So I drop the scale back into the basket, with the dead flowers and the beautiful scales I shouldn’t risk touching, and it feels like my heart goes with it.
Because it would be too much to have this and then find out later I could break it after all.
“I don’t have magic,” I say numbly, reflexively. “I have the opposite of magic. I’m like a magic void.”
Kovan steps in close enough that he can cup my face in his free hand.
I stare, my heart hammering.
“You could not affect magic without magic of your own,” he says fiercely. “You may be the most powerful being on Sanctuary Isle.”
“Okay,thatis ridiculous.”
More powerful than him, or the Sage of Wrath, the strongest magic workers in the empire?
More powerful than Zan, an actual dragon?
“It isn’t,” Kovan says. But he drops his hand.
Not letting it go, I think. But deciding I’m not ready to hear what he has to say.
Thathurts, way more than I expected.
But then he says, “Will you take me to Crystal Hollow? Since you’ve said magic is more variable at the base of the mountain, perhaps I can combine the dragon scales with the wards there.”
And I realize that maybe I’m not ready after all.
Not ready for him to see what’s become of our village, how little I’ve actually managed when he seems to think the world of me.
Not ready for him to see what everyone else thinks of me, to see him turn away from me.
But I always knew that was coming, didn’t I?
Iwon’tdecide for him.
Iwon’tlet fear make me too cowardly to reach for magic in the world.
But I still know it’s better to get burned by banked embers than by a roaring flame; better to know sooner than later if he, like everyone else, can’t cope with all of me.
Even if part of me knows that it’s already far too late to avoid crumbling to ashes in his wake.
“Good idea,” I say lightly. “Let’s try.”
Chapter 7
Tasa
Ourhikedownthemountain starts silently.
It’s an itchy kind of silence, at least for me.
The urge to just pretend everything is okay, to smooth over the awkwardness, isreallystrong. It’s a defense mechanism for me.
But everythingisn’tokay.
And at least while I’m on this mountain, I get to have boundaries.
My chest tightens, and not with exertion.
