And also a challenge, I think, to see if my word is stronger than my wrath.
False dichotomy: my wrathismy bond.
I spin into a kata, using my irritation with him to power the damn thing.
Let him be the creator of his own freedom.
I can feel the shape of the binding, and in five hundred years it hasn’t changed.
In five hundred years, they have learned more ways to oppress, not to free.
With so many people, so much power, they could have made so many choices, and this is what they went with, over and over.
It stops now.
It starts here.
With a final move, I thrust my magenta-coated palm toward Jiran. A pulse of light shoots at him.
A web of gleaming black lines around him become visible for just a moment.
Then magenta fire flares up their paths, and they disintegrate.
Jiran stumbles, swearing under his breath.
Looks at his hands like he’s never seen them before.
They haven’t been his own for a long time.
“Why did you leave the Order?” I ask him.
He looks up at me with slightly wild eyes. “You’re asking thatnow?”
After removing the binding, he means.
“The answer doesn’t change what I was going to do,” I say. “There’s no reason your power should not be your own.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“I don’t have to. I know what it feels like, magically, when a person is so dysregulated they cannot be trusted with themselves. Anyone else should be able to choose what they bend their power toward, even if I disagree.”
“Even if you’ll fight them.”
“Yes,” I say simply.
Perhaps the Order’s method is cleaner. But we are human; we’re messy because our emotions are messy. And we have arightto that.
“Am I going to have to fight you?” I ask him.
Jiran considers me. “If we get through tomorrow,” he says, “I’ll tell you.”
Chapter 25
ZanandIarequiet as we return to the cottage.
Our cottage.
I suspect we’re both thinking about the same thing.
