Page 110 of Vicious Knight

“Yes, and you can create music.” I feel like I’m trying to pick him apart. It’s difficult because he’s so closed off. He only allows you to see what he wants you to see. “Who taught you? You didn’t just pick that up.”

“My mother.” He looks away but I catch the sadness dulling his eyes.

I feel sad, too, at the mention of his mother.

“Everyone in her family could play the piano. It was a skill they all learned from way back. We lived in Russia when I was little. I learned to play the piano before I could even speak properly. It was my second language.”

“I’d love to hear you play sometime.”

“Yeah, maybe. I haven’t done it in a while.”

“How long?”

“Over ten years. I found it difficult after my family… died.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

He gives my hand a gentle squeeze. “I wanted you to.”

We stare at each other for a moment before we look back ahead of us at the shadowy path.

“Where did the name Ivy come from? You look more like an Annika.”

“It was my grandmother’s name. It’s funny, I never stopped thinking as Annika. Sometimes when people call me Ivy I don’t know who they're talking about.” It feels strangely freeing to talk to him like this, probably because I don’t have anyone else I can share these things with.

“I think of you as both, little deer.” He holds my gaze, and I realize this is a new side of him I haven’t seen. It’s a tamer side that I don’t think many get to discover.

We continue down a path that’s different to where I’ve been before. It’s older with a gathering of giant oak trees that look like they’ve been there since the beginning of time.

“We’re here.” Thorne points to the thickest tree which has a set of wooden steps going around the trunk.

I suck in a breath. How could I have missed this?

“It’s beautiful. This was here the whole time?”

“Yes. The whole time. All your exploring, and you never found this place?”

“No.”

“It’s called Freyja’s Grove, after the Norse goddess.”

“Wow.” I look around and he studies me as I take it all in.

“Come on. Wait until you see everything else.”

“There’s more?”

“So much more.” He tugs on my hand, beckoning me to follow.

We take the steps all the way to the top of the tree. Being so high up in the air feels amazing. It's at least forty feet.

Right at the top is a little platform you can’t see from the ground below us. The expanse of branches and leaves from the trees hides it, but it pushes right out to the middle of the river. The intricate vines wrapping around the structure have the same medieval Gothic design as the rest of the campus. I feel like I just stepped into a fantasy.

Thorne leads me across the platform. “Look down.”

I do, and when I stare down into the water and see a colossal statue of a woman with a shield and a sphere under the water, the air leaves my body.

The moonlight casts its silver glow down on it, but there’s a set of underwater lights that illuminate the statue, bringing it to life.