I feel myself splitting apart, coming undone. Droplets cling to Fox’s eyelashes and spill down his cheeks like tears.He reaches for me. I don’t shake him off this time but turn very still, rigid, like a statue, and he lets go at once, his hand falling back to his side.
I don’t want him to touch me. I don’t wish to be held or comforted.
‘Blaze.’
My chest aches at the softness in his voice. The rain intensifies, falling heavy and cold from a starless sky.
I never asked for this. It’s notfair. The gravity of it all weighs me down, sinking into my bones. My body is paralysed, yet my mind is spinning.
‘Leave me alone, Fox,’ I say flatly. ‘I need time to think.’
‘Why don’t you come back to the cottage and we’ll –’
‘Isaid, leave mealone.’
Rain turns to hailstones as the anger returns, cutting through the pain.
I always wanted it – power. Irevelledin my water gifts. Only possessing power is one thing. To be possessed, quite another. When I found the Eye, I thought I held the key to power itself. But I was wrong. I don’t hold the key – Iamthe key.
A prize to be won. A weapon to be wielded.
I don’t belong to myself any more.
Perhaps I never did.
60
Blaze
There was a time I found solitude suffocating. Now, I welcome it.
It helps me think.
About Etheri and Magi and Demari. About the three sisters and their talismans. About Senna’s curse and how I’m supposed to break it.
I think about my mother.
I think about fate and prophecy, life and death, about the past, present and future – a tangle of golden threads. I think about who I was and who I wanted to be.
But most of all, I think about what I have become.
The Eye dangles uselessly from the chain round my neck.
I considered hurling it right back into the Creek. Now that its power has been transferred to me, it’s nothing more than a piece of jewellery. A shiny relic. But something made me slip it over my head, where it’s remained ever since, sitting cold and empty between my collarbones, the sole witness to my self-imposed isolation.
Having long given up trying to get me totalk about it, the others eventually – mercifully – agreed to let me have some time to myself. Flint had Sheen cast a powerful wind shield around the perimeter of the cottage for my protection. It was the only way my brother would consent to leave me here unguarded, since I refused Fox’s suggestion that Scout or Cedar remain behind to watch over me. So, after several anxious looks cast in my direction, they all reluctantly left for the palace. I didn’t say goodbye.
Perhaps I’m being selfish. Fine, IknowI’m being selfish. But the way I see it, I’ve spent weeks caught up in a fool’s errand, risking life and limb to find the Eye of the Soul, when all this time –allthis time – the very thing I was searching for … wasmyself.
If my sense of humour hadn’t abandoned me along with my appetite, self-conviction and general worldview, then I’m sure I’d find the whole situation rather amusing.
But then I recall the Rain Singers back in Brava, mourning their dead. Yet more deaths on my conscience.
In my dreams I see their broken bodies littering the beach. I wake shivering, drenched in cold sweat. No arms reach out to comfort me, and I remember I’m alone.
My only visitor is fury. It drops by every so often, arriving in sharp bursts that frost the leaves and crystallize the water lapping at the bank of the Creek. Sometimes it spreads wider, coating the trees with thick layers of ice that I shatter like glass in the absence of a real target – one with raven eyes and a voice softer than silk.
I wonder how long it’ll be before King Balen learns of my new …identity. I imagine most people will think metriumphant. Even smug. After all, who wouldn’t want the ability to wield power itself?
