Chapter 18 #2
I plop down at his feet, not minding a cold butt if it means I can get this shit out of me.
He sits beside me, bringing his warmth and sheltering me from the wind.
With my eyes closed and my palms planted on the grass by my hips, I send the mass of energy down my arms and out through my hands, imagining it shooting like bolts of light deep into the earth.
When the tremors subside, I open my eyes, sigh, and proclaim, “It’s gone.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
He peers over his shoulder at the area we came from. “Are you willing to do it again? See if you can harness faster this time?”
That’s why I’m here, isn’t it? I give him a firm nod and start to rise, but he pulls me gently back down.
“Maybe you should rest a bit first.”
I sigh my assent, stretching my legs out in front of me and crossing them at the ankles. Leo does the same, and for a moment we sit in silence, watching the river foam collect around the rocks and listening to squirrels scampering up trees.
Body relaxed and tongue loose, I confess, “I don’t know why, but it feels like my ability is completely out of control, like it just keeps getting stronger and stronger and it’s never going to stop.”
Leo sits up straighter. “Stronger in what way?”
“Like I’m picking up everything, even little, everyday emotions.” I angle toward him as I tell him about the amorous guys in Brit Lit and the girl who was crying in the stairwell over her failing grade. “Is my power getting stronger, or does it just seem that way because—”
He silences me with an arched brow. “Because you’re finally paying attention?”
I roll my eyes, recalling all the times he’d urged me to accept my gift. And all the times I stubbornly refused to believe him. “Do you think that’s what’s going on?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know. Your power could very well be getting stronger. It makes sense. Like any muscle, the more you use it, the stronger it gets.”
“So if I stop using it, will it go away?”
“Betts—” he sighs.
I crack a smile. “Relax. I know it won’t.” I pull my knees to my chest. “I’m here, aren’t I? Practicing. Trust me, you and Jean both scared me straight.”
“I’ve never tried to scare you.”
“Jean did.”
“No, Jean tried to scare me.”
You need to protect her, Sidhe. She doesn’t know half of what she can do.
“She made it sound like I was doomed,” I say, trying to sound flippant and failing. “Like I’m going to blow myself up or something with my own power.” A thought occurs to me, and I sit up straighter. “Is that what Rime is worried about? Am I a potential hazard? Am I going to get everyone killed?”
“No.” Leo gently tucks my windblown hair behind my ear. “No, I don’t think that’s what she meant.”
“Then what did she mean? And what was it she sensed in my blood? Was she talking about my clairsentience?”
“I don’t know.”
Suddenly I want to scream. Why doesn’t he have any answers? “She said you would tell me.”
“Maybe in the future, I will. But right now I don’t know what she was talking about.” He sweeps my hair back again, fighting the wind. “All I know is that you’re incredibly powerful. And that you’ll be safest if you learn to control it.”
“But how can I control it if I don’t even know what I can do?”
“You learn to control what you do know, so that you’re strong and prepared for anything new that comes along.”
He makes it sound so easy. So logical.
I rest a cheek on the backs of my hands where they’re folded on my upraised knees. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
“I know.” There’s sympathy and understanding in his dark eyes. “But I’m not worried about anyone else right now, I’m worried about you.”
Because of Ember.
I pick up one of the pine branches scattered on the ground beside me and stroke its long needles like I would a cat’s tail. “What else do you know about her? Ember, I mean. Tell me exactly what emotions I’m in for. No sugar-coating this time.”
He sighs and leans back on his hands. “We have so few facts, all I can do is speculate.”
“Then speculate.”
He rocks his crossed feet as he thinks. “I suspect she knew she had fire magic long before she wove with belladonna, but for some reason, she hid it.”
“And you don’t know why?”
“We have no idea.”
Which means he doesn’t know why she suddenly decided she wanted to use both types of magic. “Was she an outcast?”
“From what I can tell, yes, at least in those years after she was rejected by the caillecha, but probably even before that. I’d imagine as soon as it became apparent she had fire magic, she would’ve been ostracized.”
“Because she’d already woven with the belladonna?”
He nods. “And obviously, at a certain point, she no longer tried to hide any of it.”
“Well, why not use it, right? Command people’s respect.” Command their fear, actually, but maybe that didn’t matter to someone like her.
Sadly, I can sympathize, especially if she tried to follow the rules and everyone still rejected her and called her an abomination. If they misunderstood her and considered her a freak of nature.
Fingers sticky from the pine needles, I toss the branch aside and pick at the frayed stitches on the toe of my tennis shoe instead.
“So then this weapon was some sort of revenge thing?” You say there’s something wrong with my power?
How about I make a super-ring and show you what wrong really means?
“Most likely.”
“Is it bad that I kinda feel sorry for her?”
Leo blows out a breath, watches the river, takes way too long to answer.
“Does sympathizing with her make you a bad person? No, but it is potentially dangerous. If you don’t manage to harness her emotions, you could end up feeling them like they’re your own.
Just like what happened with the mill-workers. ”
My stomach drops. When I walked through the logging accident’s energy, I didn’t witness the tragedy like a bystander, I experienced it like it was happening to me.
Hesitantly, he explains “I’m worried that if you find yourself identifying with her, you could not only have a harder time dissociating, but you might end up feeding her emotions and making them even stronger.”
Oh god. Does that mean that for however long I’m in range of the macguffin’s energy, I’ll be a raging, vengeful, murderous psychopath?
No way.
I’m out.
I perch on my feet, crouching like a frog ready to spring.
I don’t have to do this, right? It’s voluntary. Avery and Aaron can find the damned thing, and with fewer risks to themselves than I can. I mean, how essential am I, really? What if Leo had never found me? It’s not like he would’ve given up on the search. He’d have found a way.
Coming to a wobbly stance, I cross my arms and gaze at the low sun shining a milky orange through the bare trees.
Leo rises, too, but says nothing. He’s giving me space, I know, to work this all out in my head.
He won’t push me one way or another, probably because he’s just as torn as I am and still feeling guilty for getting me involved in the first place.
It’s that last thought that pushes me over the edge.
Maybe because I don’t want anyone seeing me as weak, but more likely, because Leo hasn’t given up on me.
If he thought I couldn’t manage, he’d say so.
His silence is proof that he believes in me.
No overprotecting, no manipulating, no lying, no begging.
This is all on me.
I take his hand. “Come on. Let’s go back and try again.”