“Yes, Vander, you should wake me.”
Evander stood, the firelit limning his face. It struck her that she might never see him again. “Be safe on your journey home,” he said.
“If you find more powder, will you write me?” she asked.
“I will.”
A fraught silence settled over the room, thick enough to scoop with a ladle. Valenna had to grip the cot to prevent herself from leaping up and throwing her arms around him. Pressing her lips to his. It made sense, kissing him goodbye, but she feared that if she touched him, she would never let herself be wrested away, all her good sense and logical platitudes forgotten.
A vein in Evander’s forehead showed, and he made a nervous motion, like he might lunge forward and embrace her. She wished he would. But he let out a short breath and said, in a tight voice, “Safe journey,” before striding out into the rain.
Valenna drew up her knees and covered her face with her hands, choking on the urge to call him back. Tiny belladonna flowers bloomed around her feet, releasing a noxious violet-hued steam. Biting her tongue, willing herself not to run after him, she listened as Hera’s grumbles and heavy footsteps faded into the forest.
Your parents are at war. Your father will use him against you. It cannot be. It cannot be. It cannot be.
Her heart was stretching, like a corner of it was tied to Evander, and every step he took pulled it tighter, ready to snap.
Valenna focused on her breathing, listened to the rain, tried to ground herself, but she wanted to shriek and throw something. She wanted to cut something. Thorns wound over her, binding her to the bed.
“This magic of yours,” Torsten said. His voice startled her. “It is like balancing a pot of boiling water against your chest.”
She glanced out the window. The trees shook down their tears; Bernice danced through the canopy, singing to herself. Evander was gone.
“You’ve met Bernice, I assume,” Torsten asked.
“I have heard stories.”
“She is the product of dark magic swallowed and digested until it turns to clear blood and an unbeating heart. Your magic is the same as hers, I think. Very much the same.”
In the distance, Bernice’s laugh was a deep rumble, like water rolling over boulders.
Torsten considered her as one might contemplate a blight on a leaf, and she felt as though he saw through her to the well of dark inside. She pulled the blankets up, as though they would block his view into her heart.
“You cannot be healed if you hold to your brokenness like a knife you clutch by the blade. Why don’t you let it go?”
“I’m saving it. Shouldn’t my father pay for making me like this?”
Torsten’s knife slipped, and he nicked his finger. He held it up, a drop of blood falling to the table. “Anger is not water in a channel, turning to the will of the lochman. Anger is a disease. You can wish your illness would strike your worst enemy as you pass him in the street, but more likely it will spread to the person with whom you share your bed.”
Valenna wasn’t listening. She didn’t want to hear him.
Torsten continued, regardless. “Sit with your wrath for a night, but in the morning, let it go. It has been many nights and many mornings. It is time for you to release it.”
“Anger,” Valenna snapped, “is power.”
“Anger,” the wizard corrected, “is weakness.”
“And you think loving Evander will fix me?”
Torsten’s eyes crinkled at the corners, soft with compassion. “People do not fix us. Your love for him will turn your cracks to fissures and your scratches to deep wounds, but that does not mean that you should give up loving him. Love leads us to a thousand small deaths—to ourselves, to our cherished flaws, to our darkest demons. Love him, and trust the Only to exact the vengeance you cherish.”
Valenna’s mind wandered. Yes, her magic would be her ruination someday, and Evander’s ruin was just as certain because, eventually, the wyvern bone powder would run out. Their love story was doomed in every letter, but if they must collapse, why not collapse into one another?
She had been her father’s secret weapon—and now, her anger was hers. She could let her magic lie dormant, like an old shotfire loaded and shoved into a box in a cellar. And someday, when the wyvern bone powder ran out and Evander was gone and she had no one left to live for, she would take her grief and her rage and force it down her father’s throat. And in the meantime, if her father touched one hair on Evander’s head, she’d tear him to shreds.
She was clever. She was powerful. She could outsmart Cadmus.
“Which direction is Cobblepine?” Valenna asked.
