“Could it be as simple as me starting smaller and building up my tolerance?” I asked.
“Simpler than making a feather float?” Tarrin quipped with a raised brow.
“But that’s the thing,” I said. “It wasn’t just making a feather float, was it?” I sent a pleading look to the king.
“She’s right, it wasn’t.”
“How was it different?” Nevander asked.
“I didn’t just lift the feather, I brought wind into this room—the feather just happened to move.”
Nevander looked to the king in surprise. “She wielded air?”
“She did, indeed. Although I missed it at the time.”
“Let me try again, knowing what we know now,” I said and readied myself.
“No!”all three men said in unison.
“By the stars, Nyleeria, how isthatwhat you got out of this conversation?” Tarrin asked incredulously; the other two seemed inclined to agree.
“Hear me out,” I said, hands raised. Skepticism marked their faces, but I ignored it and trudged on. “There’s nothing we’re ever going to be able to do about me being human, and the fates have a twisted sense of humor if the spark was put in my body only to be rendered useless. I can’t imagine that, after gods know how long, the spark incarnated only to remain dormant. The idiocy of that makes me believe there must be a way. As I see it, I either figure outhow to use this damn spark, or I die trying. If that happens, then it can find another host to insert itself into—preferably one that’s not as useless as I am proving to be.”
“No. We can’t risk it, Nyleeria,” the king said.
“Whatexactlycan’t you risk?”
“You.”
The simple word stopped me short, but there was too much at stake for us to get cold feet. If the fae had their way, then we were all destined for the same fate in the end. No, we had to move forward. There was no other way.
“We all know that I’m no good to any of us if I can’t find a way to control this, and what happens to the twins if…” I choked on the rest of the sentence, unable to voice it. I took a steadying breath. “If another war knocks on our door, gods know how many more will end up like my parents, or yours. And what if we lose and the fae enslave us, or worse, decide we aren’t worth the oxygen we breathe?” The fears I hadn’t consciously let myself consider, the ones that threw me from sleep, were now given oxygen and felt more real than ever.
Resolved, I squared my shoulders, and faced the king. With wobbly knees, I said, “This isn’t your decision to make. It’s mine, and I’m not giving up—with or without your help.”
Nevander bristled, drawing my attention to him. He looked down his nose at me with cold fury as he said, “You’ll mind who you’re talking to.”
I didn’t shrink or cower at his tone or any of the raw strength they possessed. No, this was too important to me. It wasn’t about them anymore, about pleasing them; it was about me, about my purpose in all of this. About saving my family—what was left of them—and never letting that type of travesty happen again.
A moment passed before I broke Nevander’s unrelenting stare and addressed the king once more. “Your family was killed in the last war.Killed, not brutally murdered like mine. You didn’t have to avoid stepping on your parents’ entrails, or stareinto their butterflied chests that displayed their stilled hearts like some sick, twisted masterpiece. You didn’t have to bear witness to their lifeless eyes—the ones that inexplicably echoed the agony of their final torment, as if the afterlife was powerless to soothe their pain.” My body shook from the impossible words that drew unending streams of tears—each one steeped in the nightmares that regularly ripped me awake with the ear-piercing screams that were swallowed by the stillness of the night. “You didn’t—” The king’s warm, gentle hands wrapped around mine.
He brushed my cheek lightly, liquid instantly gathering where we connected. “Okay,” he said, his expression pained for me. He held my gaze and then said again, more gently this time, “Okay.”
Chapter 18
Silty Dust
We debated it back and forth for a long while, finally deciding that I would conjure the wind in the same manner as before, but with safeguards this time.
“May we please go through it again?” I asked, steeling my nerves. I needed to hear the logic of our plan one more time before I could give in and trust the process.
“Yes,” the king said patiently.
They’d devoted the past month to scavenging every scrap of knowledge they could find in hopes of leveraging it to avoid what had happened to me last time. But it was all conjecture at this point and could end up amounting to nothing.
I cast aside that thought and listened intently as the king reexplained. “There are five viable safeguards that should protect you. First, we’ve demonstrated that we can absorb your excess energy. We’ll position ourselves around you, and if things get out of control, we can dissipate some of the residual power by placing a hand on you.” This precaution unsettled me the most, as it posed an inherent risk to them. Something we’d discussed at great length. However,they were resolute that all of us should share the burden, and I had to respect that it was their decision to make.
“Second, according to our research, the crystal can absorb a nearly unlimited cache of power and should act as a countervail to your magic if needed. Third, you have the diamond, and each of us has a similar siphon.” I clutched the pink stone dangling from the bottom of the chain. “Above all else, you must remain vigilant about the amount of energy you tap into and heed my instructions. The others are contingencies should these two fail, understood?” His look was stern, if not worried.
