Chapter 9
ELORA
“I don’t know how many times I can repeat myself, Grandmother. I was terrified he was going to kill my—Rainier. Us. I ran, jumped, and grabbed Declan’s throat. How am I supposed to recreate that?”
The early spring sun was warm as it beat down upon us, the courtyard protecting us from the wind. I wished it could shelter me from Shivani’s ceaseless nagging too.
“Are you still calling your father by his given name?” Shivani didn’t turn to face me, and her tone made me very curious about her expression. I couldn’t tell if she was irritated or scrutinizing. Perhaps both.
“I don’t know what else to call him,” I admitted. It wasn’t for lack of thought. I’d been mulling it over and hadn’t come up with anything yet.
“Father is easy enough.”
“And far too formal?—”
“Papa?”
“Absolutely not.” The name I’d called Faxon? The man who raised me until he hated me? I would never utter that word again. I wondered if I’d hate hearing my future children say it. Whoever I chose to be their father would deserve the title, so perhaps I wouldn’t mind it. I shook my head, not wanting to think of a far-off future. “How is this relevant to my training?”
“It isn’t,” Shivani agreed. “I was just curious.” She paced down the cobblestone path, mumbling to herself. “Strong emotions?”
I blew out a breath, relieved she was focusing once more on my divinity. During his attack on Astana, I’d siphoned all of Declan’s shadows from him—or at least enough that whatever he had left was negligible—and I was able to kill him. I hadn’t been able to use my divinity to that degree again. Perhaps she was on the right track about my emotions. I’d been very upset when I’d been able to weaponize his shadows against him.
Sometimes it disturbed me how easy it was to not care that I’d murdered a man. But then I remembered all the horrific things he did to people I cared about, and the discomfort always promptly faded. Maybe something was wrong with me.
I said nothing, just watched her from where I stood in the courtyard. Every time I’d attempted to siphon Cy’s shadows away from her, I’d only been able to create the faintest wisps of reaching darkness. Did I need to be afraid in order to do it? She didn’t need to experience a strong emotion to use her divinity. But she had been using it for centuries. Maybe it was hard for her when she was my age too.
Or maybe it was because my grandmother always possessed strong emotions. She felt things almost as forcefully as I did—she was just much better at hiding it. It was no wonder Mama didn’t like her much. My mother had worn her heart on her sleeve my entire life—unless she was hiding something to spare me. I thought perhaps if Shivani didn’t try to stifle every single feeling, she’d be far happier. It was my goal to get her to relax during our time of confinement.
“How are you feeling today, Elora?” She still paced around the courtyard, and I let my gaze linger on the blooming crocuses behind her as I frowned.
“Fine,” I said.
“Angry at your mother still?”
I crossed my arms. “Yes.”
“Why exactly are you angry with her?”
“I’ve told you this?—”
“Tell me again.”
Scoffing, I shifted my weight in irritation. “She let my best friend die in order to save her friend.”
Theo was only in Astana because of me . He kissed me and he left his family to be nearer to me, and he was the first person I’d ever cared for who wasn’t Mama or Faxon. And now he was dead. My dearest friend, my first friend, my most loyal friend—gone.
“You said he was grievously wounded.”
“And Mama brought me back to life . If anyone could have healed him, it was her.” I leveled a glare at my grandmother.
“You think she did it on purpose,” Shivani said, tapping her fingertip to her chin. It made me frown. “You were relying too heavily on the boy and not enough on her. It’s what I would do. Make you depend on me once more.”
“Excuse me?”
“You wanted space from her, did you not?”
“Yes, but?—”
“You think your mother is a bad person, don’t you? She took her time saving the duke, knowing if she waited long enough, Theo would die. You said it yourself. She should have been able to bring him back, should she not?”
“I never said she was a bad person,” I argued. “Or that she did it on purpose.” Growing more angry by the second, I glared at Shivani. My heartbreak and fury for my mother was more than enough without Shivani egging it on. What was she seeking to do? Sour me against Mama? “This isn’t any of your business.”
“What if it was you that was hurt instead of Theo? Do you think she would have picked the duke over you?”
Heat climbed up my throat, and my words were flickering flames as I walked toward my grandmother. “No. Stop this. I know you dislike her, but?—”
“I’m not the one who burns her letters.”
I clenched my fists, and Shivani’s face lit up, as if the sun had come out from behind a cloud. But the tension in my head told me it was my own divine light. My eyes were glowing, lit with a frustration I couldn’t quite understand. I was angry at my mother, but it was my right to feel that way. What she had done—allowing Theo to die—was between me and Mama. Her actions didn’t affect my grandmother at all. Shivani was forcing me to speak up for the last person I wanted to defend at the moment, and I hated her for it.
“You don’t get to?—”
She released Cyran’s shadows upon me, binding my wrists together, and my fury only grew. Stomping toward her, I grabbed her arm and wrested control of his stolen divinity. Would siphoning ever feel normal? Would it always feel fuzzy and strange? Cyran’s divinity felt cool where my own felt like sparkling heat, but it was moldable in my grasp.
“What is wrong with you?” I shouted at her, using Cy’s shadows to push her away from me.
My grandmother stumbled backward, barely catching herself so she wouldn’t fall. Her pursed lips and raised eyebrows did little to explain her motivations.
“Fear and anger.” She nodded, as if confirming something to herself. “We will have to find a way to test more positive emotions.”
Screwing my mouth shut, I could only stare at her as my breaths came too fast. My fingers twitched, my body wanting to do something to punish her for being such an asshole . The worst part was that what she’d been doing had worked. Someone so cruel had no business being correct as often as Shivani was.
Still, though. I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t relieved to figure out an aspect of my siphoning.
“Are we done here?” I asked, and I ripped the leather out of my hair. My head was aching, and the release of tension felt divine.
“Do you still need me?” A shaky exhale escaped me when I heard his voice.
When Cyran turned the corner around the tall hedges we stood beside, his widened eyes betrayed him. He probably didn’t know he’d just walked upon a stand-off of sorts, but his hands clenched at his sides. I’d seen him take the same stance once before—when Declan had come to fetch me at Evenmoor. Was it fear?
“No,” Shivani said. “Leave us.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched, as if he didn’t want to do that at all. “Elora?”
I swallowed a whimper, some part of me in agony over his concern. “We’re done for today,” I said, and my mouth felt like it was full of sand.
“All right,” he said, tilting his head to the side. “Well, Reminy and I found something.”
“Is it about my great-grandfather’s bowel movements?”
“Elora!” Shivani scolded, but I ignored her when a true smile appeared on Cyran’s face.
His cheeks went pink as he grinned, and it was the first time in so very long that I’d seen that kind of joy in him. I tried very hard to ignore the part of me that knew I shouldn’t care, that I shouldn’t take solace in his happiness. If the Supreme had his way, lovely moments might be few and far between; I’d appreciate this one for what it was.
Shivani sighed, and I ignored her footsteps leaving the courtyard as she stomped across the cobblestone.
It felt like it had only been seconds when Cy’s smile faded, but they were the best seconds since we’d been at Crown Cottage.
“Reminy had suspected the prophecy referred to the Bone of the Bane. There is an old record of a summoning, though we aren’t sure if it was to lure Rhia or Hanwen.” He took a step toward me, and he tugged at one of the earrings he wore. It was a nervous habit I’d noticed back in Evenmoor, and I was glad to see his ornamented earlobes once more—he hadn’t seemed like himself without all the adornments. “They used Shika’s husband’s bones.”
“So for Mama and...Rainier to summon?—”
“You don’t know what to call him, do you?”
“Why do people keep worrying about that?”
“It troubles you.”
“Well, I can’t start calling him Papa. It’s not?—”
“I know. Faxon.” Cyran tilted his head, and something twisted in my chest over his realization without me having to tell him. “Father?”
“Too—”
“Formal. I agree. Let me think of the word in my mother’s tongue,” he said, raising his hand to his mouth.
“Where was she from?” I asked, temporarily forgetting about the stupid prophecy.
“A small island east of Skos. The language is similar, but not the same.” He screwed up his eyes in concentration, before relaxing into a smile. “ Otya . That was the word.” He gave a soft laugh. “I never had a reason to use it. But you do.”
“I think he’d like that.” Otya . I rolled the word around in my mind, thinking of the man who was my sire, who I’d grown to love and trust in such a short time. The man who loved Mama in a way I couldn’t quite understand, and the man who I could very well lose before I got to know him. “Thank you, Cy. It’s better than everything else I’ve come up with.”
His hand lifted, as if he was going to grasp mine, and I froze. There was so much distance between us. For good reason. After a moment, he dropped his arm, and a crease formed between his brows.
“We thought perhaps your parents would need the bone of someone who was a bane to whichever god they sought to summon. But the person we found, well, it complicates our theory,” he said.
“How so?”
“Well, the person who did the summoning was Hanwen and Rhia’s daughter. Shika’s husband, if you remember—Wait, did you have lessons on this?” At my glare, he cleared his throat. “Well, he was the one who had stripped their daughter’s immortality. So, he was a villain in her story as well.”
To view Shika’s grief-stricken husband as the bane to anyone felt almost absurd.
“But Hanwen killed his wife! Of course, he sought revenge. How is he?—”
“I don’t disagree, min viltasma .” This time when he said it, Cyran didn’t turn red, but he averted his eyes. I crossed my arms, annoyed and sad and full of so many emotions I couldn’t pinpoint which one was strongest. “But to the gods, to their child, he was?—”
“The gods are the worst .”
Cyran’s boisterous laugh chased away most of the negative emotions I was holding inside, and I wondered if I should have suggested a fresh start far sooner.