58. I’ve got Skills, They’re Multiplying
58
I’ve got Skills, They’re Multiplying
Aliza
C limbing was easy and definitely not at all horrifying. Not when we were hundreds of feet in the air without so much as a rope or harness to save us, and definitely not when the only thing keeping us from falling were my friend’s long, talon-like fingernails, sinking into the stone as though it was butter.
Those were the lies I told myself as Jacques climbed at a surprisingly steady pace. I knew he could move faster than this, and could only assume his smooth, careful movements were intended not to displace me and send me tumbling to my untimely death.
Watching the bones in Jacques’ pale hands shift and strain was somehow worse than the view of the faraway ground, waiting to gobble us up, or at least, I thought it was. I couldn’t bring myself to peek and confirm. Instead, I focused all my energy on clinging on with every scrap of strength I possessed. Did vampires need to breathe? Apparently not, because my death grip around his neck did nothing to hinder his meticulous progress.
Wind lifted and dragged at my loose hair, whispering threats to dislodge me with a strong gust. I screwed my eyes shut and buried my face in Jacques’ shoulder. Flying was one thing, but this… this was so much worse.
“Here we are, ma belle.”
I cracked open a reluctant eye as Jacques crawled onto a ledge broad enough to sit on, encircling an enormous bubble of gleaming glass, at least three times as tall as me. The observatory, a window to the universe, and a doorway to my parents.
Fear and relief combined to turn my limbs to numb jelly, but I managed to shift from Jacques’ back and park my arse on the stone. The wind still clawed at me, still longed to drag me down the sheer drop on one side, but I crouched low, my fingers digging into the lip of the stone, and peered into the dome.
The circular room below was dark, and I had to cup my hands to my face to see past my reflection. The biggest telescope I’d ever seen was positioned in the centre of the room, atop a platform of glossy wood, but there was no sign of Mum and Dad, or anyone else for that matter.
Was that a good thing, or a bad thing?
I craned my neck, my knees protesting at the stone biting through my leathers, and spotted a crammed bookshelf and a desk littered with papers and scrolls, and an assortment of spindly metal tools. A glass cabinet housed a collection of faintly glowing orbs of varying sizes, some as large as a bowling ball, others as small as a chicken egg.
“It is empty,” Jacques observed.
I shook my head, setting my hair swaying as I straightened. “No, it’s not. It can’t be. Bryn said they’re in there. They must be hiding.”
I’d hide if a load of enormous, terrifying fae warriors had broken into my house while I was settling down to watch trash TV, teleporting me to a crazy new world and holding me hostage. I’d definitely hide. Anybody would.
“Then let us take a closer look. Are you ready?”
Jacques nodded pointedly at my gloved hands. Could I do magic while wearing gloves? Now didn’t seem like the time to test it, so I stripped them off and took a deep breath of cool, thin air.
“Okay,” I murmured to myself. “Okay, let’s do this.”
My daily lessons with Mabli seemed a long time ago, this side of the ball. If only I’d thought to bring her with us; she’d have been a lot more useful than me. All I knew how to do were party tricks and the occasional epic, pyromaniacal meltdown. Sweat coated my palms, and not the variety powered by my internal magical furnace. This was pure dread.
“I actually don’t think I can do this.” I met Jacques’ bright, eerie eyes sheepishly. “What if I can’t control it?”
Jacques huffed a sinister laugh, his smile lifting the corners of his eyes. “We’re not going to let a little thing like self-control stand in the way of spoiling a fae male’s evening, are we?”
Despite the dire situation, I returned his grin. “I’m fae now, remember? You have to stop hating us.”
Jacques’ wicked expression softened, and he pressed an icy finger to the plated leather protecting my chest. “Not in here, and that is where it counts. Here, you are still human.”
I closed my clammy hand over his icy one. “That makes two of us.”
He blinked, and it struck me that it may well have been the first time I’d seen him do so. Pushing the unsettling thought aside, I turned my attention back to the dome.
“Here goes nothing. ”
Nothing was precisely what went.
All of Mabli’s lessons, all of Sage’s misplaced confidence, all my own brewing power, all of it culminated in a great big pile of nothing.
I gritted my teeth, flattening my palms against the glass as I forced my emotions and memories into precise stacks, searching for that ember hidden amongst them.
Come on. Please.
My power ignored me. Of all the times to show me up, why now? Why when it actually mattered? Why when someone needed me?
Mum and Dad were down there somewhere, frightened and in danger. If I didn’t save them, who would? Nobody, that was who. Nobody but me would risk their lives for a pair of unknown humans. They would be left to their awful fate at Maelgwyn’s whim. He’d burnt me alive, relished my screams of unimaginable agony. What would he do to them? How would he punish me, through them?
I screwed my eyes shut, and a tear seeped between my lashes, before sizzling on my cheek.
Sizzling!
I may lack control, but I had no shortage of brewing emotional outbursts. If I couldn’t do it the sensible way, then chaos it was.
Maelgwyn had taken my parents. He’d stationed guards to follow me and he’d taken them. He’d created the monster that had killed Hyacinth, leaving my friend without a mother. He’d murdered Idris’ son, and Idris—good, kind, gentle, wild, Idris—had tried to end his own life to escape the pain.
Sweat sluiced down my spine as I created a monsoon of hate and anger in my heart. Power crackled to life in my veins and glorious, consuming heat blared through my body, the pleasure and pain of sitting slightly too close to the fire on a winter’s morning. The air simmered and rippled around me.
I could do it.
Clenching my teeth, I willed the power to my hands, and with a whoomph , they ignited.
My eyes snapped open. I didn’t know much about glass blowing, other than that it looked like a trip to the burns unit waiting to happen, but the dome glowed beneath my hands, orange and yellow so bright it was almost blinding white. It should have melted my skin, and yet, I felt only pleasant warmth, like holding a mug of coffee on a cold morning. Maybe the ironic hand I’d been dealt wasn’t a curse after all; never again would I burn.
I dared a glance at Jacques. The vampire crouched on the ledge, his wide, bright eyes trained on my burning fingers, his lips parted in awe. It wasn’t every day a girl impressed an ancient immortal.
Slowly, slowly, the glass turned malleable, thinning and bleeding beneath my touch. A tiny hole formed, growing wider. The molten glass, somewhere between a liquid and a solid, pooled at the bottomost rim of the dome. As the hole expanded, I spread my arms with it, focusing my power at its edges. Only when it gaped wide enough to admit the broad shoulders of the princes did I haul back my magic.
Just as it had resisted showing itself, it fought against retreating, but I clung to Mabli’s instructions, focusing on the rock pressing into my knees, and the wind toying with my hair, grounding myself, high above the world. The night air cooled, a ghostly kiss against my flushed skin, and as I mastered my breathing and my flame, the glow of the glass faded.
“Most impressive, mon amie. ”
I shot Jacques a wide grin. “Wasn’t it?”
“I will fetch the others, try not to fall.”
No sooner had he said it than gravity curled its insistent fingers around me, and the horrifying drop beckoned. I knelt low, clinging to the wall as the vampire disappeared the same way he had come, leaving me all alone with only the wind and clouds for company.
My fears crept in, driving back my giddiness at having successfully used my powers. Peering through the gap I’d created, I examined the room again. There was no getting away from it. Mum and Dad weren’t there. Maybe they were in the lower levels. They had to be. We would sneak in, find them, and retreat, before anybody ever knew we were there.
There was no other option.
They had to be here.