“You don’t trust her,” Elysia stated, trying to leave an opening for him to expand on.
His dark brown eyes cut to hers. “You shouldn’t either. Aidan has his reasons for allowing her to be here, but I don’t share them.”
Elysia entereda room in the estate she’d never seen before. With buttercream yellow walls, lace curtains on the windows, and floral upholstered furniture, it looked like a grandmother’s dream.
Maya spun in a circle, her dress flitting out around her. “The boys have their offices, and I havethis.”
Elysia took a seat on a cracked warm brown wooden stool. “And what isthis?”
Grim stationed himself near the door like some kind of silent, disapproving sentry. “It’s where she tests her shit and her other unnatural practices.”
Maya nodded and set her woven basket on a table. “I needed a magically reinforced space that could handle my inventions andunnatural practices,as Grim called them.”
Elysia looked between them warily. “Which would be?”
Maya busied herself grabbing objects out of the basket. She placed an hourglass, gold-faded iron scissors, and what looked like one of Aidan’s ledgers on the table. “We’ll work with those later. First, you need to understand what you’ve even been doing all these years because, my gods, do you have it all wrong.”
Elysia moved from the stool to the purple and gray rug, coming to a cross-legged position. She wound a strand of hair around her finger, thinking hard.
“How could my magic be anything other than finding secrets? Even here or somewhere like Bellia with full access, that’s what happens.” She gestured emphatically as she continued to process aloud. “I call on my magic, it homes in on what I’m seeking and yanks me around until I find it, or I can sort through the visual and emotional cues that flood in fromwhoever.”
Maya gave Elysia her full attention. “You’re not finding secrets. You’re looking for power sources.”
Elysia shook her head ,already disagreeing, but Maya cut her off. “As you’ve already learned from working with Aidan, there are different types of power you can transmute. When you were in Kava and magic was almost non-existent, you were most drawn to the few people who had magic you could have stolen to use for your own if you’d had the capacity.”
“What about all the mundane secrets and information I collected in Kava? Or how I can purposely seek information now?”
Maya paused, giving her a soft crooked smile. “Our magic is in relationship with us. You’re hypervigilant to emotions, mood, information because you needed to be, so your magic learned to use this as well. Growing up where you did, your magic would overtake you, latching on and dragging you around because you were finally giving yourself what you needed. I imagine the sensation of being controlled has lessened now, but you still trained yourself to be able to find weaker sources such as emotion or information, which is excellent. We can simply improve that skill instead of starting from scratch.”
Elysia was dumbfounded. “But I never made or did anything once I found a source.”
Maya shrugged. “It was Kava, and you had no idea to even try. You removed a stranger’s pain, didn’t you? I realize the realm did the transmutation once you dropped the solidified raw magic into the river, but you managed that with Aidan’s awful teaching. It likely won’t be that simple learning how todosomething with the power you take, but if you’d grown up somewhere normal, someone would have explained all of this to you when you were a child and over years you would have mastered it. Some of magic is innate, some is always training and practice.”
Elysia looked over at Grim. “Is this true?” Her mind was spinning, bouncing back through the years, wondering at every time she’d thought she’d been racing after secrets.
Grim sat on the floor with one knee bent and one leg out in front of him and nodded like this was obvious. “People used to call anyone with this power rippers. Usually, people have their proclivities and tend to rip from specific sources and transmute similarly. You developed an affinity for mental and emotional information, but given how drawn you were to plants in Kava, there’s a strong chance nature may be a good source for you. Ripping other people’s magic and power may prove difficult, but it’s worth attempting for battle purposes.”
Her eyes went wide as a very specific memory returned to her at his use of the word ripper. Her voice lowered. “Last time I was in the mortal realm, I—I used a man’s power. When that man broke my ankle and was going to keep breaking my bones, and I don’t even know what happened, but I took it and—” She paled, her stomach souring at what she’d done. “I brokeallof his bones.”
Grim’s face remained clean of any judgment. “Common in child rippers. Instead of ripping and transmuting, you just returned it to the sender. You might not be able to do that unless in mortal danger—like I said, most rippers have specific sources they tend to draw from. Working with us will give you control, though.” His eyes darkened. “And then you can break their bones on purpose if they try to harm you.”
Still uncomfortable, she voiced another question. “What do you think I’ll be able to do?”
Anxiety rushed through her. She just wanted to be able to protect herself again. She hated being the weakest one in a fight.
Maya’s grin was vicious. “We’ll dabble in the areas I think you’re most likely to excel in.”
“Such as?” she asked warily.
“Nature and death, obviously. We’ll start with plants and work our way to necromancy.”
Her stomach bottomed out now. “Necromancy,” she repeated.
Grim grunted in dissent. “Not necromancy. Anything butnecromancy. You don’t see Aidan running around abusing his chthonic powers or bringing corpses back to life. He keeps them here where they belong.” Elysia was pretty sure he said something about a rule-breaking degenerate under his breath.
Maya's face flattened. “While your domain remains the harvesting and transport of souls, his isthe entirety of death and the dead, and you would do well to remember it. He simply hides it—likely because of your hypocritical disdain. How do you think your reapers are made? There would be no reapers without Aidan calling them into new undead life. He’s so ashamed, he doesn’t evenlookat your reaper choices. He plunges his hands in the dirt, calls them, andleaves.”
“That’s not?—”
