“What’s the right question?” she asked, not hiding her annoyance.
Terran smiled as if he’d won a great prize.
“Why aren’t you training for the Trial?”
Mev opened her mouth, and shut it.
She looked at me.
I shrugged, with little to say.
Is he always this way?
Her whispers were seamless, as if she was born using them.
No,I whispered back.Sometimes, he’s worse.
Unable to help myself, I laughed at her expression of horror which is when Kael and Terran realized we’d been whispering. And while the mountains still trembled with his power, it was Mev’s silence that promised the greater storm.
43
TERRAN
“How is she doing that?” I asked Lyra, finally able to breathe.
We stood at the base of the Sky Pinnacle where candidates for the next ruler of Aetheria tested their skills against each other. The sheer rock face of vertical stone offered no quarter. Gusts of wind sliced through the air which smelled thin and cold, a reminder that in this place, only the most powerful could do battle. There were four candidates in total, Mev, thankfully, among them. Two had dropped out already with only Mev and an Aetherian noble, and long-rumored as a potential for his predecessor, remaining.
He was strong, but Mev was stronger.
“I don’t know,” Lyra said beside me. “Removing air is more difficult than manipulating it. I’ve seen Galfrid attempt something similar, but I doubt anyone taught her to do that, including him.”
When the spectators realized what Mev had been doing from her position near the top of the mountain, it was too late for any of them to fight back, if this had been a battle. Making it as difficult to breathe as if we were up there with her, Mev had created a moment of stillness that kept me uneasy, even after she returned the air to normal.
It was a skill that would be difficult to counter.
“It’s as if Elydor itself chose her,” Lyra said.
“I agree. Maybe her arrival awakened something dormant and Elydor recognizes her as part of the Gate’s balance, lending her extra power.”
Since I was watching Mev and her opponent, I didn’t realize Lyra was staring at me until Kael chuckled. When I looked at her expression, I may have scowled.
“That was incredibly insightful. And enlightened,” she said.
“I will have you know?—”
“Look,” Kael exclaimed as those around us gasped.
Mev had lifted her hands, bending the high winds into a dome over the Pinnacle. Clouds ripped apart and then reformed into a roaring vortex above her opponent, pressing him down with invisible weight.
Both stayed that way until… he yielded.
For a time, no one moved. Then the mountain itself seemed to exhale and wind rushed over the stone as if carrying word of what had just taken place. The air was alive with power, with the certainty that something in Aetheria had shifted. Even the elders, usually unmoved by contests of might, stood silent in reverence. This was not merely victory. It was the birth of legend, the moment the chronicles of Elydor would mark as the day Mev of Aetheria bent the wind to her will and claimed the skies as her own.
Cheers erupted around us, giving no hint that Mev might face the same type of rebellions as I was, though so far, there had been no further reports of unrest. A new king. And now, a new queen.
“Congratulations,” Lyra said to Kael as Galfrid approached the pair. Soon they would descend, and Aetheria would have its first half-human ruler.
“I cannot believe it,” he said, my brother’s shock apparent.
