“He is a part of me. He is me, Alandris.”
“Whatever reason you want to give me to try to push me away, I will let you give, but do not believe for a moment that I am ever going to walk away from you.” Alandris released a breath. “I blamed myself when you—when you died. If I had not hesitated to end Kallistra.… If I had not feared what you would think of me when I showed you the brutal truth of my magic… she wouldhave been burned alive before she could so much as breathe the same air as you.”
He wrapped a hand around the back of my neck. “I did not want you to see such ugly violence, and I have regretted it every day since. So do not think your magic scares me. You could tear me to pieces with those shadows of yours, and I would beg you to do it again if it meant keeping you.”
I pressed my head to his chest, for the first time in what seemed like ages, feeling something other than cold. “I won’t ask you to leave. I promise.”
“It would be futile.”
I hummed a laugh. “I believe you.”
I tilted my head back to look at him, and he bent down to kiss me. A gentle, undemanding kiss that tasted a little like sadness, and a lot like ‘I missed you in a way that made my very soul ache.’
To say the moment his lips left mine felt like a tragedy would be an understatement. I wanted to exist in that moment endlessly. A perfect slice of time carved out for the two of us where there was no death, destruction, or madness. For the briefest time, there was not blood on my hands, but velvet. He took everything wicked about me and made it beautiful and soft.
Damn, how I wanted to believe it.
“I’d like to stay like this,” he murmured against my lips.
“I’m sensing a ‘but’ coming.”
“Butwe need to train. The Divine Council has decided to shift their efforts to finding you. We can only hide for so long before they force us into a fight, and we can’t do that until we remove Zaelos.” He pulled away, and I felt his absence immediately. “I don’t know what awaits you inside the Soulseer, but if what happened at the Temple of the Moon is any indication, you aren’t yet ready to take control of your magic.”
I withheld a sigh. I knew I wasn’t ready, but it still hurt to acknowledge. It might have been embarrassment I was feeling, in actuality. How many did I have to spend attempting to master my cursed magic before it’d be enough? Standing before someone who lived and breathed their magic so naturally made that shame all the worse.
Apparently, my self-loathing showed on my face, and Alandris added, “You will succeed. I know you will.”
I pressed my lips together. “I have to. And if there is anyone who can teach me, it’s you.”
“Then let us begin.”
If I’d surmised that Alandris would take it easy on me on account of his care for me, I would have been sorely mistaken. He was as ruthless a teacher as he’d been at the Mages Consortium, only now even the rare tenderness he’d occasionally shown me during our private lessons—while failing to maintain his ruse of hating me—was absent. This was a different Alandris—one that had no intention of teaching with a delicate hand.
Another wave of fire blasted past me, the warmth pricking my skin only enough to cause discomfort. I’d attempted to pull my magic up to block, but it hadn’t answered in the way I’d wanted. Too fragmented. Too wild. It had a mind of its own, and that mind cared little for my survival.
“You would have died there if I’d aimed properly.” Alandris left me no time to answer before rushing me, flames swirling around his arms.
I braced myself, begging my magic to listen.
“You are facing a Fae, a Fae who thinks himself a god,” he grunted, swinging down at me. “It is his magic you seek to claim. You need to be better than its original owner if you hope to bend it to your will.”
Swirling to the side, I managed to narrowly dodge his burning strikes. “I was not born of this magic. I was made of it. It is not a part of me, like your fire is a part of you.”
The heat left his palm as he grabbed me by the waist. Another death—I noted—had he been actually trying to kill me. “No one in this realm is born of magic.” He looked down into my eyes, his chest rising and falling with labored breaths. “We may have an affinity for it—but whether given by the gods or by nature, we must master it ourselves.”
I freed myself from his grip with a groan, running my hands through my hair. “It is not easy.”
“It will never be.” He brushed his palms against his pants. “Let’s stop for today. You need to be in the right frame of mind for this to work. It is half the battle, maybe more. When you stop doubting yourself—over-thinking—that is when you will face me on equal footing.”
A small grin tugged at the corner of his mouth, and I matched it with one of my own. “Asshole.”
He turned away, waving his hand through the air dismissively. “I look forward to more creative insults from you. It’s how I measure how well of a job I’ve done teaching my students.”
As much as I wanted to be angry with him, it wouldn’t have been fair given that—loathe as I was to admit it—he was right. I was the only one holding myself back. Excuses and comparisons would not make me a stronger Mage.
I entered the house after him, finding him stripping away his sweaty jacket. His eyes met mine, and he frowned, guilt etching his features. “You understand why I must train you this way?”
“I do.” And I hated that he felt bad for it.
