But then, in one final breath, they each closed their eyes and lifted their faces to the sky, where a bright light shone.
In a gust of wind, they were gone, leaving behind a rain of ash that fell like snow.
I remembered their names, their faces, them. I held their memories of pain, torture, the eyes of their tormentors echoing through me. I would carry their ghosts inside me, to always remember their sacrifice.
My true power, new and curious, settled inside me and quieted now that I had finally seen it for what it was. For what it had always been. I had no name for it, but for the first time, I felt what it was to be whole, to be normal and one with myself.
When I opened my eyes again, I stood at the center of an empty crater, raindrops falling on my skin. No black vines, no oozing tar. The blight was gone.
Around me were the ruins of Drachenfels Keep, destroyed by my echoed storm. The sky, gray and gloomy, loomed above me.
I stood there, naked among the rain and ruin. When my mind fully returned to light, I saw Kael walking toward me. He wrapped his cloak around me, bringing warmth, and I caught myself shivering.
He poured his gaze into mine, uncertain of what I’d done, but knowing I had destroyed the blight. He did not speak. He only wrapped me closer, letting the rain wash the last traces of black from my skin. I sagged into him, feeling the weight of everything I’d seen, everything I’d done. The storm above us quieted, and so did the one inside me.
Chapter 31
Evie
Dawn rose, sunlight breaching through the curtains I had forgotten to close in the heat of the moment. Kael still slept beside me, on his stomach, as he did every night. That man slept like a stone. Not even the bright first light of summer drenching his face could wake him.
We were in my quarters, which was not unusual, yet this morning felt different. Perhaps it was because a month had passed since I had removed the blight and the world had gone quiet. No more danger creeping down the mountain. No looming threat of siege. The gutters had finally been cleansed, not by force but by the steady aid the Crown had poured into them. What had once been a maze of refuse and rot now stirred with the first timid signs of order. Workers hauled away the last of the squalor-scarred timber, and fresh stone waited in carts along the riverbank, ready to rise into walls and walkways. New plans to shape the gutters into a proper district were being drafted even now, drawn by the king’s own hand. His vision spoke of clean wells, wide lanes, and homes built high enough that sunlight might reach places it had not touched in years.
The next step was to invite the Duchess of Bretannia and theDuke of Lutessia to the castle, and host a feast fit for the three states. A display of unity, Bram, who very much relished in the idea of a feast, had said. Something about public appearances… and the need to show the people that the Court still breathed strength rather than fear.
Or maybe, just maybe, this morning felt different because tonight we would board a ship headed to Sud. Andwe, because Kael was coming with me.
He would meet my parents—Lydia and Roberto—which honestly made me quite nervous. My mother would love him at once. Kael held the highest status a wizard could ever reach. Her large, dark brown eyes would sparkle like lantern glass. My father, though, would immediately wonder whether Kael had used his position to coerce me somehow. He had always been so protective, yet so dismissive all the same.
I did not blame my parents for mistaking me for a seerling. Even I had misnamed myself. I had been a strange, quiet child who had seen echoes of people’s pasts, most often without warning and often to my detriment. My parents, especially my father, had told me to conceal my power or I would never be accepted into any school, any academy. Better to smother the gift than let it grow wild, he’d said. Better to hide it, seal it, pretend it was nothing at all.
So I had done exactly that. I had folded my power into silence, tucked it into the smallest corner of myself inside a box of blackiron, and lived as though the echoes were a curse I must outlast.
But now I was something no one, not even the academy, could explain.
And I had become the talk of wizard town.
They didn’t know whether to call mereflectororechomage, orechomancerfor the fancy ones. I would like to be called simply Evie.
Naming a whole new branch of magic… could you imagine?
Kael loved to toy with my power. The lightning I echoed back to him always steadied him. When the storm stirred too fiercely, he poured his magic into me, and the world quieted for himat once.
And then I saw all of him, the raw parts of him, and I loved him a little more each day.
I woke Kael by stroking him gently so he would turn onto his back. I ran my fingers down his athletic chest, exploring each ridge and sinew, down the heated line of his manhood. He was already hard for me.
“Good morning, Magister,” he murmured, his voice still heavy with sleep.
He let me climb atop him and kiss him. Last night he had unleashed the storm into me, so he was gentler now.
He would not see this coming…
With a flick of my fingers, magic coursed through me, and I had him pinned to the bed with a gust of wind.
He looked at me first in surprise, and then that surprise gave way to a slow, hungry curiosity.
He would let me play.