Chapter Thirty
The feeling of sweat rolling down the side of my face reminded me far too much of how blood felt on my skin. My body didn’t seem to know if I should relish in it like I did with the prisoners back in Neokell, or panic as I did when I held my dying father in my arms.
“Focus, Dimitri,” Mother chided, shifting her weight subtly from side to side, as though she was debating on when to strike.
Deciding to beat her to it, I then launched toward her as she shifted her weight forward instead of backward. Fireball in hand, I raised it over my head before slamming it down over her.
Realizing her error, her eyes widened slightly before she committed to the forward movement she’d already begun. She rolled under me as I was mid-air, avoiding the fire I had conjured to my palm. Her body seemed to remember whatever training she’d had many years ago.
Landing in a crouch as my fireball snuffed out, I panted heavily.
She still fought like a Southerner.
The first few days after returning to Gatlyn Castle, I simply allowed Mother to rest and eat.
I needed her to gain her strength, and now she was successfully back on the path to a healthy figure.
After the first few days, though, she’d grown antsy—and honestly, so had I.
We decided to begin our training that night, starting with earth.
She’d claimed that rooting yourself in the earth was the easiest of my three zirilium, so I’d taken her word for it.
What neither of us seemed to know at that time, though, was what would happen once the alychite stopped touching her skin. The moment I’d unclasped the special metal cuff from her ankle, I’d been thrown back as Mother practically erupted.
The very ground beneath our feet shook as it cracked and fissured, crystals rising from deep within. Then the plants surrounded and climbed her, and the shadows circled, and I couldn’t reach her despite how hard I tried.
Then she went up in a pillar of flames I thought would touch the clouds.
A few moments later, the fire went out, and she fell to the ground in a slump. The plants had burned off of her, the shadows dispersed, and the earth and crystals returned to how they had been—almost as though they’d never been disturbed at all.
She slept until the afternoon the day after that.
Fortunately, we’d been so far outside the castle grounds that nobody had mentioned seeing anything to me—yet.
Once she’d awakened, she and I reasoned that because it happened when the alychite stopped touching her, that the odd events from the night before had been a buildup of years of zirilium.
That it had been lying beneath her skin until then, just waiting.
And we’d let it loose.
After that, we’d been much more cautious about taking the cuff off her ankle, though the eruption of power didn’t happen again.
I’d decided the cuff would remain on for now. Just because she was my mother didn’t automatically grant her my trust.
The night after, we officially began my training.
It’d taken the next four nights before I could move a rock larger than my palm around at will, even with us changing locations to try to connect to different types of rock and earth.
Though, once I’d done it the first time, it felt like a floodgate had been opened within me. My earth zirilium felt easier to access and tap into—a connection I hadn’t possessed before then. And after conquering the basics of earth earlier that week, we’d moved onto fire.
My chest heaved as I stood from my crouch, turning on my heels to face my mother, prepared to try again.
Instead, she was already standing.
And the smile on her face could only be one of pride.
“You’re beginning to use your zirilium based on your instincts, not your emotions,” she praised.
“It just felt… natural.” I looked down at my hands in muted awe.
It had been just over a week and a half since we’d left the encampments outside of Neokell. The time since had mostly been consumed by meetings during the days as my advisors argued about our next moves, and training my zirilium with Mother during the evenings and late into the night.
The past few nights, she’d been forcing me to form different shapes out of my deep orange flames.
Because I’d already associated my fire abilities heavily with my emotions, it had been much more difficult than I thought it would be to construct simple shapes and forms. We’d begun with a flame, then focused on how to control its size.
Then we focused on the fire’s heat level, then its form—my favorite being the shape of a longsword, which I’d accomplished just the night before.
In the beginning, when I first began with earth wielding, I was so tired I’d fall asleep the moment my head hit my pillow after training with Mother.
Now that I’d been using my zirilium constantly for a couple of weeks, though, I could feel the difference.
My mother had claimed that using your zirilium was similar to working a muscle—that it would gain strength over time with use.
Due to the sheer amount of time I was putting into these tasks and my training, my sleep schedule had become atrocious. I could see it in the dark circles appearing under my eyes, and in the way I could hardly focus on my daily meetings.
I was exhausted, but at least I was doing things.
I was still trying to push forward.
I would still win.
“That’s how it’s supposed to feel,” she reassured me. “Your abilities are a part of you—they’re not something foreign.”
Still looking at my hands, I flexed them a couple times, relishing in the residual power I could feel in them.
“Let’s go again,” I said, sliding into a loose fighting stance.
Smiling softly—as she always had in my memories—she shook her head.
My heart felt as though it lurched out of my chest as she moved towards the door to the small training room we were in. Reaching out to stop her from leaving, I paused as she turned back around to face the center of the space.
She shot me an empathetic look once she noticed my hand still halfway extended toward her. She didn’t comment on it, though; she simply lifted her arms towards the large, metal chandelier overhead and forced the flames to grow smaller and dimmer.
“Come,” she said, moving to the middle of the training ring and sitting on the floor.
“What are we doing?” I questioned as I drew closer to her.
Mother remained silent, simply motioning for me to sit across from her instead.
Holding back a sigh, I lowered myself to the floor in front of her, positioning myself so we were face to face about an arm’s length apart.
I watched as she closed her eyes and went so still, she could have passed as a statue.
Just as I opened my mouth to ask again what we were doing, she spoke.
“Do you feel them?” Her eyes stayed closed, her hands resting on her knees.
“Feel what? Who?” I looked toward the door in the corner of the room, thinking that maybe somebody had gotten past Val, who was guarding the door.
It wasn’t until Mother responded that I understood what she’d meant.
“The shadows, of course.”
That was why she’d dimmed the light in the room—to create more shadows.
“We’re practicing shadow wielding?” I asked, looking at the darkest shadows in the corners of the room with a newfound interest.
“We’re feeling them,” she clarified. “Becoming aware of the shadows near you on a wielder’s level is the first step to forming your initial connection with them.”
Questions bubbled up within me, my curiosity beginning to get the better of me. I wanted to understand how it worked, and what she meant by a connection. What was it that made shadow wielding different from the other zirilium?
“I’ve felt other fae when they were in their shadow forms, but never just ordinary shadows,” I said, eyeing a shadow nearby skeptically. “And I slipped into my own shadow form once—though only for a split second.”
“That’s good! You’ve already got a head start, then.” I watched as Mother used her zirilium to rip a small chunk of the stone floor beneath us out of place—a piece no bigger than the size of her fist. When I raised an eyebrow at her methods, she reassured me she’d put it back after we were done.
Using her earth wielding, she suspended the stone in the air above us so that it cast a dark shadow on the ground between our forms.
“Shadows, much like crystals, have a unique energy to them,” Mother said, her eyes peeling open to meet mine. “They’re stubborn. You have to make them want to work with you by sending out your own energy to them and meeting them in the middle. Only then can you form a connection with shadows.”
“None of that makes any sense!” I exclaimed, exasperated.
“It will, Dimitri. Now take a breath and focus on the shadow of the stone. Take in its shape, the different shades to it, the harsh and soft edges it possesses.” Her eyes flicked down to the shadow between us.
Taking a deep breath to calm myself, I looked down at it and did as she’d said.
My gaze followed the outline of the shadow, taking in the sharp edges on one side and the fuzzy ones on the other.
The entire shadow was dark, but I realized that the middle was a deeper color than the rest of it.
Surrounding it was warm, dim light from the small chandelier overhead, making it appear even darker.
Oddly enough, it reminded me of Ziana’s feathers and how they had such a depth to them.
Suddenly, I felt strangely compelled to reach toward the shadow—so I did.
I paused my movement halfway as the skin of my hand began to feel as though it was tingling.
“Keep going,” Mother encouraged, her voice gentle, and I realized she must have been watching me.
Taking a deep breath, I slowly reached out further to the shadow. The closer I got, the more my skin buzzed with energy.
“Don’t quite touch it. Get close, then send out your own energy toward it,” she advised.
Stopping a breath away from the shadow, the tingling sensation growing stronger, I closed my eyes and took steadying breaths.
Focusing intensely, I felt my zirilium flowing through my very bloodstream.
I could feel it itching at my hands and fingertips, as though it, too, wanted to form that connection Mother spoke of.
So I allowed it.
Releasing the reins which I held my abilities by, that connection snapped into place so forcefully I gasped.
“That’s the tether,” Mother explained. “Move your fingers now, son. And open your eyes.”
My gaze immediately drew to the shadow before me. It didn’t look any different, but I could sense the energy flowing from it to me and back—as a full circle.
Doing as Mother instructed, I wiggled my fingers just a tad—that buzzing sensation lessened now that I’d accomplished my task. I watched, awestruck, as the shadow followed my movements perfectly.
“I did it!” I wiggled my fingers again, just in case Mother hadn’t seen the first time.
I wanted her to be proud of me, I realized with a start. I wanted her approval.
And that single realization opened a gnawing pit in my gut.
Smiling, she responded, “Yes, you did. Now just—”
She was cut off as we both watched my connection to the shadow falter, then fail as it slunk back into its original shape.
“What happened?” I demanded, though my hands had begun to shake.
“Shadows are fickle things, Dimitri. They take years of practice to—”
“But I don’t have years!” I reasoned, frustration bubbling inside me. And with those quickly emerging emotions—panic, anger, disappointment—a fraction of energy escaped me as the flames of the chandelier overhead grew and grew and grew.
She didn’t understand. I had to master my abilities sooner rather than later, or we’d lose. I would lose, and I would fail at accomplishing the final task Father had given me. And if I couldn’t succeed, what was I besides a failure?
“Dimitri, reel yourself back in!” Mother’s hands clasped my shoulders, squeezing.
I centered myself on the feeling of her tight grip, gasping for air to counter the panic I felt.
Concentrating on the air entering my lungs, I clamped down on the loose energy I’d let run wild. The flames overhead immediately returned to their normal, small size, though the ceiling betrayed the evidence of my outburst with black scorch marks.
Panting, I pulled away from Mother. Then, I retrieved the alychite cuff and clamped it down over her ankle.
“You’re dismissed,” I breathed heavily. “Don’t get caught heading back to your chambers.”
She was only allowed to travel the castle through the hidden tunnels, though most of what she needed was brought to her chambers by either Val or Hugo.
“Dimitri, I—”
“Now!” I shouted, pointing in the direction of the hidden door in the corner of the room.
I watched as her face fell and her shoulders slumped. She looked defeated, almost. I knew I should’ve felt guilty, but I couldn’t see past my own need to be alone.
I refused to be that vulnerable—that weak—before anybody else.
Including my mother.
As she departed without another word, I spiraled into a fit of disappointment and hatred—though I refused to admit to myself who I felt these emotions toward.
It’d only add to how inadequate I already felt.
And as the secret door shut behind Mother, my own spiraling mind engulfed me whole.