Chapter 60
Blaze
There was a time I found solitude suffocating. Now, I welcome it.
It helps me think.
About Etheri and Magi and Demari. About the three sisters and their talismans. About Senna’s curse and how I’m supposed to break it.
I think about my mother.
I think about fate and prophecy, life and death, about the past, present and future – a tangle of golden threads. I think about who I was and who I wanted to be.
But most of all, I think about what I have become.
The Eye dangles uselessly from the chain round my neck.
I considered hurling it right back into the Creek.
Now that its power has been transferred to me, it’s nothing more than a piece of jewellery.
A shiny relic. But something made me slip it over my head, where it’s remained ever since, sitting cold and empty between my collarbones, the sole witness to my self-imposed isolation.
Having long given up trying to get me to talk about it, the others eventually – mercifully – agreed to let me have some time to myself.
Flint had Sheen cast a powerful wind shield around the perimeter of the cottage for my protection.
It was the only way my brother would consent to leave me here unguarded, since I refused Fox’s suggestion that Scout or Cedar remain behind to watch over me.
So, after several anxious looks cast in my direction, they all reluctantly left for the palace. I didn’t say goodbye.
Perhaps I’m being selfish. Fine, I know I’m being selfish. But the way I see it, I’ve spent weeks caught up in a fool’s errand, risking life and limb to find the Eye of the Soul, when all this time – all this time – the very thing I was searching for … was myself.
If my sense of humour hadn’t abandoned me along with my appetite, self-conviction and general worldview, then I’m sure I’d find the whole situation rather amusing.
But then I recall the Rain Singers back in Brava, mourning their dead. Yet more deaths on my conscience.
In my dreams I see their broken bodies littering the beach. I wake shivering, drenched in cold sweat. No arms reach out to comfort me, and I remember I’m alone.
My only visitor is fury. It drops by every so often, arriving in sharp bursts that frost the leaves and crystallize the water lapping at the bank of the Creek.
Sometimes it spreads wider, coating the trees with thick layers of ice that I shatter like glass in the absence of a real target – one with raven eyes and a voice softer than silk.
I wonder how long it’ll be before King Balen learns of my new … identity. I imagine most people will think me triumphant. Even smug. After all, who wouldn’t want the ability to wield power itself?
So it may come as a surprise to many that the answer is me.
Because I don’t. I don’t want it. I wanted my magic. Power that belonged to me and me alone. But the power running through my veins is not mine. Already I feel drained by it, as though it were some kind of parasite, and I its involuntary host.
And the worst part is I can’t seem to tell where I end and it begins.
Did I succeed in opening that portal because I’m a gifted Aquatori, or because I drew from power itself?
Did I survive that snake bite because of the strength of my blood, or because that blood was steeped in ancient magic?
Did I turn the forest to ice because I’m Demari, or because I’m the Eye?
It’s little wonder I never figured out the truth.
In a way I’m grateful for these past few weeks of ignorance.
The responsibility of possessing this much power is a burden too great to fathom.
As for becoming queen … if the crown is starting to resemble a shackle, then the Golden Palace is no better than a prison.
Even the Lagoon – my court, my link to Queen Hydra, this shimmering ideal of a new home and a fresh start – is beginning to tarnish.
Gilded cages still have bars.
I never wanted this, just as I never wanted to be an Heir. All I’ve ever wanted was to leave Ostacre far behind. To see the world and become someone new.
But it doesn’t seem to matter what I want.
There’s a sense of being pulled backwards through door after door, each clanging shut behind me. The future I’d planned for myself is now forever beyond my reach.
I feel bitter and bruised and small.
So maybe that’s why I’m still here, sitting aimlessly on a rope swing in the Wildlands, stewing in my own misery. Maybe that’s why I’m acting like a petulant child rather than the soon to be Queen of the Waterlands.
Though I just wish it were the only reason.
I pluck a leaf from a branch and tear it into tiny pieces, letting them drift down into the Creek below.
Fox might be gone, but those spring-green eyes are all I can see.
This place is his. Everything about it calls him to mind.
I started sleeping on the floor to avoid the ache-inducing mint-and-pine scent clinging to the bedsheets.
Yet it seems to linger on the air, taunting me.
Haunting me. I can’t stop thinking about him.
I’ve tried. I even drank up the last of the liquor in pursuit of a moment’s reprieve, to no avail.
The Earth Cleaver burrowed his way into my heart and, quite unintentionally, broke it in two.
He said himself that the reason we were drawn to one another was the Eyes.
Which means that whatever I feel for him, whatever he appears to feel for me, I have no way of knowing if it’s real.
Which means I can’t trust my own feelings any more.
Which means we can never work, he and I.
And it hurts. It hurts so badly I can barely breathe.
But soon – very soon – I’m going to have to face him. Face everybody.
Part of me wishes I could just stay here forever, indulging my suffering, hiding from the world like my father did. Or sprout wings like Kestrel Calloway and fly far away. Only that would be the coward’s way out, and I’m many things, but I am not a coward.
I vowed to do whatever it took to save Hal. I won’t turn my back on the crown I won. I have to see this through.
King Balen was right – this is only the beginning.
And I am the beginning that brought the end.