Chapter Twenty-Six #2
Ferrying the supplies back, I stack my wood atop the kindling and proceed with striking the flint until I get a spark to catch.
Davien hasn’t returned by the time I’m done stoking the flames, so I turn to focusing on food.
There are some rations at the bottoms of the saddlebags that I lay out on the table.
I spend way too much time making sure they’re as aesthetically pleasing as possible, given that it’s only a small loaf of bread, a jar of blackberry jam, and salted meat.
“You eat with your eyes first,” I mutter, thinking of all the times Joyce chided me for the table not being set just right.
“What was that?” Davien startles me. He comes in through one of the side doors of the main hall.
“I don’t suppose you found a larder miraculously stocked with food, did you?” I ask instead of repeating myself.
“Not unless you consider moss food, no.” He approaches. “I think this will be enough.”
“I do too, I just wish it were more substantial.”
“It’s a dinner fit for a king.” He helps himself to a hunk of bread and slathers it with jam.
I laugh out loud. “It is not.”
“I am a king, and I am eating it, therefore it is.” His eyes shimmer with amusement. He could kill me with a smile.
“Very well, Your Majesty.” I dip low into a bow.
“If you’re that concerned, why don’t we make it fit for a king?” He’s cast in a warm glow from the fire.
“How would I do that?”
“A small ritual should suffice.” He begins rummaging through the saddlebags, glancing back at the food. “What would you have in mind? Perhaps some kind of pasta? Or a meat pie?”
“If those are my options, meat pie.” I watch with keen fascination as he takes a piece of chalk and marks a series of triangles and circles in a grid-like pattern on the table. His movements are strong and confident.
“Food rituals are fairly simple if you have a general sense of how cooking works and an aptitude for it. You need some basic requirements for the ingredients, some heat.” He gives a nod to the fire. “And then the rest is magic.”
“All right.” Excitement rushes through me at the idea of getting to use magic again. I’m about to lose these powers, so I might as well enjoy them while I can in whatever way I can.
“Stand here.” He maneuvers me in front of the table, stands behind me. I’ve never been more aware of the strong length of his body or the way his breath cuts straight through my clothing to hit the nape of my neck. “Put your hands like this.”
His voice is soft and low as he runs his fingertips down my arms. They land lightly on the backs of my hands and take them with a gentle grip. He guides my palms onto the table and rests them lightly at two points on the grid.
“Now, just like we did with the lantern, think about what you’re trying to make.” How can instructions be so…sensual? I try not to squirm. “Will the magic to bend to you, to do your bidding as its master. You control it. It doesn’t control you.”
“What does it feel like for you?” I ask, fighting to stay focused. “I’ve been trying to feel the magic within me, but I can’t. Every time I want to summon it, there’s nothing there.”
He draws small circles on the back of my hand with his fingertips as he considers my question. I don’t even think he’s aware of what he’s doing and I don’t point it out to him. The sensation is too delicious to stop.
“Magic…I wouldn’t say it’s a thing that I feel, not consciously, at least. It’s more of a state of being.
An awareness of the world and all its mysteries—the ones you know, the ones you don’t, what you can control, and the forces you are helpless to do anything but to submit to.
Magic is one of the greatest things we will ever know and never be able to explain.
To know magic is to touch the old gods that brought this earth from primordial chaos.
It is to embrace the glimpse of greatness that we all possess within us—to boldly reach for what could be and not what is, both in ourselves and the world around us. ”
Davien’s words are thoughtful and poetic. If not for his pauses and breathy stillness, I would think he had practiced the speech. But every word is as sincere as the last.
I laugh softly, trying to free up some of the restless energy his speech filled me with. “You realize none of that is very helpful for me, right?”
“I suppose it’s not.” I don’t even have to turn around to know that there’s a grin on his face. “Why not treat it as you would a dance? That seemed to work for you during the tunnel construction.”
“It did, but…” I trail off with a sigh. “I wish I could feel it, is all. I struggle to conjure something that I don’t know is there half the time.”
“Knowing magic is like trying to tell someone what the color red sounds like. Once you hear it, you know. But until then, it’s madness to try and explain.”
That gives me genuine pause. I run my fingertips across his chalk lines thoughtfully. “I think I know what you’re trying to say.”
“You do?” The question is a mix of delight and surprise.
“I know what the color red sounds like.” I begin to think of magic in an all-new way.
“Just like I know the harmonies of the pollinators in summer and the soft requiem of winter. The world has a sound to it, a song, if you’re able to listen.
” Magic must be the same. Once you hear it, you’ll be able to sing along.
It is not a dance. It is the music itself.
What is the song my magic sings?
The question rattles my core. It isn’t my magic. This isn’t my power, my destiny. My fingers curl as I lift them from the table.
“What is it?”
I step away from him with a shake of my head. Wrapping my arms around myself, I cross over to the windows. The lake is a bright cerulean in the late twilight. Just as I suspected, it really is glowing.
“Katria?”
I hear his footsteps approaching. I speak without looking at him. “It doesn’t matter. There’s no point in me learning any of this.”
“Did I say something that upset you?” He comes to a halt just behind me. I don’t turn to face him.
“No.” I’m perfectly capable of upsetting myself.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t lie to me, please.” In the face of my silence, he continues with his incorrect assumptions.
“There’s no reason to be frustrated with magic.
Even though we fae work on honing and perfecting our skills, our knowledge of magic is somewhat innate.
We know it from birth. You don’t have that benefit, so it’s only natural that you struggle and—”
“I’m not upset that I don’t know how to use magic.” I hang my head. “I just don’t see the point in learning it. Doing so will only end in disappointment.”
“You’ll be able to master it,” he assures me.
“With what time?” I round on him. “Tomorrow, if everything goes correctly—and I know I don’t need to tell you what rides on tomorrow, that it must go correctly—then the magic will be out of me.
This power was never mine—it’s yours. There’s no point in my learning it now or ever.
I’m just a bystander, an accident, a thief.
I am a brief note in your symphony, and it hurts too much to pretend to be anything else. ”
His gaze softens, his eyebrows turning up slightly in the center. “I don’t want you to hurt,” he says.
“I’m used to being hurt. I can survive being hurt.” It’s all these other feelings that are difficult. It’s the happy feelings that I don’t know what to do with, the ones that dust me like a sprinkling of salt and outline where all my wounds are.
“That’s not a way to live. You should never have had to live that way.”
“Well, I have, and I’ve done just fine.”
“You survived, and that’s commendable, given that I only know the tip of the iceberg of your suffering. But merely surviving isn’t any way to live. I want you to thrive—you deserve to thrive.” He takes a small step forward. I take a large step back.
“You shouldn’t concern yourself with me.” I shake my head.
“But I do.”
“But you won’t.” My words are as cold and icy as the air seeping through the window at my back. “Soon enough, I’ll be nothing to you. All of this, whatever this is, will be nothing. You’ll be king and I’ll just be a human living on your land across the Fade.”
“It’s your land now,” he insists.
“Stop being kind to me.” My voice raises a fraction. “Stop pretending like any of this is real.”
He staggers as though I’ve struck him. Davien shakes his head slowly. “Every minute of this has been real for me. More real than I ever wanted or asked for it to be.”
“It’s not.” Maybe if I say it enough times, it will be true for both of us. “It can’t be. Not just because of what our futures hold but because we were never even supposed to meet.”
“But we did. And despite all odds—”
“Don’t say it.” I know it’s coming. There is the same tone in his voice now as there was when he was speaking to Shaye. “If we stop this now, we can pretend none of it happened.”
“We are beyond pretending.”
I know what he says is true, but I continue anyway. I can’t stand idly by as he condemns us both. “Neither of us will have to be hurt more than we already will be, than we already are. We can—”
“Against all odds, I love you, Katria.”
I can’t do anything but stare at him. I burn with anger, with frustration, with passion. No three words have ever made me happier or cut me deeper. Nothing has ever meant more to me while simultaneously having to mean nothing at all.
“No, you don’t,” I whisper.
“I do.” He takes a step forward. “I love you in a way that I never expected to love anyone. I have always been destined to be thrown into a marriage of convenience. I never expected to love.”
“And I don’t want it.” I shake my head. My eyes are burning, tears pricking at their edges. “I don’t want your love.”
His expression crumples. He is more wounded than I’ve ever seen him. He hovers in limbo, mouth opening and closing, unable to figure out what to say next. I allow him to stew in the silence. I’ve made myself clear.
“Why?”
I shake my head at his question, glancing away.