And Merrick knew my sisters, or some of them. He knew Erena. It’s close enough, when there is nobody else.
The words spill out. Merrick’s head tilts, the stew left to simmer as he settles back on his stool. My voice shifts tosomething bitter. “I amuseless. I cannot use my own maegis. I am a bystander.”
He studies me before nodding at my hands, still clutching the empty stems. “Why don’t you give it a try? I’m not a faeyte, of course, but I am still a Traveler. Perhaps I can help.”
My heart leaps inside my chest. “Right now?”
Merrick’s smile is half-amused, half-soft. He would make a good teacher, I think. “The first part of learning something new is learning not to be afraid of it. I’m here. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
His steady words are surprisingly reassuring.
I put the stems down, brushing off my palms before I flex my hands, opening and closing them into fists before holding them out, palm-up.
I jolt when Merrick’s hands cup mine from underneath.
“Breathe,” he says. I look up into his blue eyes. The lines on his face squeeze and flex, and I wonder how old he is. Only fifty winters, perhaps. Maybe a few more. “And concentrate. Empty your mind of other thoughts, Selene. You would have been taught this much, I think.”
I was never very good at it. But I do as he says and close my eyes, as I was taught.
Merrick waits, patient as he holds my wrists steady, letting my hands rest on his. It takes me a few minutes to find the quiet. For my breathing to slip into the old rhythm, my chest rising and falling slower than any natural movement.
“Good. Search for it.” The words are slow, and soft. Not interrupting, but nudging the edges of my mind. “Find your maegis, Selene. Call it to you. It will listen.”
I have been too scared to even try to look since Callan removed the cuff. As if there might be nothing there. As if it might have abandoned me, like everyone else.
But I can’t hide forever.
Taking another, fortifying breath, I search for that elusive place inside my mind, hoping it opens to me.Second sight, my sisters had always called it, the few times that I had persuaded them into answering my incessant questions.
The ability to look within, to see something other than the physical world around us.
But they had never told me exactly what I wouldseewhen I found it.
My lips part on a gasp, the images in my mind wavering before they steady once more. “It’severywhere.”
My maegis… itglows. “I didn’t expect there to be so much of it.”
“How does it look?”
I reach for some, attempting to touch it with phantom hands. My words sound as though they come from far away. “Like ribbons of light. They glow like silver, almost, but illuminated. They’re very bright.”
A pale blue cavern of beautiful, endless light is what I see. Hundreds of ribbons of maegis stand in my mind’s eye. They remind me of the rose-colored quartz stalactites and stalagmites that had jutted from the floor and ceiling of the caverns behind the Falls each winter, glittering and ethereal and lethal in their beauty.
This, too, is beautiful. But fear has me stilling, my breathing coming in smaller pants.
Because it feels as though I’m being watched. Judged. Sweat prickles on the back of my neck as I gingerly reach out once more. The silvery, jagged piece I attempt to touch breaks apart like smoke, reforming only when I pull my hand back.
I sense their disapproval. As though I do not belong here, inside my own mind.
Annoyed now, I reach out once more. Merrick told me to call for them. To call, and that they would answer. Erena, many years ago, had told me the same.
Mine.You’re mine.
This time, the maegis does not dissolve. It feels fragile, soft beneath my hands, but it allows me to gather it up, to feel the sensation between my fingers. Wary, but it settles in my hands as if I’m holding a cloud.
I study it. Searching for the right words.
I’m sorry I took so long to find you.
