Chapter 16 #2
Her hands were at her sides, unmoving to start.
Then she lifted her hand and a flame appeared over her palm without a single rune cast. My jaw dropped.
What she was showing me was . . . impossible.
It was one thing to have a two-handed casting ability – like fucking Julius – but this .
. . the implications. When you were caught by Runecoats, the first thing they did was bind your fingers and hands with a type of rune that cemented them together to keep you from fighting back.
“This is what the Senate is investigating you about, isn’t it? Wild magic?”
Her eyebrows shot up. “The gag rune you signed means that you won’t be able to pass on what you learn here today to any who are not part-Fae.”
A non-answer, but again the implications. Could I not even mention it to my friends? She snapped her fingers.
“This requires focus, and a control over your own emotions and power. You must master this now, or your window to learn it will close and you will lose access to it forever.”
Well, fuck.
If you didn’t count the kraken, or the fact that I’d have to face Nocta . . . I’d still have to deal with this.
I shoved those thoughts aside and homed in on the one that was bothering me most in this moment. “Unsanctioned magic frays the Weave. Aren’t you afraid of freeing the monsters of Everdark?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Did they tell you that? Wild magic doesn’t fray anything but the minds of simpletons.
Weak men who will say anything to keep the power where they want it, in the palm of their foolish, meaty hands.
Now stop being impertinent, child. I told you one question a day, and I meant it. Now focus, Hannah.”
I tried to focus while digesting her words. If she was telling the truth and this magic was safe to use, then the Senate was scummier than I believed before. And that was saying something.
But wait, did that mean that my improvised magic also didn’t damage the Weave? And, if so, did it mean that I would lose that, too, if I couldn’t master this?
Her voice brought me back to the present before I could mention any of it. “You must see the rune in your mind, clearly, and cast it toward the place you wish it to go. This takes many years to master, which is why you must start now.”
Many years? I didn’t have many years. Not if this was going to be any use for defeating Nocta. What if . . . what if it was already too late? I wasn’t really a teenager, not that she knew that.
Panic lit the anxiety that always lay curled inside my chest, and the room swam, the glowing structures, the runes set into the room to make the illusion hold. Fae, I was part-Fae. And there was a good chance I was going to lose my magic if I didn’t learn to do the impossible.
“I need air.”
I bent at the waist and wobbled, dropped to my knees as the panic attack clawed into me; like a panther in the night, it pounced without warning.
This was too much; there was no way through it.
I could feel the panther climbing my spine, digging into every part of me.
Distantly, I knew this was a bad one. Sweat poured off my face, dripping onto the stone, my body shaking as it reacted to the fear in my mind.
Thalienne was speaking but it felt like she was far away.
I needed to run, I needed to get air, I had to get out of here.
I scrambled to my feet, unseeing as I stumbled, half blind. Go. Run.
Anywhere but here.
There was rough tree bark under my hand, and I clung to it, then propelled myself forward into the illusion of a forest. Wind tugged at me, sharp and cold like a winter chill.
I kept moving, picking up my pace, falling, finding my feet again, running flat out through the forest. I barely dodged plants and trees, stumbled, nearly fell a second time, leapt over the stream, going as hard as I could until there was nothing left in me to keep going, and the anxiety had been left behind me somewhere.
Burnt out on adrenaline and fatigue.
I went to my knees a second time, tipped my head back and just sat there, sucking wind. Thinking of nothing.
The world shifted and I was back on the stone in the center of the room, looking at Thalienne across from me.
“What is a rune that you are most comfortable with?” she said gently. “That is where we will start, young Hannah.”
She spoke as if I hadn’t just bolted away from her, freaking out, blind with panic. Her eyes were as sharp as ever, giving me no pity, marking nothing I’d done as odd despite the tone of her voice. “Focus on the rune, child, nothing else matters in this moment.”
I stayed on my knees and let myself push everything I’d just learned away – I could freak out again later if I had to – the worst was over for now.
Her voice helped me focus and I did as she asked.
What was the rune I was most comfortable with? I went through the list in my mind. Even though I could cast a proper rune, with the blocks removed from me, I still found myself gravitating toward the runes I’d come up with on my own.
Like my ‘nicking notions.’ Hell, I’d used it just the night before – an unsanctioned rune, right under Thalienne’s nose, with Runecoats floating about watching. But maybe it wasn’t as bad as I’d been told.
But that didn’t create something she could see. “I . . . don’t know.”
“What was the first rune you learned? Perhaps one that your mother taught you?”
I hadn’t thought about the first rune my mother taught me in years. It wasn’t what most children had been taught, I knew that. Most learned to pull things toward them, with a simple beckoning rune. But not my mother.
I closed my eyes and sunk into the memory.
My mother was on her knees, facing me, her white-blonde hair hanging down either side of her face. She held my hands so gently, her smile making her eyes crinkle at the edges. Her fingers pressed over mine, helping me cast my first rune.
“This rune is the first rune my mother taught me, Harlow, and now I am going to show you.”
Over and over, she helped flex my fingers until the movement became natural.