Chapter 16 #2
“Right.” Because Draven was many things, but he had never been… defective, like I still managed to be.
It made sense. From everything I had read or been told, mana was instinctual, a natural extension of your thoughts. It wasn’t like learning to walk or read, it was like breathing.
Or at least, it was supposed to be. I would have assumed that getting an enormous boost of power changed things, but as usual, it was only me who struggled with a basic part of being fae.
A muscle worked in Draven’s jaw, and he took a breath, looking out at the mountains.
“I paid a high price for the additional power I wield, and even then, it was only ever Winter mana. When you learn to control your powers, you will have two at your disposal.”
When, he had said. Not if. Not in the incredibly unlikely event that it doesn’t kill you first.
“You believe I can get my mana under control?”
He turned back to face me. “You have survived torture time and time again, Morta Mea. If anyone is stubborn or resilient enough to do the impossible, yes, I believe that it’s you.”
His tone was darker than his words, a small note of bitterness underneath, like he hated those things about me as much as he appreciated them.
Or just hated the reminder of the things I had endured?
I held his gaze, feeling the frustration across the bond as clearly as I read it in the churning shades of teal blue and emerald. As guarded as he was, sometimes I thought I was almost starting to understand him.
“It isn’t torture every time,” I said quietly. “Honestly, it’s better now than it was in the cave.”
Rage replaced the bitterness clouding the air around him. He scoffed, shaking his head. “Which cave?”
The one with the Dragon or the one I had been chained in, he meant. The question was rhetorical, but I felt the answer tumbling from my lips anyway.
“Both of them.”
Frost coated both of his fists, and he broke our gaze, dropping my arm in the process.
“You said you paid a high price for your mana, Draven. Can you honestly not understand why I would do the same?”
“I had no choice—”
“Neither did I,” I interrupted.
“—but to act alone,” he finished in a thundering tone. “I was alone by circumstance. You chose to be alone. You keep choosing it. Even now, if I couldn’t feel your mana out of control, couldn’t get it under control, would you have told me about the toll it was taking?”
I swallowed, a lump forming in my throat at the accusation I couldn’t quite deny.
You were my wife.
I still felt the hollow ache in my bones at the way he had used the past tense all those months ago. I knew what he meant when he said I kept choosing to be alone… had known all along that I would set us back. Still, I couldn’t see another way.
Draven protected what belonged to him; he had made that clear. But protecting someone was not the same thing as having a partnership, and we did not exist on equal ground.
Would I have told him that I was struggling if I thought he might lock me further into a cage? Would I have admitted to another weakness when it was all I ever managed to show him?
“I don’t know,” I finally said. “Talking about things isn’t exactly what we do.”
The truth of the Frostgrave Battle hung between us, the story he refused to tell. For that matter, he never offered anything I didn’t pry out of him.
Even with the villagers, he had taken care of every repercussion of the monster attacks without so much as a discussion.
Like so often before, the words were stuck in the air between us. Talking wasn’t what we did; it wasn’t a skill we had. I had built my life on secrets, and he had built his on power, and right now those things felt nearly as insurmountable as the monsters that wouldn’t stop coming for us.
Wasn’t that always the way of things, though? There were no demons quite as hard to defeat as the ones that ravaged your own soul.
“We should get to training before darkness falls,” he said after several stilted heartbeats.
I nodded, even as something in my chest sank just a little more. He was right, though.
We needed to focus on getting my mana under control, not the widening gaps between all the fractured pieces of our souls.
Whatever small hope I had allowed myself to feel that I could learn to channel my mana was dashed when the next thing I knew, I was waking up to the oppressive weight of Draven’s fury.
Slowly, I took stock of my surroundings.
I was in his bed, on my stomach, with Batty trilling worriedly from the pillow next to me. My body was drained, like I had walked through a desert for days on end without food or water or shelter.
And my wings burned as if they were on fire.
Something trickled down my skin, and I reached a hand up to my nose only for it to come away covered in blood.
“Son of a frostwhore,” my sister cursed. “It’s bleeding again.”
Her slim hand came into my periphery, holding out a cloth for me. I took it, and her hands went to my wings instead.
“What happened?” I croaked out.
“Oh, nothing. You know, just, the two of you apparently thought it would be smart to poke the frostbeast of your uncontained mana without bothering to have a healer present.”
Her touch was far more gentle than her tone as she rubbed ointment into my wings in a familiar soothing motion, just as she had treated my wounds the first time I was brought to her.
“As soon as you attempted to channel your mana, it spun out of your control. Your wings emerged, and your ice punctured through them before I could control it.” Draven delivered the words in what might have been a matter-of-fact way, if I couldn’t feel the rage that underpinned every single one.
At himself? Or at me again for going to get this power to begin with?
Both, most likely.
Fatigue clawed at my limbs, darkness threatening the edges of my vision.
“Amias is on his way, but I’m doing what I can in the meantime.”
If he hadn’t come yet, that meant he was with Nevara. It didn’t bode well that he couldn’t leave her side, knowing how forcefully Draven must have demanded his presence.
I sighed. Suddenly, the idea of returning to unconsciousness felt less like a threat and more like a reprieve. I gave into the darkness that beckoned at the corners of my mind.
The last thing I heard was Batty’s indignant squeak, just as I felt Draven’s weight settle onto the bed next to mine.