After letting out a calm exhale, I once again stretch my fingers over the gilded tip of the short stone before me. As soon as I touch it, I call the gold to seep from my fingertips, and it starts streaming down in slow, steady drips.
“Good.”
Slade’s murmured praise bolsters me.
I reach inside of myself, looking for that effortless control that came out of me in Ranhold. If I was able to grab hold ofallthe gold in the entire castle, I can control this one gilded rock.
This is my power. I control it. It answers to me and me alone.
The concept of recalling the gold back to me is completely unnatural, and something that I’m fighting to figure out. Yet because of Ranhold, I know I’m capable of a lot more than I realized, either because my magic evolved, hatching from the chains I’d been wrapped in, or because this was always something I could’ve done with training—I’ll never know which. All I know is I’m going to figure this out, because I don’t want to keep living in fear of my power. I want to live incontrolof it.
Like liquid pouring from a glass bottle, I envision shoving a stopper in, ceasing its flow. The visual helps me ground what I’m trying to do with my magic, and I feel my power respond, the gold trickling to a stop against the rock. My hand shakes from the effort, but I hold on, scrabbling to keep steady with my concentration. Now that I’ve successfullystoppedgilding, I need to take it just one step further.
Continuing my trick of visualization, I picture someone opening the bottle and tipping it out, letting gold collect in my palm.
“Good, Auren.”
I distantly hear Slade urging me on, but my concentration is almost replaced with giddiness when I feel the gold come back up, sliding into my hand. I shove down my excitement, continuing to call more back to me, and when I have a good amount pooling in my palm, I start to picture pouring it back into my unstoppered bottle, letting it drip into that narrow opening.
The weirdest sensation comes along with it. The gold that was pressing up against my palm just...sinks back into me. It’s like dropping a piece of fabric in a puddle. Except the puddle is my moving gold and I’m the cloth.
It takes a long time, but slowly, I manage to soak it all up. When I sense the last drop disappear, I open my eyes to find that the rock is now bare of every single speck of gold.
With the biggest smile stretching over my face, I whip around to look at Slade, pointing triumphantly. “Did you see?”
His lips kick up, making the skin beside his eyes crinkle. “Well fucking done.”
With a giddy laugh, I leap up and then bound into his lap, keeping my bare hands braced against the wall behind him, arms resting on his shoulders.
Our faces are just an inch apart, chests pressing against each other, and the surge of confidence inside feels like bubbles inflating me, making me buoyant.
“Do you know what this means?” I ask.
His hands grip my waist, fingers moving in a slow draw of mirrored strokes. “What?”
“This is going to changeeverything,” I breathe. “If I can master this, then I can touch anything, any hour of the day. I can be casual and unrestricted. Iwon’t have to live in the dark anymore.”
In more ways than one.
“Because even if I gild something, I canungild it.”
A low hum comes from his throat, and he lifts a hand like he’s going to touch my face, but I rear back, batting his hand away with my elbow. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to grab your face and kiss you.”
My stomach tightens, because that sounds like averynice reward, but then my eyes snap to the outside of the cave. “It’s still daylight.”
“But you just proved that you canungild something if need be.”
He tries to move again, and I leap up out of his lap. “Let’s not get hasty. That was only my first time.”
Slade gets to his feet, and the look in his eye makes my body go hot all over.
“You know how to call your gold-touch, and you also know how to make it retreat now,” he says as he begins to prowl toward me with a hungry look in his eye.
I lift my hands up in front of me to ward him off. “I only just learned how to do that three seconds ago!”
He doesn’t reply, just keeps coming for me, and great Divine, thelookon his face. His dark green eyes sweep down my figure like he’s thinking very dirty thoughts.
