She closed her eyes and took another steadying breath, prying those invisible fingers of fear loose. Aya had worked extensively with Galda, the trainer for the Dyminara, on controlling her state. She began at eight years old – the very day she learned her mother died.
Her mother, like most Caeli, was born hearing thewhispers of the wind. Aya’s father used to say it was why she needed to travel for the merchants – she had to follow where the wind called her, or else she would be betraying her very soul. But Aya had heard her parents arguing before her mother left for that fateful trip. Had heard Pa begging her not to go with the volatile autumn weather, had heard her mother confess that Gale wouldn’t simply withhold her wages, but would seek repayment for lost labor, and it was payment they couldn’t afford.
And she could still hear the way Gale’s messenger read Eliza’s name off the list of people and goods lost in the shipwreck … as if objects held the same value as human lives.
Gale, the coward, had sent his son, too, to share the news. A child to do a grown man’s job. And Will, a scrawny ten-year-old at the time, had simply stared at Aya as her father crumbled, his head cocked to the side, his brow furrowed. As if …
As if he could sense those wretched things she’d said to her mother before Eliza had left. As if he were wondering why, with so much guilt burning inside of her, she wasn’t falling apart too.
Will lost his own mother years later, and Aya wondered if he’d been given the decency to grieve in peace. If perhaps the rich were afforded such things.
It was Galda who found Aya that night in the woods, when Aya’s grief called her power forward so strongly it’d driven her to unconsciousness. And it was Galda who offered her the one thing Aya, even at eight, so desperately needed: control.
But if the incident at the Wall had taught Aya anything, it was that control wasn’t constant.
It took discipline.
Focus.
Vigilance.
The exact qualities that had been drilled into her over the last thirteen years.
Because she hadn’t meant to do it. Hadn’t thought twice about the words she hurled at Will that day on the Wall when he taunted her.
You hate me, that much is obvious. But I think there’s something else there, isn’t there, Aya love? Something you’d rather not explore.
Her mother had always claimed that while Hepha, patron goddess of the Incends, hadn’t blessed Aya with her flame, she had certainly given Aya her pride.
Will had gotten under her skin, had pushed her just far enough that she snapped. And when she did … it shattered anything that wasn’t a deep bitterness and loathing between them.
She’s too dangerous.
Aya had dragged herself to his father’s townhouse that night to check on him; had waited in the hallway, listening to Will argue with Galda inside his room, urging her to remove Aya from the Dyminara qualifications before she could hurt anyone else.
He’d told her that Aya could’ve killed him, that there was no room in the Dyminara for someone with such a lack of control.
Her one dream. Her one opportunity to ensure her father could rest easy in the cold winters and no longer struggle to provide for himself. The one place she could do some good.
He had been content to destroy it all.
She never forgave him.
For the way he’d tried to take her future from her, yes. But also for the way he’d affected her. For the way he’d unleashedthe crawling beneath her skin that she’d learned to keep locked so tightly; the lack of control she’d spent years shoving deeper and deeper until she could convince herself her affinity was hers to wield alone.
It was as if his darkness had called to hers, and she hadn’t been able to resist responding.
And for that, she hated him.
Aya frowned at the pale gray light that marked the coming dawn as it whispered through her arched window. It would be impossible to find sleep again. Her gaze fell to the Conoscenza–the Book of the Gods – on her bedside table. Its worn leather binding sat open, the Prayer of Certainty to Sage, the goddess of wisdom, staring up at her from its onion-skin pages. She had found solace in its verses last night. Her mind had been restless, turning over every piece of information she’d uncovered about Trahir ordering weapons outside of the Council.
Before Aya could reach for the Conoscenza again, her door creaked open, a head of white-blond hair peering in.
Tova grinned. ‘You look like shit,’ she said as she stepped into the room, two steaming mugs of chaucholda in her hand.
‘So I keep hearing.’ Aya glanced at the mirror across from her bed. Her dark brown hair had fallen loose from its long braid, the whips covering the angles of her face. She looked paler than usual, any hint of warmth that crept into her skin in the summer from her father’s olive complexion long gone from the colder months and worsened by her restless night. The dark circles under her eyes brought her irises closer to the icy blue Will once said matched her disposition perfectly.
She could’ve done with a few more hours of sleep. But at least she’d washed the blood off.
