Chapter 17 #2
His shoulder brushed mine while his gaze stayed on her longer than courtesy demanded.
Then he nodded. “Lead the way.”
We stopped at the center of the clearing where the wind softened, and the trees stood like a quiet wall behind us.
Zaicha faced me, her gaze settling on mine in a way that made it difficult to look away.
“How did it feel to heal the dragons?” she asked quietly.
I didn’t hesitate. “Amazing.” A breath slipped from me. “Like finding a gift I never knew I had.”
Her head tilted slightly. “Yet . . .?”
The words rose before I could stop them. “It didn’t feel like it belonged to me. It felt . . . borrowed. Like it could change its mind at any moment and hurt someone instead.”
“You don’t trust the magic.”
My fingers curled against my palm. “I don’t trust me.”
“What would you say if I told you I trust you?” Her gaze flicked to Brenton. “As surely as your mate does.”
I frowned.
She stepped closer. “Life and death are not enemies. They do not conquer the other. One begins where the other changes form.” Her gaze held mine, patient and certain.
“You felt it as foreign because you met life through the hands of death, and you were taught that those things cannot belong together.”
The wind stirred around us, carrying the distant cry of a bird unseen overhead.
“But they do,” she continued. “Death does not suffocate life, Finley. And life does not banish death. They exist in union, each giving the other meaning.”
The back of Brenton’s hand brushed my knuckles. “Yesterday, you were afraid.” A faint smile touched his lips. “And you still chose to help them.”
My voice came out small. “Why did it feel like it could turn on them?”
“Because you have only been taught how to funnel the death,” she said. “Not how to live with it.”
“Will you show her?” Brenton asked.
Zaicha didn’t answer but lifted her hand, palm upward. The air shifted.
I felt it before I saw it. A familiar pull in the air, like a memory my body recognized before my mind did. The space around us grew heavy, threaded with an essence that was neither wholly living nor dying.
A small bird descended, its wings slowing as though the sky itself had gentled its fall. It landed softly in her waiting hands.
Brenton stiffened beside me. “What are you—”
The magic rose, and the bird shuddered once. Its breathing grew shallow and uneven, its tiny body surrendering to Zaicha’s power.
It didn’t bleed or cry out. But life no longer clung to it.
My heart lurched.
The air that vibrated around it didn’t feel foreign.
My gaze snapped to hers.
“My magic is similar to yours,” she said.
Brenton’s step forward was curt and sharp. “You’re hurting it.”
Zaicha’s attention shifted to him, calm and unoffended. “I am changing its state. Not ending it.”
The bird trembled weakly in her hand. Brenton took another step.
“How else should she learn?” she asked. “Magic cannot be understood in theory. Only in practice and choice.”
My chest tightened as I watched the fragile rise and fall of its chest, and the deeper, impossible awareness beneath it.
Zaicha looked back at me. “It will not die.” She held the bird toward me. “Come, live beside it.”
My feet carried me forward. The bird’s life hovered somewhere I could almost perceive but not quite touch.
“Yesterday, you reached for life without understanding quite how you found it,” she said. “Do that again.”
My pulse stumbled, my mind skimming at the way Willow had reached for my magic. Trying to remember how I’d summoned it on its own.
“I don’t know how.”
“You do,” she said. “You simply did not notice what you were touching.”
She lifted her free hand, and the air shifted. And suddenly, I felt it.
Threads as fine as spiderwebs stretched the space around the bird. Some glowed strong and warm, others dimmed and quickly faded to nothing.
They didn’t fight each other. They existed side by side, separated by the smallest, most impossible distance.
Life.
My breath caught. “I . . . feel it.”
Brenton drew closer so that his shoulders settled beside mine. He stayed within reach.
Zaicha smiled. “All death magic is the space between. You do not create death. You touch the moment where one becomes the other. And then you choose.”
The bird trembled, its breath stuttering.
Panic flared in my chest. My hand hovered uselessly above it. “It’s slipping.”
“Then bring it back.”
I waited for her magic to move with mine, to steady what I might fail to grasp, but her magic stayed quiet around us.
I swallowed, forcing myself to focus on the fragile strands. I reached, clumsy, brushing past fading threads before catching one that pulsed faintly beneath my awareness. I felt Brenton’s attention on the threads with me, tracking every flicker.
Warmth sparked along my fingertips. The bird jerked in Zaicha’s palm, breath hitching before it steadied. Weak but present.
Air rushed from my lungs. Brenton exhaled with me, but his stance didn’t ease. His body remained angled between Zaicha and me, even as relief softened his features.
“You see?” she said. “You already know how to use it.”
I looked back at her, shaken. “You trusted me not to lose it.”
Her expression gentled, and I never questioned the distance her magic kept from mine. Only the way Brenton never quite relaxed beside me.