Chapter 43 #2
Even frustrated, Vale is always a man in control—a constant commander. The flint, on the other hand, seems to have a different agenda.
He slams the tinderbox on the mantle. It’s enough of a jolt to make me flinch. Or perhaps it’s the lightning drawing so near. Either way, it unsettles me.
I rise and walk over to him, pressing my palm between his shoulders. They remain tense.
Perhaps these memories are too much.
I look to the stack resting in the fireplace. I could offer to help, but it doesn’t feel right. We both know I have the skills. I do not think he would be offended. Yet revisiting a time when the world lost so much, when everything was out of control… now is not the moment for me to step in.
Rubbing the base of his neck—a comfort he does not pull away from—I focus on his warmth.
A fire is not needed when I have him to keep me warm. I close my eyes and the thought alone seems to heat me. I am not even in his arms, and still I feel my temperature rise.
“Gods above,” Soria breathes, her voice low and haunting.
The fire crackles.
Vale and I both step back instinctively. The tinderbox still sits untouched atop the mantle; Soria and Ace remain seated on the far sides of the room, and there in the hearth a fire steadily breathes to life.
I lean into Vale, uneasy despite the contained blaze before us. We move together and sit on the couch, never turning our backs to the hearth and the stark evidence it holds.
I look not only at the fire, but into it—through it.
“See it. Feel it,” I murmur as Vale wraps his arm more tightly around me. The storm outside now mirrors the turmoil inside my chest. “I wasn’t trying to.” I turn toward him, confusion and shame rising to the surface.
“I know, love. I know.”
Ace turns back to his wineglass. Less over-the-top than his usual flair, it rests in his hand as he swirls a lone finger just above the rim. “Nope. Still not working,” he sighs.
“You can’t just expect the wine to obey you on a whim, can you?” I let out a quiet, uneasy chuckle.
The wine stirs.
Ace drops the glass. Crystal shatters across the floor.
“That… that wasn’t me,” he says shakily. “Dropping it, yes, okay, that was me, but—it moved. You moved it,” he says to me, astonished more than anything.
They all move to clean up the mess, but I am frozen in place.
The flowers. The fire. The wine.
Too much. Too much is changing.
I run. Down the halls and into our chambers. I throw myself onto the bed, unable to cope.
Vale finds me there weeping. My breath fractures and breaks, tears soaking into the pillow I bury my face in. Vale rubs my back. I shake my head and claw at the tightness in my chest.
“It took everything in me. Court, the wedding, becoming queen. I didn’t know if I had it in me.” I struggle to inhale, completely overwhelmed and so close to losing myself. “I don’t have anything left, Vale. I don’t… I can’t…”
“You are.”
Two words. Zero doubt. The powerful king whose voice carries all the weight in the world.
“Mira, you say you can’t, but you are. You are doing it all.
You are staying strong, even when you falter.
You are a queen not in title, but in how you carry yourself.
In the way you already love this land and its people as your own.
You are the fiercest, most loving woman I have ever known.
And you are capable of far more than you give yourself credit for. ”
He sits on the bed and pulls me into his arms. In his embrace, I allow myself to be small. Delicate. Held.
The tears slow as he brushes them from my cheeks. His own rests against the top of my head. Thunder grows more distant, though the rain still comes down in sheets.
He rocks me gently, a subtle rhythm that my breathing slowly learns to follow.
“I didn’t understand Ace’s words at first, but I do now.
I saw it, and I felt it. I don’t know if I did it.
That doesn’t seem right. It’s more like I called—and it answered.
” My shoulders drop suddenly, along with everything I’ve been holding so tightly.
“Like your mother’s song,” the words catch in my throat.
“Vale, I think I hear it all. I think it hears me. I don’t know that I am the one doing it, but I feel woven into it somehow. ”
He holds me through the next wave of tears. For each realization I face, my body fights to reconcile it. Before it can fully ease, another truth rises.
“I think I always felt it. It’s why I was more at ease in the forest than with people. But Vale, this is so different. Any connection I had before was a single drop compared to the vast sea I’m in now.” I shiver at the magnitude of it.
“Mira, you’re shaking.” He pulls a blanket over me and steps toward the hearth in our room. With the staff dismissed for the evening, none of our usual comforts have been readied.
“Wait.” He stops at the word and at my hand outstretched in his direction.
I take a deep breath. Once more I let instinct outrun reason. “I want to try.”
I close my eyes, breathing slowly and intentionally. I match my breaths to the rise and fall I imagine in a flame as it comes to life. The energy from the storm thrums outside the manor, and I feel it too. I feel all of it—ancient and insistent, surrounding me.
Mine.
The word crashes into my thoughts, and I feel my grip on it slipping.
I push the word away and return to the sensation. The awareness of everything around me and within me. I sense the glow long before I open my eyes. Holding on, I refuse to let the connection break. I breathe with it. I answer it.
When I open my eyes, the hearth roars at full strength and the room shimmers. Every lantern and candle in the space burns bright.
Where tears once flowed, joy rises. Overwhelming, consuming joy. Vale stands, expressionless, waiting for my reaction to settle before he moves. As my smile steadies, he steps toward me.
“You are a miracle,” he says, taking my face in both his hands. He kisses me.
A knock comes at the door.
“Are you all right?” Soria’s voice calls from the hall.
Vale crosses the room and opens it. She and Ace shift uneasily beyond the threshold.
“So, uh, not to alarm you,” Ace says, “but every flame between the parlor and here just ignited at once.” His words land with an odd, careful weight.
My mind reels. I did that. I really did that. I tried—and it worked. A little too well.
“All the way to the parlor?” I ask nervously. “Anywhere else?”
We set into motion, each of us searching a different part of the manor before meeting once more.
“The library was lit, but it seems the study was not,” Vale reports when we return to the parlor.
“It seems it reached a number of rooms but didn’t spread too far,” Soria adds.
I look out the window. The garden lies dark and quiet in the rain. “The guards?” I ask, afraid of the answer.
“They would have been here in an instant if they thought anything was amiss. The staff too, I suspect. Thankfully, the outbuildings seem unaffected.” Vale’s words should reassure me, but they don’t.
“So I can guide it enough to make something happen, but not enough to keep it contained,” I concede reluctantly.
“Perhaps the answers are not within the books, then, my dear,” Soria says softly.
“Does this mean it’s training time?” Ace asks with far too much excitement for my liking.
Now this—this feels dangerous.