“What do you mean?”
He lets a few seconds pass by, his eyes scanning my face lovingly and fingers gently caressing my own. “Before I tell you, I need you to know that this changes nothing about who you are. At your core, Rhea, you aregood.And kind and absolutely perfect.”
A different tension makes my heart begin to race as my eyes bounce between his.
“I have seen you use your shadow magic twice. Once was right after I told you about Alexi.”
“What?”
“Your magic surged out of you so forcefully, I barely had time to shield against it with my own. It wasstrong. It reached the plants in the corners of the room and sucked them dry, turning them into something brittle and lifeless.” My gaze falls to one of those plants still sitting there—dead and completely black. I don’t realize that my chest is heaving until Nox leaves his chair to kneel at my side. “Breathe, Sunshine.”
I shake my head, my hands trembling in his as I rasp, “I remember succumbing to the feeling I had—this cold, dark power running through my veins. If that’s what I did to plants, what would I do toyou? What if I hurt you, Nox?” Gods, what if I hurtanyone?
“You didn’t. And you won’t.”
“What happened the other time?” I ask, already apprehensive of the answer.
Alarm flashes over his features before his throat works with a swallow. “The night we escaped from the tower, when you healed me in the meadow, do you remember what happened with the two guards that approached us?”
“They never reached us. I was able to heal you before they did.” I remembered it clearly. I looked back and saw them coming and then started healing Nox’s wound. I had found it strange that they hadn’t reached us before we were able to get away, but I figured that time had gotten distorted in my memory. That the stress and panic of trying to heal Nox and of exposing my magic to him had perhaps made it seem like time had falsely slowed down.
“No, they made it to us just as you started healing me. They arrived side by side, and one of them laid a hand on your shoulder.”
A spark of memory flashes—a weight on my shoulder, an ear piercing scream.It’s like I have all the pieces of a puzzle scattered out in front of me and I’m left to sort them until they come together and make sense.
“You screamed,” Nox continues, “and then your eyes… They went totally black. Shadows exploded from your body in the blink of an eye, there and gone, and the men went flying back.”
I drop my gaze from his as another memory comes to light, another piece of the puzzle. This one is of icy cold flowing through me and my vision becoming slightly obscured, like a black veil had been placed over my eyes. “You told me not to look back. Why?”
“Rhea, it’s alright.”
No.No, it’s not alright. “Why did you tell me not to look back?” I sit with the memory—those heart-stopping moments when I healed him.
His mouth opens and closes, words he’s trying not to say the only ones that must be coming up as he clamps his mouth shut again. Then, the final puzzle piece clicks into place: the King’s Guardsman in the woods holding Bella captive.
You already have two guards’ deaths on your hands.
“I killed them, didn’t I?” I barely say the words. Afraid that if I speak them too loudly, there will be retribution against me. Or maybe I’m afraid that speaking them aloud will confirm they are true. That it will affirm that there is indeed something monstrous about me. Something that makes me more like my uncle than I ever want to be.
“This doesn’t change who you are,” he repeats, his eyes boring into mine.
“Did I kill them?”
Nox cradles the side of my face, his thumb brushing over my cheek in reassuring strokes. But it doesn’t erase the feeling of a dagger plunging into my heart when he answers, “Yes.”
The next few moments are a numbing blur filled with Nox’s whispered words of reassurance in my ear, his body holding mine up as I struggle to take breaths between my heaving sobs. I had never wanted magic, this disastrous power that was now running through my veins. I had never wanted this kind ofresponsibility.
Selene had said my magic held balance, but what sort of balance could be found in this? I could apparentlymurder,but I didn’t have the ability to give life back? There is no equilibriumin that, no sense of symmetry. How am I somehow supposed to bealrightwith that?
“I will help you train with your magic, help you learn to master it. Everything else will come with time as you begin to explore your freedom, Rhea. Selene is right; you should take as much time as you need to figure out who you are.”
It is odd to have him talk of Selene—to reference the Middle—without hesitation.
Nox continues, his voice achingly soft. “This doesn’t have to be something that derails you, Sunshine. This can be a moment where you begin to own your power.”
So much talk of power—something I had always thought I had none of back in that tower but was now apparently brimming with here. “Does my magic frighten you?” I ask him. I wouldn’t blame him if it did. It terrifiesme. Nox surprises me when he responds by laughing, making me scowl against his chest. “That isn’t a funny question.”
“No, it isn’t. But I think this will help you understand why I’m laughing.”
