Chapter 44
SAPHIRA
“I’m not very good with magic,” I warned as I followed Kaeleron to a clearing a short distance from Arianell’s home, a wise suggestion by him given how I had scorched part of the forest when I hadn’t been fully in control.
He frowned over his shoulder at me. “Nonsense. You just have a poor tutor.”
I gave him a look that relayed exactly how I felt about that remark.
“Meiryn is a good teacher. She got me to produce magic… although we haven’t been able to really get past my shocking lack of natural talent in that department.
She taught me how to teleport and how to go invisible, and without either of those things I wouldn’t be able to visit you. ”
He turned on his heel and walked backwards in front of me, a grin curling his lips. “And for that I am eternally grateful to her, which is something I never thought I would say about a seelie.”
I slowed to a halt, my brows lowering. “You really mean that?”
He stopped too. “I do.”
“But you hate seelie.” I couldn’t contain those words as they pressed for freedom, born of that tiny seed of doubt that still existed within me.
“Less so these days. I examined that feeling while you were here, gallivanting around a kingdom as its new heir, forgetting all about me.” He wistfully gazed at the trees.
I rolled my eyes. “Stop being so dramatic. And I didn’t exactly get a choice. And there was certainly no gallivanting.”
I had wanted to tack on that I had been fighting for my life, but caught myself, aware that if I brought up how I had been treated in my time here, he would most likely go nuclear again and I didn’t have Arianell to contain him.
“Come, little wolf.” He unbuttoned his tunic, revealing far too much tempting honed muscle that flexed and bunched beneath his pale skin as he cast the jacket away from him. He slid a smirk my way. “Does my love like what she sees?”
“Not going to lie. The view is spectacular.” I grinned at him as he straightened, letting me get a good look at him, and savoured that hint of pride in his eyes as he let me drink my fill of him and that touch of colour on his cheeks that told me my words had affected him. “Spectacular and distracting.”
His low chuckle did funny things to my insides as he prowled towards me. “My little wolf is insatiable.”
I sighed, all melodramatic. “I was left without my king to satisfy me for weeks. Weeks.”
“Your king,” he purred, that light in his eyes betraying how much he liked it when I called him that, and slid his arm around my waist, drawing me to him. “Your king wishes to satisfy you… but alas… he has promised to train you, so train you he shall.”
His wicked grin lit up his face.
“And then your king shall ravish you.”
“I like the sound of that.” I wound my arms around his neck and tiptoed to press my lips to his. The kiss was brief, far too chaste, but it smoothed away that blemish in my mind, that part of me that was already thinking about my next visit to the library and what if I failed again?
He groaned, his expression pained as he grasped my waist and eased me away from him, every muscle on his torso tensed for my pleasure. “If you continue like that, I will not be able to focus on the training part and will skip straight to the fucking part.”
I pirouetted away from him, out of his grasp, earning myself a low growl of displeasure that matched the dark look on his face as I glanced over my shoulder at him and said, “Then I’ll just keep my distance from you. Is this far enough?”
I stopped a good thirty feet from him.
He ran a hand down his mouth as he gazed at me. “I do not think there is a distance I would not cross to have you, my love.”
“I am well aware of that.” I raised my hands, gesturing to the trees that were so different on this side of Lucia and that too-blue sky. “You crossed half a continent.”
“I would walk to the ends of the universe to be by your side.”
He meant those words. I could see it in his eyes, hear it in his voice, and in the tremulous and unsteady beat of his heart that spoke of his nerves.
“I would do the same.” I smiled at him, leaving myself open, not hiding the truth of my heart from him. “Nothing could keep me from your side.”
He cleared his throat, an awkward edge to his body language as he looked at me, but then he recovered, the part of him that was unused to being so open about his feelings, that was unused to letting them rule him, transforming into one I was more familiar with and loved just as much.
The king.
The ruler.
The leader of an army and the skilled warrior.
The teacher.
“Show me what you learned,” he said.
I did as instructed, remembering everything Meiryn had taught me.
I removed my boots and the moment my bare feet touched the grass I felt that connection between me and the nature in this realm bloom inside me, spreading to fill every inch of me.
I sank into that connection and held my hands before me, staring at the space between them, focusing on the feel of this realm and the flow of it through me.
Solar light sparked between my hands and unfurled into ribbons that swirled around each other, forming a ball I struggled to contain as nerves rose and I wondered what Kaeleron thought of me now, wielding the magic of his enemy.
He stepped forwards, closing the distance between us down to ten feet, and the solar magic cast golden light over his chest and his face. I risked a look at him, taking my eyes off the magic I had summoned for only a second.
“Interesting,” he rumbled.
I looked back at the magic I had produced, tracking his gaze there.
A single thread of darkness danced among the twisting golden ribbons.
I broke my hands apart, shattering my connection to it, letting it fizzle out and die before I could accidentally call down lightning as I had before.
“That,” I muttered, “is the reason we stopped practicing magic anywhere someone might see it.”
His silver eyes lifted to meet mine. “Meiryn saw this?”
I nodded. “She wanted me to think about the first time I felt the connection to Lucia because nothing else was working, and so I did and I thought about Lucas, and the rejection, and finding myself in Lucia, and how I wanted to make him pay… and I summoned magic… yay me… but it also went wildly out of my control and it was like a bolt of light and shadow.”
He looked troubled by that.
“I think it’s just because my mood was a little… wrathful.” I brought my hands before me again. “It doesn’t happen every time. Just sometimes. Enough times that we thought it best to train far away from anyone. I think that time it was your fault.”
“My fault?” He frowned at me as I had expected, and it was much better than him staring at my hands as if there was something wrong with me, something dangerous about me.
“Little wolf… you bled darkness in my dungeon, do you not remember? You hungered for vengeance. Have you felt… such darkness any other time?”
“All the time,” I blurted. “Sometimes… sometimes when you’re feeling all wrathful… it’s like it speaks to this darker part of me. I figured it was just the dual nature of the fae. You all blend darkness and light into one. You all have that other side of you.”
He closed the distance between us and placed his palms to the backs of my hands as I held them before me.
“We do all have a darker side. It is to be expected that you would have one too, but your darkness… it was carved from wrath, forged by a hunger for vengeance. It was born in my court, and perhaps… perhaps the goddess Lucia knew that was where you belonged and blessed you with shadows as well as light. Perhaps you are a union of both.”
He didn’t look sure. I wasn’t sure either. All I knew was that whenever I tried to summon magic, there was a fifty-fifty chance it would involve shadows and a wilder, darker sort of feeling inside me.
“Focus.” His palms shifted across the backs of my hands, drawing my attention there. “Look into my eyes, but focus on the point between your hands and the earth beneath your feet, and the blood in your veins. Navigate that blood. Follow it from the soles of your feet to your fingers.”
I did, keeping my eyes on his, drowning in their intensity as I found the flow of nature—of magic—as it circulated through me, first from the point where my feet touched the earth, and then from another part of me.
“You can feel it, can you not? The magic that lives within you. Not magic from the land…”
“From my heart,” I whispered, cutting him off as warmth filled the centre of my chest. “My soul.”
There was power there, a trickle not a torrent, but it was there and it was soft, but unyielding. Warm, but fierce.
“That is the flow of magic you should follow. The magic that is born within you, not from without.” His voice sounded so distant as I followed that flow of magic, not from my feet but from my heart.
Letting it flow to my fingertips.
It cast warm light up at his face as he smiled. “Good. Now condense it all, as if you are pushing it down, but feel the life and flow of it. Dance and rejoice in the warmth and comfort of it, but remember you are the one in command. You are the source… in here.”
His left hand slipped from the back of mine and he pressed two fingers to my chest, right over my heart.
I warmed under them, the magic feeling strongest there, as if it was reaching for a connection to him, and I focused on my hands, drawing it there, commanding it but revelling in it, as I had seen Kaeleron enjoying the connection with his shadows so many times.
“Good,” he purred, pride shining in every line of his beautiful face as he looked from my hands to my face. “Look at what you can do, my love.”
I did. I looked at my hands.
Suspended between them, silken threads of golden light danced, twining with each other into a single ribbon that warmed my skin and my heart. No trace of shadows touched it.
“How does it feel?” he said.
“Good,” I answered as I thought about it. “Right. Comforting, like you said. Like… oh gods this is going to sound ridiculous… but like meeting an old friend.”