Chapter 101: Is This Even Shade?
The cool, almost biting air of the hallway offered little comfort. As soon as the final echo of the latch faded, Eirin’s knees buckled beneath her. Her hand flew to her mouth, fingers pressed hard against her lips, stifling a desperate, guttural gag. The bitter aftertaste of the tea, that noxious brew, clung to her tongue.
’What kind of tea was that?’ Eirin wondered, her mind reeling, consumed by the burning sensation in her throat and the violent clenching of her stomach. She braced herself against the cool wall, desperately trying to hold back the tide of nausea, to prevent the humiliating act of vomiting right into the pristine, polished hallway.
"Hey, what’s wrong with you?"
Shade’s voice, rough around the edges yet surprisingly laced with genuine concern, cut through the dizzying fog in her mind. Eirin turned her head slowly, blinking, her vision blurring at the edges. He stood a few feet away, his brow furrowed, his dark eyes fixed on her with an unusual intensity.
The directness of his question, and the faint worry in his tone, was so unexpected, so unlike the Shade Cromwell she knew, that Eirin felt a jolt of confusion, a new layer to her disorientation amidst her acute physical distress.
"What’s wrong with you?" Eirin managed to turn the question around, her voice a strained, reedy croak, thin as a ghost’s whisper. Her face, she knew, must be pasty, paler than a sheet of freshly bleached parchment, reflecting the sickly pallor of her churning stomach. A low, ominous growl rumbled deep within her gut, a sound that seemed to echo in the silent, gleaming corridor.
The young man raised a brow, a flicker of his usual disdain returning, though it seemed tempered, almost hesitant, as if even his innate rudeness was affected by the situation.
"You look like a struggling dog," he said, his lips curling in a faint, familiar sneer.
The words, so reminiscent of their barbed exchanges, of that one time they’d fought in the dusty training field during Eirin’s turbulent first week at the Academy, brought a strange, almost comforting sense of familiarity. It was a known jab, a small anchor in a sea of unsettling change.
"And here I thought you were being worried—guess I was deluding myself," Eirin whispered, the words coated with disappointment, her voice barely audible above the persistent ringing in her ears, the dull ache behind her eyes.