’t believe that the boy kneeling beside him was the same one who walked around the academy so comfortably, so confidently, so cheerfully. What Declan had been through—Bear couldn’t imagine it. Couldn’t imagine the horror of losing one parent, let alone two. And he couldn’t imagine how he would go on afterwards, how he would find that inner strength that was so apparent in Declan.
“At the risk of sounding really…” Bear didn’t know what word to use, so he moved on and said, “I think you’re pretty amazing, Declan.”
Even in the shadows of the night, a hint of colour touched Declan’s dark cheeks. But Bear felt he owed it to the other boy to be honest, especially after everything Declan had shared with him.
What he didn’t want was for Declan to feel uncomfortable, so Bear was quick to grin and add, “Even if you do lose points for drugging me against my will.”
“Admit it, you felt better after your nap,” Declan said, now grinning too as he brushed his fingers one last time against the glass and stood to his feet, holding a hand out to help Bear up.
“I admit nothing,” Bear said, dusting off his jeans once he was standing. “But I will say that I’ve never slept more in my life than I did last weekend.”
“And I will say that you’re welcome,” Declan returned. He held Bear’s eyes and, much quieter, said, “And just so you know… I think you’re pretty amazing, too.”
The words washed over Bear like sunshine on a cloudy day, wa
rming him from the inside out. He smiled softly in response, fighting the heat now touching his own cheeks.
With so much already shared between them that night, there was little else for them to say as together they turned and headed back towards the entrance of the cemetery. Once clear of Hallowgate’s wards, Declan activated their return Bubbledoor. They then trekked through the forest to the academy in companionable silence, finally reaching the dormitory building and escaping the miserable cold.
It was only when they ascended to the third floor and were about to part ways on the staircase that Declan spoke again—the first words uttered between them since leaving Randon’s grave.
“Thank you—for tonight. For following me.”
“I think you mean ‘stalking’.”
A huff of laughter. “I mean it, B. Not even Kaiden knows I go there every year. I usually have to get through that on my own. It was… easier, tonight. Having you there.”
For the umpteenth time that evening, Bear didn’t know what to say. So he let his actions speak for him, stepping forward and pulling Declan into a tight embrace, holding him close. Just as he’d said to Jordan days earlier, he croaked out, “If you ever need to talk, I’m here. I mean that.”
Declan took his time pulling back, but when he did, he met Bear’s steady gaze and repeated, “Thank you. That—” His voice cracked, so he cleared his throat and tried again. “That means a lot.”
Bear squeezed his arm. “Any time, Declan. Day or night.”
Declan only nodded, but then he returned, “Same for you, B. Any time. Any reason.”
Bear offered a half grin and, seeking to lighten the mood, said, “You’ll likely regret that offer. Don’t forget who I hang out with.”
Amusement flashed across Declan’s features. “You probably need your very own therapist just to get through each day.”
“You have no idea,” Bear said, sighing comically.
And with Declan’s laughter still ringing in his ears, he took off down the hallway to his bedroom, before collapsing onto his bed fully clothed. The day’s events finally caught up to him, prompting his eyes to close as he began to drift off into a deep sleep… with a smile on his face.
