Why touch her like she was oxygen in a sealed tomb and then vanish? She hadn’t expected him to leave her this long.
In two weeks, her hands had blistered, her strange dreams had resurfaced, and the softness of her body was fading.
She hadn’t expected Rune to truly stay away. Not this long.
Laughter drifted to the clearing.
Alora glanced over her shoulder at where Theia and Zuma had taken to sitting near the pond when she trained. An unspoken show of support, or maybe so they weren’t left alone in the cottage.
Theia perched on a log, writing in a journal he had purchased for her in town. Zuma sat nearby, sharpening an axe that didn’t need sharpening. Their gazes would fall on the other when neither was looking.
The evening sky was a perfect backdrop to the scene they made.
None had made any advances, perhaps because they knew they shouldn’t, but that didn’t stop them from lingering together.
And it made Alora’s chest ache.
“Focus,” Calla barked, calling back her attention.
Alora inhaled sharply and got into position again. She stood barefoot in the clearing, sweat dripping from her brow, her hands glowing with threads of crimson light. Calla circled herlike a predator, hurling bolts of shadow for Alora to block, dodge, or redirect.
“Summon armor.”
Alora tried to see it in her mind, tried to call it forth. But feeble smoke puffed at her fingertips.
Calla shook her head. “Dark magic is not for the weak. It is intentional, precise, and brutal. For the worldof demons is violent. Do not hesitate. Magic doesn’t wait for permission.”
“I’m trying—” Alora twisted to waylay another hit, breath ragged. Her fingertips sparked, the air warping around them. “I can’t always tell where it’s going.”
“You don’t tell it,” Calla snapped. “Youwieldit. The instinct is already inside of you. Did you not create the Elder Tree portals? Did you not make a god yield?”
She sighed. “I did that with light magic.”
“And you can do so with dark magic. You are not half one thing and half another. You are both. A Primordial Goddess born of chaos, fused by light and dark. Imagine what you can do when you yield to both sides and accept who you are.”
But Alora had yet to reclaim her light magic. It still sat in a jar, glowing in her bedroom like a beacon, waiting.
“Alora.”
“I tire of this,” she snapped at Calla. “I tire of you pushing me.”
“I will keep pushing you until you fight back. A person’s true nature comes to light whenever they are cornered. Either for the better or for the worse.”
But Alora had already considered the worse. What if surrendering to her magic meant becoming something she would not recognize once the fight was done?
“Do you understand whatVaelith Nocthra va’thaltruly means?” Calla asked quietly.
Alora sighed heavily.
“It does not simply meanthe Shadow Queen has come,” Calla continued. “Vaelis queen, yes—butithalters the meaning.”
She held Alora’s gaze.
“Vaelith means sovereign. By right. By blood. The mountain did not name you queen by marriage, Alora. It recognized your rightful claim to the shadow throne.”
The declaration lodged in her chest like a stone.
Sovereign. By blood.
