We did it until my hands shook and the air tasted like burnt leaves.
“It’s not working,” I said. “What I have… it’s too big.”
“You’re not opening to it.”
“If I open to it any more, it’ll kill you.”
She smirked. “I doubt it.”
I thought of the moment I’d lost control with Rydian and unleashed my furyfire on him. It hadn’t even singed his clothing. Was Keres also immune to its destruction?
My furyfire jumped, zapping Keres with a hot ember. She yanked her hands back and glared at me. I had my answer.
“How do I keep it small enough without snuffing it out?” I asked.
“Don’t think of it as small or big,” Keres said. “Think of it like threads inside you. Find the one that leads to the source of your power. Separate the signal from the noise.”
“I don’t have a signal,” I said. “I have a pack of glimfangs fighting over a single piece of meat.”
“Glimfangs can be taught,” she said.
I snorted. “You ever met one?”
“As a matter of fact, I was raised by them.”
I blinked.
She merely smiled with eyes colder than the whipping wind and walked toward the house. “We’ll try again tomorrow.”
I turned to find Amanti sitting alone at the edge of the stone circle. When I moved to join her, she waved for me to remain standing.
“Walk with me. I need to stretch,” she said, grunting as she pushed to her feet. I didn’t offer to help her. I knew better.
We took a narrow path skirting the house that led through a copse of trees before spilling into a small meadow. Waist-high grass rippled like someone ran fingers through it, bending low against the brittle gusts. A ledge dropped off sharply, offering a view of mountain ridges stacked in the distance like sleeping beasts. A hawk made a slow circle overhead.
If not for Heliconia hunting me and the bounty on my head, it might have felt almost peaceful. My thoughts drifted again to Rydian. I snarled at myself and shoved them back.
Amanti kept close to the woods, one hand trailing leaves like she needed the touch to remind her body that the ground was real. She didn’t look winded. She didn’t look well, either.
“I need to tell you something.”
Her words, the seriousness held in them, stopped me. “What is it?”
She looked away. “The Brindalorn’s attack injured me gravely, but that’s not the reason I haven’t healed.” She turned back to me as if forcing herself to meet my eyes. “Not long after my attack, I felt something shift within the magic I’d been gifted by the Fates. Our Aine magic has been fading foryears, but this… This was different. And it is not something I can come back from.”
“You’re no longer Aine.”
“I’m no longer Aine.”
I searched her gaze, trying to decipher why she seemed so braced. “Do you worry I’ll think less of you for it?”
“I worry I won’t be enough to help stop her,” she admitted quietly. “Everything I was gifted, everything they imbued in us—it should have been the realm’s to use. To stop Heliconia. And instead… it’s gone. All of it. And I’m sorry for it, Aurelia. I know what it’s like to feel the realm’s hope rests solely on your shoulders.”
“Amanti, to me, you have never been just one of the Aine. You are the one who taught me how to shoot with a bow. How to hunt. How to drink.” We both grinned at that one, undoubtedly thinking of our late nights spent in Sunspire’s library with a bottle of whiskey between us, but my humor faded quickly to longing. “You are my family just as Sonoma and Lesha are. I don’t need you to be Aine. I only need you to be here with me. To love and support me.”
She grabbed my hand in hers, her brown eyes welling with tears in an expression I’d only ever seen once or twice in my life. “I will do so always.”
“That is all I need,” I whispered.
