“I’ll be right at your back. If you want me to move, you just tell me that, okay?” Kyzen asks and I gulp. “We’ll explain everything.”
I nod.
He crawls toward me slowly, stopping only when he’s at my back. His legs settle on either side of mine as I reposition myself until I’m sitting crisscrossed. I tangle my fingers in the grass to keep from reaching for him.
The warmth of his chest against my back sends a shudder of relief through me, though my muscles stay coiled.
His arms slide around me, resting on my thighs, gentle and careful. The embrace that doesn’t trap me. I know I can break free from it the second I need to.
“What you’re experiencing, what you’ve been experiencing since you left the healing villa is what’s called the Shadow Shift. It’s the phase after the God of Shadows’ power retreats from your mind. That…hum you heard while you were in there was his power weaving through you. It discombobulates reality and sometimes, it takes a while for everything to settle once again.”
My throat constricts and fear that I may suffocate sears through me when I can’t swallow down the lump.
Kyzen’s fingers rub circles against my skin.
“How do you know that?”
His touch recoils, and my leg jumps in reaction.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you,” he whispers. His breath fans the sweat on my neck, and I repress my shiver. “We were put in those rooms for three days and sixteen hours.”
The blood in my veins freezes.
“What?”
“Almost a year in after we arrived, Gladian pushed us too hard in training one day. He got Amick on the ground, and we…reacted. I left that scar on him that goes down his face. First, Harriseen declared Gladian could whip us in retaliation, butGladian refused, fearful of how our father would respond to that. So our punishment was those rooms.”
My lips tremble, as does everything else.
“Why…what’s the point of that room?”
“Fear is an extraordinary motivator. Enough of the emotion will have power reacting on its own. The point of those five rooms is to bring forth trauma and induce fear, so your power comes out to work with you. Harriseen uses the rooms to force those who don’t have control of their power to gain it in that moment,” Amick murmurs quietly but factually.
“That’s how long it took for our powers to come out. It was just enough to give him a glimpse of whether what Derivius wrote about our abilities was true or not,” Kyzen says.
“How…how long was I in there?”
“Twenty-four hours.”
A harsh exhale rips free from me.
For the Valories.
I never would’ve survived.
I still feel like I’m dying.
“My power came out?”
“Twenty-four hours is what Derivius negotiated for. Your power didn’t come out until we came into the room.”
Gods…when I attacked them.
A tremor shivers through my body and Kyzen tightens his hold. I lean into it. The desire for this to feel real—normal—overwhelms me.
“Why is it taking so long to shake this sensation?”
He hesitates, and I sense his tension bleeding through his grip.
