Thea, sweet, precious Thea, shook her head, ferocity contorting her delicate face. “You are the first person in our family to wield in nigh fifty years,” she hissed. “And you didn’t get it here. He couldn’t help you learn it. I couldn’t help you.” A shuddering breath, and she lifted her chin. “If you can make him let you go,make him.If you want to leave, do it. You owe us nothing.” Her mouth trembled. “You make your own luck.”
I held tighter to her hands. “I’m empty inside, Thea,” I said. “Ispilled it all out, and it takes…I don’t know how long it’ll take, to come back again.”
“But it will.” She winced, like it hurt. “You’ll figure it out, and it will. And they won’t be able to lock you up with me ever again.”
The words didn’t seem real. I had read minds and frozen a man in midair, I had thrown fire from my hands andthiswas what didn’t seem real, like when you open the cage and the bird doesn’t realize it can fly. This was some kind of broken, some kind of foolishness I’d have to interrogate later, but for now I hung onto my sobbing sister’s words, and tried to let myself imagine them true.
“Did you really burn down the wall at Rowton?” she asked, still in a whisper.
I nodded. “Not on purpose. It just…came out.” I remembered the street toughs melting and burning, and tried to imagine that as Father’s ministers, as his guards, as Father. It felt…strange. But not as wrong as it probably should. Maybe I could do that. But Thea.
“What about you?” I murmured. “Do you want to come with me?”
She let out this little hitching laugh. “I don’t think I’m strong like you, Rowena.”
She’d been raised for this. This place hadn’t been a paradise for Thea, but it hadn’t been a hell. Going to people who spoke her language, who valued the talents she’d accrued for the role she’d prepared for, it made sense that she wanted that, instead of tents and Orcish and ways foreign to her.
I bowed my forehead to hers, warmth against mine. “I wish you every happiness.”
It took a moment for her voice to answer me, steady. “And I you.”
FAREWELLS
The day Thea left, they took me again to that dingy hall to talk to Father about my power.
I had avoided their questions, as best I could, told them about the slow gathering, that my well of power was empty. And I’d stayed with my sister, and went outside to place my hands on the grass of the courtyard, regardless of the stares and whispers, to look at the sky, the only things I could think to do. I let the power coalesce inside of me, not letting myself use a single thread or a breath of it, feeling the way I pressed it down under my skin like the frightened child I had been before. But unlike before, I could feel the trickle. I could feel that empty space, the space that had grown before, after the Pthralhirgar, after I exhausted myself at the wall.
It was bigger.
When Thea and her escort disappeared out through the gates, out of sight, on her way to a life far removed from these walls, I stood again in that threadbare throne room, looking up at the baron, the sickly ruler of the House of Belnor.
He wasn’t a massive wolf on its hind legs, or a giant felinescenting my blood. He was just a man. It seemed unfair that someone so unimpressive could do so much harm.
Father’s minister was again there on the platform, the one who’d supposedly been so very punished for selling me. Of course they were all up there and I was standing on the floor again, though this time without bonds on my wrists. At least, on some level, they knew they shouldn’t tie me.
The minister spoke for him. “Now, Lady Rowena…” The title was new. “You had informed us that you had enacted pyromancy just prior to our men reaching you at the orc encampment. That in deflecting oncoming aberrations, you had exhausted the breadth of your power.”
“I burned them to death.”
There was some uncomfortable shifting in chairs, which was odd. This was the power they wanted, but they weren’t comfortable with me having it, were they? All this time trying to get me to burn things, and they weren’t really happy when I did.
“Yes, well, we had discussed that it would take you some days to rebuild your reserve of…fuel, as you put it.”
I had not put it.
“It has been more than a month. While no one expects you to be ready to take out a building, it would behoove us to start exploring what you’re able to do. The family annals—" he waved to an aide with a couple of books in his arms, "—have records of sorcerers doing quite a few things besides burning. While gouts of fire may be useful in a siege, and others knowing we have such a scion will be helpful to keep enemies at bay—" how did he manage to sound so condescending when it wasmypower talked about? "—there are other abilities that should serve us sooner, if you could suss out a visiting noble’s motivations and thoughts, for example. We’ve proffered a soldier for you to practice on.” He referenced a man standing to the side who looked singularly nonplussed.
I considered wrapping the tendrils of power around theferret-like minister’s mind, cracking it open to my gaze like a nut, but the intimacy of it, after Khal, left a sour feeling in my stomach. “No. Not that,” I said, and didn’t care about the ripples of annoyance over the room.
“If you’re not able to do it yet, that isn’t a problem. It’s just something that you should practice, if you’re going to render aid to your father.”
“And what about my husband?” I asked. Faces around the room flinched. It didn’t matter if they were upset now, now that Thea was no longer in this house. I raised my eyebrows. “Why only my father?”
“Well now…” the minister spoke again, the effort of keeping that fake courtesy in his voice straining. “You don’t have to worry about that again, my dear. That’s been cleared up, and we can put it behind us now.”
“But I married Khal Drazha’s-son.” I let my gaze sweep them, let them look away. “To save Thea. We agreed in this room. You had me on my knees, with ropes on my wrists, right…there.”
“Well that wasn’t valid, it’s been settled, so you don’t have to worry your head about it now. If we could look forward?—"
