I’m a storm of disbelief.
Erik’s hands are soothing on my cheeks, brushing away my tears. I could wonder how he’s so sure that Malak was aware of my power, but I already have the answer.
“Malak told you all his secrets before he died.”
Erik nods. “I forced him to tell me everything.”
“If he knew… why would he keep me powerless?”
Even as I speak, I suspect I know the answer. Before I left the cursed city, Genova, the leader of the farmers’ guild, had warned me about games of power between men and women.
She had asked me:“What does a powerful man do to a woman strong enough to challenge him?”
It was the same thing Malak tried to do to my siblings, who were also born powerful. “He wanted to destroy me so I wouldn’t challenge him.”
But Erik shakes his head emphatically. “If he wanted to destroy you, he would have had you killed or he would have siphoned your power like he did to your brother and sister. On the contrary, Asha. You were the first Blacksmith who was like him. He wanted you by his side.”
My face drains of blood. “What?”
“He wanted you to hate the world as much as he did. He was looking for a way to make you a hammer because it was his fault you didn’t have one.”
Now, I’m baffled. “How so?”
“You needed a special hammer like he did. His sister was the hammer-maker, but by the time he realized you were like him, she was gone. He’d had all the other hammer-makers killed years before. He’d done it to maintain control over Blacksmith power—who received a hammer and when. But it meant that once she was gone, there was nobody to make a hammer for you.”
I chew over what I know, but there are more questions than answers. “Milena disappeared—was supposedly killed—soon after I first picked up a hammer.”
Erik gives me a wry smile before he pulls me closer, resting back on the bed so that I nestle into the crook of his arm. His voice rumbles in my ear. “I only have Malak’s version of those events, but in the days after your power failed to materialize, Milena was evasive about it. It was her job to understand every Blacksmith’s individual power. When he pressed her for answers, she refused to give them. Then, a few nights after, he discovered that his prototype device was missing—the one he eventually perfected and used on me. He went looking for her only to find that she’d fled.
“He believed she’d taken it. She had kept your nature from him and kept a hammer from you so you could never join him. She’d betrayed him. To save face, he destroyed part of the city and concocted a story that she’d died in a human rebellion. That may have been false, but his rage was real.”
I shiver. “Many humans died in the days that followed her supposed death.” I try to shake off the horror and focus on what Erik is telling me, tipping my head back to see him. “If Milena stole the device, that could explain how she changed Thaden Kane. In all the years since then, she could have created many replicas of that device.”
Since Thaden Kane’s arrival, it’s been my fear that Milena is creating an army.
Erik doesn’t immediately agree. “Until Thaden Kane arrived, I didn’t think Milena would try to use it for her own purposes. I had this notion that maybe…”
I wait for him to continue. “Maybe what?”
He shrugs. “I thought maybe she was trying to stop Malak. By stealing his device, she set him back years. Along with ensuring your power wasn’t available to him, she practically cut him off at the knees.”
My forehead creases. “But if he was so unhappy that I didn’t have a hammer, why didn’t he let me use his?”
“Because nobody other than his sister knew he was left-handed and she had loudly pronounced that you were defective.” Erik gives me a piercing look. “For you to use his hammer would have cast aspersions on his power. Even his most loyal followers had ambitions and could have used it against him. He couldn’t expose himself to that risk. Well, not until he’d proven he could successfully combine a human with an animal.”
“Not until he created you,” I whisper.
Erik nods.
My head is swimming, but I try to cut through to what this means for the path ahead of me. “When you were dying, you told me it was my choice whether or not to find Milena.” I speak carefully. “But what you really meant was… it’s my choice if I want my own hammer.”
Again, he nods. “You could have tools of your own.”
Assuming I can ever dislodge the dark medallion embedded in my palm…
Even now, a battle is being fought between the two medallions. The balance between light and dark is fragile, and yet Erik is so damn calm as he contemplates me. So much the opposite of me, as if we’ve switched places and I’m the volatile one.
My shoulders slump. “I should never have tools of my own.”
