Something like triumph.
“I once told you this is magic unlike anything you have seen. Unshackled. Natural.Free.” He drew closer, brandishing an arm. “Look what you can do with a merethought, niece. Imagine what you could accomplish when taught how to hone it.” Gripping my shoulders, he met my gaze. “How does it feel?”
I bit down on my tongue hard enough to draw blood, forcing myself to stay silent. To stay in that room with Leo. To not let Theodore’s words get inside my head.
Because I was afraid of admitting how it felt.
“Deny it all you want, but I see it in your eyes.” His voice dropped to a whisper, but that didn’t make it any less potent. Any less searing. “I see thepride. Thestrength. I want all of my people to know that feeling. To have such confidence in their magic, no matter their province, no matter their bloodline, for that was something I didn’t have until your father and I found it together. I want to help you, Rose. The way he helped me.”
My breaths were ragged as I wet my lips and looked back at what I’d done. I hadn’t thought such a thing was possible with Alchemy—to be able to perform magic without aspell. What elsedidn’t I know? What else was there to learn about this power I’d had my entire life?
I closed my eyes and shook my head. He was doing it again. Getting in my mind, twisting my thoughts, making me forget my purpose.
“I—I can’t do this,” I stammered, pulling from his grasp and stumbling toward the door. “I don’t know what you want from me, but I’m not my father, Theodore. This isn’t?—”
“Rose,” he thundered, that single word turning into a command and making my footsteps falter. Blindly, I reached for the door handle and tugged it open, but it slammed shut once more. Pressure mounted inside of me, a cascading well of confusion and power and anger and yearning.
“Rose, there is so much you don’t understand. So much I can teach you, if you will?—”
“Let me go!” I screamed, throat hoarse and hands shaking as I spun to face him. Suddenly every book, every vial, every object that had been hanging came crashing to the ground, the sound of shattering glass and deafening boom of tomes hitting the floor splitting my ears.
“I have to go,” I whispered frantically, and to my surprise, the door opened when I turned the handle.
The last things I saw before it banged closed were his white and blue eyes staring after me, and his fingers dipped in red.
58
Rose
The days passed in a haze.
Any note from Theodore, I promptly burned. I spent my time either with Leo or buried in the pages of my father’s Grimoire, pleading and praying for something to bring me closer to an answer. To figuring out how to end the Somnivae curse.
Perhaps refusing to face the emperor even though he was the empire’s best chance at freedom from the curse made me a selfish coward, but I couldn’t go back to that study. Not yet. Every time I got near him, he burrowed deeper into my head, erasing my convictions until I didn’t know what to believe.
And a small part of me still thought…what if he was right? What if he was doing what was best for the empire as a whole by making us stronger, giving us courage and pride and power? I couldn’t deny the way my magic made me feel or the newfound assurance I had in myself. All thanks to Theodore.
But when those confusions slipped in, when those emotions began to wedge themselves between my desire for justice and a better empire foreveryone…that’s when I was the most frightened. That a single man in a matter of weeks could so easily twist my own beliefs.
I didn’t have to figure it out alone, though.
Leo stood by me through it all. Day after day leading up to the ball, he listened to my muddled thoughts, helping me decipher truth from lies. When I strayed too close to the edge, he walked me back to the line. When the ache to feel that electrifying magic hit its peak, he replaced it with a different yearning.
We’d grown close in those weeks before the attack on the Lightbenders, but it was nothing compared to the days since. I’d always thought my freedom relied on keeping myself untethered, on fading touches and distant words that meant nothing. But I’d never known such freedom and peace as I did when I finally let someonein.
It was as if all my pain, all my guilt and confusion and the shadows that were bottled inside of me no longer weighed as much as they once did.Leowas there to share it with me. When the dark thoughts pushed at my mind, when memories of my father or moments of self-loathing and anger threatened to pull me under, I didn’t shove them beneath the surface as I so often did in the past. There was someone who cared, someone who wanted to know every last part of me.
I wanted to know him, too. More than I’d ever wanted anything. I wanted to cut through the fabric of his heart and mind to carve out a spot for myself so he would always know he had someone who saw him, who desperately craved his light and his dark. His good and bad.
It was all beautiful to me.
A week had passed since my last encounter with Theodore, and I’d ignored four of his attempts to reach me. I knew if he truly wanted to see me—or throw me in the dungeons—he could have done so with the snap of his finger. The fact that he was giving me this choice, giving me a way to deny him, only succeeded in gnarling my thoughts even further.
I’d steered clear of Nox and Arowyn besides the occasional meal, throwing out excuses so I could study my father’s Grimoire. In reality, though, a part of me was already preparing to have tosay goodbye to them. The ball was tomorrow night, and Lark had said the third trial would occur a couple of days after, and then…it was over. If we made it out unscathed, at least. We would all go back to our provinces, presumably never to speak again.
I couldn’t rip Leo from my heart even if I tried, but my friends…it would be wise to create distance. I should make the end easier to bear, do us all a favor and back away while I still could. Before it would hurt too much.
They, on the other hand, had other plans.
