Iago relaxed, his small wings slumping in relief.
“Butwhyare we not allowed to go in there?”
Iago’s gaze darted around the hall. “I have been forbidden to speak of it.”
“Oh,” Elizabeth said, a bit crestfallen. “No worries, then.”
Back in her chambers, she pulled out the rock and set it on the writing desk.
She focused on her breathing and looked within herself, to the well of peridot fire. She focused on the stone, visualizing it floating.
She closed her eyes and unwound a thread of the fire, imagining it extending outwards from her, reaching and scooping up the stone, cradling it and pushing it skywards. Her lower back grew sweaty with the effort, and her outstretched hand trembled in her focus.
She opened her eyes. To her surprise, there was a faint, flickering line of green fire extending from her palm towards the stone.
“Váless,” she whispered.
The stone rocked back and forth on the table, like a bird struggling to fly.
Once more, she found the well inside herself and laboured to find a thread she could pull outwards. She failed several times.
Each time she tried to pull a thread from the well, it would snap back like an elastic band. She focused harder and ended up with a fluttering thread of peridot fire. After several attempts, she was able to surround the stone with her green fire and lifted it skywards.
The stone slowly, sluggishly, rose from the table up to her eye level.
It worked.
The stone levitated a foot in the air, spinning in place. She blinked, and the stone dropped, clattering across the table.
Elated, she whooped, then promptly covered her mouth.
She hadmagic.
Her energy suddenly flagged. She had just eaten, but her stomach grumbled. Debating if it would seem suspicious to beg for more food from the kitchens, she rummaged through her bags for nuts and any leftover bread she had taken with her on her rides. She devoured fistfuls of nuts like a starving person.
After she was sated, she grinned wickedly.
The angel had given hermagic.
Elizabeth paced, considering the implications of what she had just discovered.
She tried to sit still, tried to open a book, but she was filled with restless energy and decided to wander the castle to stretch her limbs.
She passed the ballroom doors and was seized with a burning curiosity about it. Did the abandoned ballroom have something to do with the women in the cellars? Some ritual through which they’d met their end? Or something else entirely? The castle was brimming with secrets, and she found herself hungry for answers.
And Iago’s refusal to tell her about the ballroom had only intrigued her further.
Struck by a sudden thought, she grinned. There was someone she knew with looser lips than Iago.
Suddenly, she heard voices down the hall and quickly hid behind a pillar. She strained her ears to hear what was being said.
“Shall we, then?” Caspian asked in a cold voice.
“Certainly.” Mammond’s voice was honey-sweet.
“Happy hunting,” Caspian replied.
“Happy hunting,” Mammond agreed.
