Chapter 18
Revna
“The third rule of magic: it is an extension of yourself.”
I chewed my lip, studying S?ren. He appeared totally at ease, like he wasn’t obsessively thinking about having to strip me down yesterday in order to save my life. The circles beneath his eyes betrayed his lack of sleep, but otherwise he was calm.
I, on the other hand, couldn’t stop thinking about it. I refused to feel awkward—he’d seen it all before, and preventing my hypothermia wasn’t the least bit sexual. But it nagged at me.
Maybe because you think he’s a monster, and yet he never acts like one around you. The thought was involuntary but not fear-ridden like the other thoughts I’d had influenced by my Lurae. It felt more true, too. S?ren had done monstrous things. That could not be denied.
But did it make him a monster at his core?
I wasn’t sure.
“So, like my sword,” I said, forcing myself back to the conversation at hand.
“Exactly.” He sounded pleased I’d caught on so quickly.
“At first, when you learn how to spar, the sword can be too heavy—almost unwieldy. It’s easy to feel like the weapon pulls you in the direction it wants.
Like you have no control. But once you’ve used those muscles enough, you become master of your weapon. ”
The words settled in me, the familiar comparison like the spark of a struck match in the dark. “That makes…an absurd amount of sense.”
The Tapestry had said continuing to train with my Lurae would help me contact it again.
Would allow me to see more of the past without diving to my near-death in a frigid lake.
And we needed to understand the intricacies of the prophecy we’d discovered.
So despite my wariness, despite the strange tension now living between S?ren and me, training wasn’t something I was willing to set aside.
“Then let’s get started,” he said.
“I hate this.”
I snarled and sat down hard in the snow, dropping my face into my palms. After two hours of relentless practicing, I was still unable to coax my magic to obey my commands at will. The occasional successes soured after dozens upon dozens of failures.
Colors bloomed behind my eyelids in the darkness, the pressure from my hands blocking out the white landscape, desolate in every direction. At least when he was teaching me how to fight with a sword it came somewhat naturally.
S?ren perched on an old stump. The wood let out a creak, and I peered between my fingers to watch him lean forward and place his elbows on his knees. “Do you know how my Lurae manifested?”
I didn’t move. Why did his question feel like a trap? I was rabidly curious, itching to know the story. But would he have offered if it wasn’t meant to…I don’t know, teach me some kind of lesson? Prove a point?
“Do Kryllians have a ceremony?” I asked.
“We do—or used to, I guess, in Bhorglid. I stood on their temple steps for almost an hour waiting for my Lurae to show up. Frode only told me later, but it was all a ruse. They wouldn’t hold the ceremony until the child started displaying signs of a Lurae and then they encouraged them to pretend it had arrived in that instant. ”
He huffed a laugh, no amusement in it. “No. We don’t have any kind of ceremony, thank the gods.”
Silence fell for a few seconds. Maybe he doesn’t want to tell me after all, I told myself. And maybe I don’t want to know. Maybe allowing him in will crack the protective barrier I keep up for all the right reasons.
I lifted my head and crossed my arms, resting them on my bent knees. He wasn’t looking at me—he stared back at the forge, rubbing the edge of his hand-sewn cloak between his thumb and forefinger.
He turned to glance at me, and our eyes caught. I rested my chin on my forearms. S?ren was unsettled, and I knew him well enough to know he would stay that way until he said what was on his mind. A fragment remaining from our shared and shattered past.
Hesitantly, I asked, “How then?”
He swallowed. Averted his eyes. “I had been nine for almost two weeks,” he began.
“No magic had manifested yet. Mother and Father were gently trying to convince me it wasn’t a problem for me to be Nilurae.
They were right, of course, but I was young.
Everyone else in my family was Lurae—Mother could conjure illusions, Father was a healer, and Sonja only needed to think in the direction of the nearest seed and it would grow at her command. ”
I hummed softly, an assurance I was listening. With every word, the towering, often sullen man faded away until I was only able to see the dark-haired visage of a nine-year-old boy nervously rubbing the edge of his cloak.
“We lived in a tiny village along the coast,” he continued. “The year before Sonja turned nine, our crops failed. We lost many people. So when they realized she could make anything grow…”
“They revered her,” I murmured. They had revered Bjorn and my father, too—their Lurae offering heat in our freezing wasteland.
“Of course they did.” He didn’t sound bitter acknowledging it, shrugging at the obvious conclusion. “And I thought my sister was the most impressive person to walk the earth. She was full of raw power. The thought of not having a Lurae made a young boy incredibly upset.”
A few heartbeats of silence followed. Within them, I felt the dread of what was coming. S?ren waited, mouth open but no words coming. The trees, solemn guardians of the forge, twisted in their seats to listen. The wind ceased.
“I argued with my parents. It became heated quickly.” Nausea crept in. I knew where this story was headed. “You’re well aware of how magic surges when you’re angry. One moment I was yelling at them, the next I looked around and they…they were dead.”
I said nothing. S?ren’s foot tapped an impatient beat in the snow.
“I ran. Sonja found me hiding in the fields behind our house. She realized what had happened, but she had heard the townsfolk talking of chasing down the murderer. While I waited there, she returned to the house and pointed them in the wrong direction. Then she closed our parents’ eyes for the final time, packed two bags full of supplies, and we left. ”
When he looked at me again, I saw the boy—gray eyes filled with tears and whispering, I didn’t mean to.
The prophecy’s identification of S?ren suddenly made a terrible amount of sense. Him, harbinger of forebearers’ doom.
The tightness in my chest returned. S?ren took a deep breath, likely preparing to put on the airs of someone well-adjusted, and in a burst of unfiltered thought, words flew from me.
“I killed Halvar.”
There were dozens of things S?ren could have said. And somehow he managed the one I least expected.
“I know.”
I blinked, heart faltering. “What—what do you mean, you know?”
Panic filled me. If S?ren knew, did the others? Had Freja discovered the truth and managed to hide it from me? Is that why she was so argumentative with me all the time now? Shit, had I been forcing Jac to live a lie for no reason—
“Revna.”
I breathed in and saw S?ren kneeling in front of me.
His palm was outstretched tentatively toward me, but it never connected.
Instead, he pulled it back. Sheepishly, he ran the hand through his hair.
“There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.
My Lurae involves more than just killing people at will. I can also see ghosts.”
The revelation startled me from my panic. “Are you serious?”
“Yes. I ran into Halvar’s ghost a few days into my stay in Bhorglid. Made the mistake of going into the tavern after I gave Mira my latest update.”
I remained frozen. My emotions couldn’t decide the best course of action. Did I need to panic? Accuse him of lying? Demand more information? What was the right thing to do?
And most important—how was he being so calm about this?
“Will you tell me what happened?” S?ren’s voice was far more gentle than it had any right to be, and it pierced through my rib cage like a blade.
I didn’t want to resist anymore. Besides—he already knew the damning part. What was the admission of a few more sins?
I took a deep breath and began to speak.