“I want to try something.”
Em sidestepped a slashing sword maneuver by Amund, then made a vicious cut at his body, which he managed to deflect. That was how all their attacks ended—a hairsbreadth from severing a limb.
“For the record, watching you two is stressing me out.”
Their movements were fast as hell. Faster than the battle practice Lex had witnessed inside Garrin’s court. But in this battle play, Em seemed to be giving it everything she had.
Energy wafted off Em, so much so that Lex could easily detect it. Not so much Em’s power level, which only Amund and Camille were good at reading, but the cocktail of energy that made up her unique magic. And the magic she used to levitate was different from what she used to Blend.
Lex saw her window of opportunity and yelled, “Now!”
Em leapt into the air and levitated. Only this time, she didn’t fall a second or two later. She remained rooted on invisible strings powered by Lex.
Em’s arms swung in the air, and she nearly dropped her sword when her natural landing didn’t come.
Lex blinked, her eyes burning, unable to hold the magic.
A few seconds later, Em landed on the ground, her sword at her side. She looked over in surprise. “Can you boost my magic and someone else’s at the same time?”
Lex’s hands shook as her mind relaxed and she regained her strength. “I don’t know.” The amount of concentration it had taken to hold Em’s magic was intense.
She glanced at Garrin, but he was already staring at her. And he wasn’t alone.
Everyone in the room was staring. The only person who didn’t appear surprised was her mother, standing off to the side with a smug look on her face.
“Do it again.” Em bent her knees in a ready stance.
“Reading your power and pushing it back at you took mental energy, Em. I don’t know if I can do it right away. Pretty sure I can’t hold you there and boost someone else’s power at the same time.”
Isle stepped forward. “You can, if you split your mind.”
Had she lost it? “I’m a decent multitasker, but I’m pretty sure I can’t do that,” Lex said.
“As a human, no, but you are no longer human, daughter. Only your memory tells you that you are.”
Garrin sent Isle a cutting look. “And who is to blame for that? You wiped her consciousness, leaving scraps behind.”
“I did what any mother would—I saved my child’s life. Fromyourfather, Dark Prince, if you recall. Even if my daughter had been fully grown and capable of her magic, she could not have stood against the Dark King and his soldiers.”
Isle paced the cave. “There was a reason I hid, and not simply because I was of noble blood and Casone would have wished me to be a part of his court. I feared your father finding Lex and discovering who she was. Of him discoveringwhatshe was.”
Lex pinched her eyes closed. What was her mother talking about now?
Isle stopped pacing and leveled a look at Garrin. “Regardless of my desperate actions, your father figured it out. When, I do not know. I thought I had hidden us well, but I worry now it wasn’t me Casone wanted the day he buried me. Zirel’s kin said the Dark King heard tale of my daughter—and of her father.”
Garrin’s brow furrowed. “Who was her father?”
Lex huffed out a breath. “Whoever it was, he wasn’t in my life.”
“Of course he was,” Isle said. “He simply was not of this realm, preferring to watch over you from afar.”
“A human?” Garrin shook his head. “Impossible. Her power is like none in our land. We’ve already determined she isn’t Halven but full Fae.”
Isle raised one eyebrow. “No, not Halven.”
Garrin’s jaw clenched. “Speak plainly. There is no other realm besides Tirnan and the Earth realm.”
“Is there not?” Isle slowly looked around the room. “There is a realm from which we all hail. From which our forefathers came.”
