46. Glass Rose
forty-six
Glass Rose
“ L evitation.” Morgoya picked up a small glass orb from the cart of wares Batre had hauled out of a hidden storage facility on the other side of the training room. It was thin, reflecting the fog-tainted light like a pearl, and extremely fragile.
She let it drop.
Her hand flattened in the air above it, halting the descent.
The orb floated a few inches away from an untimely death upon the floor.
With a glance at her girlfriend, she withdrew her hand, and the orb wobbled midair but remained in place.
Batre had extended her own palm flat and horizontal, accepting the transfer of power and keeping it safe.
“Any faerie can do it,” the High Lady informed me as Batre’s bare hand guided the orb back to its place on the cart.
“There are a number of basic abilities that anyone with magic can complete, though everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. It doesn’t matter which Element you were born to inherit. ”
“I did that once,” I announced, pointing to the orb.
Morgoya’s face betrayed mild surprise. “You did? When?”
“I was a child. I didn’t mean to do anything like that, but during one of my”—I searched for the right name—“ episodes , all of the objects in our living room started levitating. I had no control over it.” Bile rose in my throat, the familiar prickle of abhorrence triggering the hairs on the back of my neck, so I took a deep breath. “Like…I couldn’t put them down.”
“Hmm.” Morgoya tapped a manicured finger against her upper lip. “Is that the only instance of baseline magic you’ve experienced?”
Ignorance jerked my eyebrows up. “Um… What are the others?”
The High Lady elevated one arm, sharply clicking her fingers as she brought her fist towards her face like she was pulling a string. A book appeared on top of the cart.
“Summoning,” she declared simply, and then proceeded to let her arm fall back to her side, releasing her fist into a flat hand as if she were wiping a table, and the book disappeared. “Vanishment.”
I watched as she summoned the book once more, then twisted her hand as if to flick an invisible switch. Immediately, the hardcover book flipped open, and pages began to turn of their own volition.
“Enchantment,” she announced, and then the orb was in her hand once more. “Summoning,” she reminded me with a pointed look, before she tossed it into the air.
I braced for another round of levitation, but Morgoya let the glass shatter upon the floor, and it was all I could do to keep up as she brought her hands together above it as if she was praying. The broken shards of glass morphed back into the original item without a single crack or scratch.
“Restoration.”
The High Lady made the motion of lifting a string and the orb floated up to rest on the waiting palm of her free hand. A moment later, she made a pinch towards it, and the glass orb was once again shattered into hundreds of tiny pieces.
“Destruction.”
Keeping her fingers in place above the remnants of glass gathered on her palm, she rubbed them together like she was seasoning a pot with salt, and I stared open-mouthed as the glass refashioned itself into the shape of a rose.
The delicate petals shone in the low light, the transparent stem harnessing a bluish hue.
With a theatrical curtsy, Morgoya handed the glass rose to Batre—who took it while fanning her face with her other hand and batting her eyelashes exaggeratedly—and then she twisted back to face me.
“Transformation,” she concluded.
“You’re already aware of trans portation ,” Batre added, kissing the rose before she sent it floating back to the cart of magical supplies.
“That’s what we do when we evanesce, but we can also do it with items. Certain faeries are skilled enough to do it to other people, too, but that’s often frowned upon. ”
“Necromancy is another one,” Morgoya mentioned, swishing her hips as she walked over to the throne. “That isn’t just frowned upon, though. It’s a banned magic, commonly viewed as a practice that only the Witches still acknowledge.”
“Oh, and don’t forget telekinesis!” Batre exclaimed.
The High Lady clicked her fingers as she sat down on the throne of vines.
“Yes, that one, too! Thank you.” Her gaze settled on me.
“I tend to forget telekinesis because I’m fairly weak in that area, but it’s the practice of mind-reading or mind-sharing—which is what you and Lucais are able to do through the mating bond’s magic—and memory-scraping.
” She shrugged, a reticent look in her eyes.
“The last part of that is controversial, but it’s not actually banned unless you’re permanently removing the other person’s memories.
It’s also one of the most uncommon skills, second only to necromancy.
Lucais’s father was a very talented telekinetic, actually. ”
“Healing!” Batre threw in as she rustled through a cabinet.
“So common we always forget it. Everyone can heal themselves to a degree, but only some have mastered it well enough to be able to heal others.” She straightened, pensive.
“I think that one ranks about third on the list of uncommon talents—for being able to heal other people, that is.”
Head spinning, I held my hands out in front of me to beg for pause.
“Let me go through this from the beginning,” I beseeched, feeling foggy and warm as I displayed a hand to count on my fingers.
“The most common forms of baseline magic are levitation, restoration, destruction, transportation and trans form ation, enchantment…” With both hands in the air again, I trailed off with uncertainty.
“Summoning,” Morgoya added.
I lifted another finger.
“And vanishment,” Batre concluded.
Another finger.
“Right.” I nodded like my mind wasn’t swimming through muddy waters. “So there are eight, plus three forms of less common magic that include necromancy or healing, and then all of the mind-reading stuff.”
The High Lady clapped her hands gleefully. “You’ve got it!” she applauded, grinning as she crossed her legs.
I raised an eyebrow at her. “Hardly.”
“There is a whole new world of layers and rules that apply to all of those forms of magic, but we don’t need to get into them right now,” she assured me.
“The most important thing is that you know what your options are so you don’t feel pressured to follow through with the only form of magic you’ve ever been shown—which was dark and kind of messy, no offence. ”
“None taken.” I swayed a little on my feet, woozy. “I feel like this is a lot, though.”
“Here,” Batre offered, picking up the glass rose that Morgoya had transformed.
She smiled as she approached me, but I saw the panic flaring in the depths of her eyes, like she was concerned they might lose my interest or scare me away.
Like they’d be damned if they did. “You said that you’ve levitated in the past. Why don’t we see if you can do that again? ”
Inhaling deeply through my mouth, I accepted the glass stem.
It was cool and so devastatingly fragile between my fingertips, the distortion of the world through its translucent, ice-blue surface too pretty to be handled by someone who had touched so many horrors.
Batre reclaimed my attention, pulling me from the intrusive thought, and I understood the look she was concealing.
She’d pledged the commitment of her lifetime to Morgoya, who was irrevocably tied to Lucais in ways I still didn’t fully understand, and losing him would be catastrophic for the both of them—even if it was only in title.
Rulers in Faerie generally die at the end of their reign.
I straightened my spine. “What do I do with it?”
“First, imagine there is a link between you and the flower,” the earth faerie urged. “Picture it as an extension of yourself, the stem another part of your hand—a limb you can hold and control with calculated movements. Focus on that feeling, and let me know when you think you’ve got it.”
I did as she instructed.
The rest of the room faded from my mind; everything from the High Lady on the edge of her vine-woven seat to the maroon smudge of my hair in the mirror.
The ceiling disappeared, and the floor fell away from under me.
I stared at the glass rose until I knew exactly how many petals made up its flower, until the stem felt like a part of my hand, until I felt a sense of familiarity with the single leaf and thorn that peeked out from one side.
Rolling it in my hand, the sharp angle of the thorn glinted as I turned it, and I could imagine my own blood running through it like a vein that would fill with the colour of my insides, a crimson flood linking my body to the flower—
“Apply pressure if there are any open wounds while you wait for someone to come, preferably with a clean bandage if you think you can find one. But the first thing you do is call us, even if you need to leave the house to do it, even if you think she really needs your help. Someone will always come if you call, Auralie. Okay? You did really well tonight.”
—and making us one. I squeezed my eyes closed, keeping the visual in the forefront of my mind as I gripped the glass stem and imagined that I could manipulate its movements the same way that I flexed my fingers.
There was a pressure in the air, an invisible thread stitching us together, as corporeal as the tendons in my hand or the muscles in my jaw. Opening my mouth to tell Batre—