In a couple hours, I’d be infiltrating the arena prisons to see Myel.
I ate my dinner — a large one, since I was famished from all this grueling work — in silence. After dinner, Koar gave me more of his life essence to help revive me further. I wanted to practice a bit more after that, but both Lhorine and my grandmother said they had a better idea.
“You know the basics at this point,” Lhorine said. “Everything you wanted to know, you know. You need time and practice and hopefully you’ll have that tonight with your bonded. And perhaps the bond will help the process?” She didn’t sound convinced of that.
“And since you need to conserve your energy,” Olinara picked up the thread, “we thought we’d take this time to tell you more about your parents.”
My parents?
Now?
“Do you think it will help?”
The two shared a look, then nodded.
“Yes,” Olinara said softly. “You need to know the legacy you carry, the power and potential within you. Maybe, once you understand that, you’ll see how powerful you really are.”
IZZY
“Your mother, Ysania, was… different,”Lhorine began with a wistful tone. “Everyone saw it. She wasn’t like most elves, didn’t see herself as superior. She was the most… down to earth elf I’ve ever met and also not afraid to call out the inconsistencies and prejudices of her own kind.” The woman sighed. “Even I wasn’t that brave.”
“And she loved freely,” Olinara added. “Not afraid to tell the world she loved my son and that there was absolutely nothing wrong with that. It… infuriated a lot of elves. Her mother, Queen Leastrine, tried to quiet such speeches, smooth things over with elven kind, but in the end Ysania was too vocal, too brazen. She was dedicated to changing this world and the real trouble was… some people were starting to listen. That made the traditional elves furious.”
“That’s why she was exiled.” Lhorine picked up the telling. “The queen was wise enough to see that things were starting to change… but that Ysania was pushing things too far too fast. If Ysania had stayed, she’d probably have been assassinated. So, the queen sent her away and let things cool down, all the while subtly encouraging the changes her daughter had instigated.”
“Twenty years later, and the views of nearly all the royals and many others had shifted, enough that…” Olinara pursed her lips.
“That Valnea killed my family,” I finished.
The two women nodded.
“Your mother did more to change elven culture in twenty years than anyone had done over the many millenniums of elven rule.”
I smiled, suddenly damn proud of my mom. Then a tear leaked from my eye, sad that I’d never gotten to know her.
“But it wasn’t her ideals that changed things for the elves,” Lhorine said with a note of awe in her voice. “It was her power.”
I perked up.
“If she’d just been some third-rate earth wielder, I doubt many, perhaps even her own family, would have paid her much mind,” Lhorine continued. “But she was one of the strongest earth wielders in generations, perhaps ever. When her older brother Jyrandion got married, she and a dryad friend built the happy couple a new castle outside of El’Anderyn. She single-handedly summoned marble from miles away, shifting it through the earth to become gleaming towers and sturdy walls. The legend was, she could snap her fingers and shatter mountains.”
“And there was good reason for that belief,” Grandma picked up the telling. “When she took the test of power, the glasstone shone with blinding white light, then cracked and crumbled. When sparring with her brothers and sisters, who were no slouches themselves, she regularly bested them without much effort.”
“That’s the legacy you have inherited,” Lhorine said softly.
“But when I tested, I was only orange, which I’m guessing isn’t great,” I said.
Lhorine shook her head. “Olinara told me you were under your mother’s binding at the time. She must have limited your strength and abilities. You are most definitelynotorange rank anymore. I was here, off campus, when you fought Saldrea, yet Ifeltyour last push of power. The earth itself shuddered. That was something I hadn’t felt since your mother.”
I blinked.
“Oh…”
I mean, yeah, I had overpowered Saldrea and Golana together and that had been a herculean feat, but… these two were saying I was some super-elf? Or at least the daughter of a super-elf.
“We’re telling you this, so you can be confident in your abilities tonight,” Olinara said, laying a hand on my shoulder. She smiled. “My son was a fairly powerful nymph as well, and if I had to guess, you got the best of both your parents.”
A wave of self-consciousness swept over me.
