36

A Touch of Magic

So it turns out I can be a total coward.

My declaration leaves me more vulnerable than I like. At my words, Reven’s expression shifts from surprise to scorching need, which tries to draw me back to him. But it’s the wariness that’s still there that threatens to break into my soul and steal everything.

I think it’s because I see so much of myself in him.

So much of the child who wanted love but was mostly kept away from the few people who could possibly give her any. Someone looked at only as a thing, a tool, a means to an end, rather than as a person with a soul and heart. But, like I said, I’m a coward, so I turn my back on him and raise my hands, pulling sand out of the ground.

I think I feel him close to me, but a check over my shoulder shows he hasn’t moved nearer. “Are you going to help me figure this out or not?”

He raises those thick, black eyebrows slowly. “You need my help?”

I turn back to what I’m doing. “I was never allowed to do anything with my power beyond make my flowers, and even that was secret. You use yours a lot. Feel free to share some advice.” I don’t let myself even glance at him. “I’m going to try to bring some sand up from the soil to work with.”

He doesn’t say anything, but this time I definitely feel him move closer.

I have to close my eyes for a second to hold my focus on what I’m doing.

Then we get to it. Together, we work through the remaining daylight hours on what I am becoming more and more sure is a lost cause. This should be easy, but it’s not, and every effort is failing in one way or another.

As soon as the shadows of dusk start to stretch across the clearing, Reven raises his throne of shadow. Then the blue stones appear, like materializing from whatever pocket he stuffs things into, in a perfect circle around him. The tree gives a great shake like she’s sending him her blessing, and I want to believe it’s the wind, but no breeze touches my skin.

I have to say, except for the whole evil-onion-layers bit, Reven’s power over shadow seems much handier than sand.

“Should I go somewhere else?” I ask.

Indecision flickers over his face, the way he pauses as he sits. Then he shakes his head. “I’m okay for now.”

Not exactly confidence inspiring.

“Keep going,” he says as he closes his eyes. “I’ll let you know when I’m ready, unless you figure out the portal before then.”

I’m not sure where this hope of his is coming from after how badly this has gone so far. I’m certainly not feeling it. Because while he is calm and almost relaxed, I am… Let’s just say I’ve learned something about myself today. Apparently sucking at something important, maybe even lifesaving, makes me pissy and prone to swearing and even violence. The malformed pieces of glass I’ve produced have taken the brunt of that so far.

I can’t even make anything big enough to crawl through, let alone walk through. Previous efforts have cracked, shattered, toppled over, melted, or turned back to sand. At this point I’d settle for accomplishing a small handheld mirror.

Not exactly the rescuer Reven hoped for.

All I’m left with as I sit here are piles of sand all around me that I’ve pulled from the ground. I couldn’t even do that right. The small creek now has a new bend to it that might become a pond, thanks to me sinking the land underneath. Meanwhile, I’ve made and remade my pile, then returned it to sand when my efforts didn’t work, so many times it’s not all sand anymore. I don’t want that wolf, or anyone else, to cut themselves on a wasteland of glass.

All in all, a useless day. The goddesses got it right, making Tabra firstborn.

I flop to the ground beside the rock where we kissed earlier and drop my head back against it. It’s not that I’m physically exhausted from the use of my power. It’s more from my own emotions. I’m only eighteen, and it feels like the fate of the entire world rests squarely on my shoulders.

Pressure clearly doesn’t make this lump into a diamond. What were the goddesses thinking, putting any of this on me?

My amulet gives a tiny thump, like it’s comforting me. I hope to the high heavens that Eidolon’s gift to my sister, if it does anything at all, is a similar comfort. I doubt it, but I need to hold on to hope where I can get it.

With a deep sigh, I raise my hand, palm up, and pull my light forward. The glow has remained bright this entire day, and now, in the dark, even with two moons now hanging crescents in the sky like claws of light, I can barely stand to look at my own flesh, far more brilliant than when I would make my flowers at home.

Why? Because it’s darker here? Or because practice and use feed the gift?

Almost without thinking, I pull a small amount of sand closer and heat it. I mold the glowing orange glass into a delicate petal and then allow it to cool.

This is easy.

I’ve done this a thousand times before, the flower forming under my direction without so much as a flick and swish of my fingers until I reach out and pick up a perfect glass lily—a symbol of hope and new beginnings where I come from—that’s small enough to fit in the cradle of my palm. This one is ridiculously better than my first efforts when I was a child.

Practice. That’s what it takes to manipulate my powers. Proof that Grandmother got a few things wrong after all. Unfortunately, practice takes time I don’t have.

I wrinkle my nose at its smooth flawlessness. Perfect, and yet still a poor imitation of the real things. I glance over at Reven and am snared by the sight of him. Eyes closed, trancelike in his throne of inky swirling shadow, he’s both man and darkness. Like me, he’s flawed and broken. It’s hard to look past the turbulent power that pours off him like the River Tropikis pours off the edge of Wildernyss, a terrifying torrent that could easily sweep you away, but I think I see him more clearly now.

I shift my gaze back to my minuscule creation and stare at the tiny, upside-down reflection of my moonlit face in one of the petals.

What good is making the larger glass to walk through if you can’t make it work magically anyway?

Can I even create a portal in my glass? I stare harder into the flower, like it’s an onyx ball a seer-woman in the slums of Enora uses to look into the future.

Nothing.

That’s not how the portals work, Meren.

Because, of course, it takes power to activate it. On a deep breath, I bring my power forward again. Only, rather than forming or manipulating, I send it into a single petal of the glass itself. And wait.

Still nothing.

I puff out a frustrated growl. Beating my head against a stone wall would be more productive than this.

Jaw clenched, I try once more. This time, rather than just one petal, I push my light into the entire flower and picture what I hope is the safest possible portal for the other end. One without guards, at least when we were there. The one that Reven dragged me through the night he took me.

I imagine where it is in the Devotion Mountains inside the Queen’s Tower and what the room looks like, so unlike any others, which are all found in temples with elaborate and rich decor all around.

A small burst of heat sparks from the amulet against my chest, and suddenly I’m gazing at multiple tiny versions of that very room reflected in each of the petals of my glass flower.

“Oh my goddess!” I’m so startled that it worked that I lose my focus and bobble my flower, almost dropping it.

“What?” The growl that comes from Reven swings my gaze to where he’s seated.

Or rather, where he was seated. The throne is gone, and the shadows have disappeared. He’s on his feet, hands fisted, gaze sweeping the glen for danger, his face cruel in its intensity.

“Nothing,” I assure him, scrambling to my feet as well. “I—” I pause and hold up the flower I made. “I made it show me the other side of a portal.”

He looks at my face, then looks at the flower and back at my face. Then, finally, he rolls his shoulders. Slowly, his hands unclench as he stands upright. He really was ready to demolish anything threatening us. Or me?

“Which one?” he asks.

I scowl. “What? No Great job, princess! or I knew you could do it!” After he’s watched me struggling all damn day.

He cocks his head, waiting for my answer to his question.

“The secret one in the Queen’s Tower.” I’m grumbling now.

“You figured that out, hmmm?”

I shrug. “I’m a princess. I was made to memorize maps and information on all the dominions my entire life. I knew about the tower before you took me. Just not the portal inside it.”

“I see.” Why does that seem to bother him? “Do you think you can make something big enough for us to get through?”

With a grimace, looking at the small dunes of sand all around me, I shake my head. “Only if I sell my soul. But even then, I’d probably get swindled.”

He doesn’t argue, doesn’t push. “Then we stick with the original plan.”

He prowls closer, and I catch my breath at the way he moves, at the peril that cloaks him now that he holds more darkness within him. The same way that she-wolf moved.

“Show me how it works?” His demand yanks me out of my thoughts.

Flower in hand, I repeat what I’d done. For a long string of seconds, I worry that it won’t work. That a moment ago was a fluke. But before the worry can expand in my chest, the plain stone room on the other side of the portal in Wildernyss appears.

Reven wraps his hands under mine as he stares at the flower.

And I stare at him. So close to me now. Touching. After that taste today in the sunshine on that rock, the part of me that’s had to hide and steal and fight to get anything that’s just for me…that part wants more.

“Here.” I place the flower in his hands.

His eyebrows wing up, and now he’s watching me, that wariness back.

I shrug. “A gift.”

To remember me by after all this is over.

I almost expect some kind of teasing remark—maybe even sarcasm. But instead, without a word, he draws forth that smoky pocket and disappears the flower into it.

Then he drops his hands to his sides, and, from the way he’s watching me, I almost think he’s going to kiss me again.

“Let’s go find Vos,” he says instead.