Seven #2
Amalyss picked up her own book and rolled onto her stomach, propping her chin in her hands. “She’ll help, unlike someone we know.”
I chuckled as I turned my focus to the text before me.
Time passed with the quiet scrape of paper and the occasional soft conversation from Amalyss and Tasia.
At one point, Vora brought small sandwiches—egg and watercress—and tea around midday before slipping away.
I nibbled on the corner of one as I read, leaning closer to the pages when one passage in particular snagged my focus.
Harnessing familial magic is largely an innate ability, and in young children, it often flares with their emotions until they learn to control their newfound power.
Even so, perfecting magic varies from family to family depending on the unique strain.
While children may bear the raw potential of their parents, wielding it effectively comes from years of finesse and practice, and is best taught by another family member.
If that power is never refined, the individual in question will likely never be able to perform the same feats as their ancestors.
In other words, I was royally fucked unless any of the other Ferngloves could effectively teach me to harness Rorik’s gift. I snorted and nearly blew sandwich bits across the book. Wiping the last crumbs from my lips, I turned to the next page.
In the case of heartbonds, acquiring new magic can be quite jarring.
Both parties may be familiar with their own unique brand of magic—assuming their familial powers were strong enough to be passed down—but the influx of a foreign magic can be difficult to manage.
Guidance from both parties about their respective powers is necessary to fully realize their shared potential and harness their combined magics.
Furthermore, while heartbonds require no romantic attachment to form, there is an emotional component to their connection.
No fucking shit. I absently rubbed the left side of my chest as I remembered the torrent of unbridled feelings that had battered against my heart.
As such, learning how to harness familial magic through a heartbond can be developed quite quickly and efficiently, since the bond itself allows both users to feel deeply through their connection.
This grants the individual the ability to acutely experience how said magic is accessed and shaped versus learn through years of trial and error, as children do when learning about their inherited familial power.
A weighted groan slipped from my lips. Pinching my nose, I let my eyes close.
No matter how well-versed Lydia was in heartbonds, I had the inevitable sinking feeling that she would be able to accomplish only so much.
Especially with Rorik shuttering his emotions from me and apparently stilting the power that seeped down our bond.
I needed him to take the wall down between us, but did I even want that?
That meant he would have access to my magic and, worse, my feelings, which were already a whole ass mess.
“Find something?” Tasia asked.
I opened my eyes and closed the book. “Nothing beyond what I already feared. I just hope your mother can help.”
Amalyss sighed as she pushed herself into a sitting position and tossed her text to the side. “I don’t understand why Rorik is so resistant to the idea of you accessing his magic. If he would just take his head out of his insufferable ass—”
Her words died in her throat as she went utterly still.
A needling chill drifted from the rafters to settle over me like a fine layer of snow, and my gaze shot to the open windows.
No clouds. No breeze to speak of. And then it came.
A wet rasp with no source that filled my ears just the same and, with it, brought the sour taste of death.
Bile crept up the back of my throat as my power surged to the surface.
“What’s going on?” I asked, glancing at Tasia. “Do you feel this, too?”
Before she could respond, Amalyss let out a cry that rent the air and sent my heart racing. Her pupils were blown wide, and she slapped a hand over her neck as her mouth opened and closed. Tasia was before her in seconds.
“Amalyss, what’s—” A startled gasp ripped from Tasia’s throat to strangle her words.
Her own hand covered the space on her neck, a mirror to where Amalyss’s was already perched.
Slowly, they both rotated their gazes to me and then let the first layer of their glamours fall away.
My own power ripped free from my core and came rushing forward.
I didn’t bother to restrain it and instead let it unfurl in a billowing glow of moonlight.
Amalyss’s and Tasia’s life threads, invisible to all but me, twirled about their frames.
Like Rorik’s they were a resplendent, vibrant aquamarine—save one thread each that was now drenched in a horrendous oily black sludge.
My gaze shifted to their bodies, and I found the damning pocket of infection at the bases of their necks. The blight was back.
Footsteps thundered from the hall, and their bedroom doors were thrown open. Rorik stood at the threshold, his gaze tearing apart the room until it landed on the girls, with Lydia a breath behind him. She shouldered past him and then came to a complete stop.
“No,” she mumbled as she crashed to her knees, face ashen. “Not again.” Her hands trembled as she stared wild-eyed at her daughters. Tears bisected her cheeks in flowing rivers that cascaded over her sharp jaw.
Panic clawed up my throat and soured the back of my tongue.
Why was this happening? How? I’d cured them.
All of them. Before I’d left Fernglove and returned to Willowfell, I’d called on my power once just to see what their threads looked like.
They’d all been wonderfully clear. There hadn’t been a single trace of blight left on any of them.
Yet it was back. There wasn’t even blight festering in the surrounding land, so they couldn’t have contracted it from the earth itself.
And all the Ferngloves—infected or not—wore their glamour practically nonstop, which was beneficial in that it acted like a bandage that kept blight from spreading to others.
“Your everjewels?” Rorik asked, his voice carefully neutral.
Amalyss dragged her watery eyes to him. “Intact. I can still feel them.”
“Me, too.” Tasia shifted, and her fingers absently ghosted her thigh.
Everjewels were the reason Evers were, well, Evers.
They gained immortality by keeping the gems buried deep within their bodies, and their magic was supposed to stave off just about any ailment.
They’d never truly worked against blight, but Evers had taken to burying more and more stones beneath the folds of their muscles to help keep the creeping sickness at bay.
“I don’t understand. We were just sitting here,” I said quietly. The spots on their necks were small, but the decay had already started. Their puckered, splitting skin was rotting from the inside, and speckles of yellow loam were just visible in the depths of the black ooze.
Tasia nodded. “It came out of nowhere. I’m not sure what could’ve caused it.”