Chapter Seventeen Shielding
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
SHIELDING
Reya’s stomach dropped out from under her. “You can’t be serious.”
Caelan’s mouth tilted in that way of his.
“It’s dangerous!” she sputtered.
“That’s what the waterfall is for.”
“Is this because I told your friends that you’re dying?”
He pressed his lips together, and Reya had a feeling he was trying to suppress a smile. “This is not a punishment. I’m trying to help you by teaching you control.” He nodded again to the pool.
“Can’t you just throw pine cones at me or something?”
“When you would ever need to shield against a pine cone?”
Reya groaned, and Caelan stepped closer.
“I don’t know what it is you see when you let down that floodgate.
But every time you plead to forget, you invite the magic to consume you, if only to make the memories go away.
When that Dread Wolf came at you, your instincts took over long enough for you to rip it apart.
You have to need it. That’s why we’re using fire.
” He gestured to the pool for what she knew was the final time.
Reya remembered Caelan’s gaping chest dripping blood onto her own. That had been the first time she’d ever heard him scream. What happens next time will be on you.
She’d made it this far.
Off came her armor, vest, boots, and pants, until only her filthy tunic and sword belt remained.
The rocks were slick with algae, and she shuddered as her bare skin met the icy water.
Reya went in as far as she dared, the waterfall close enough that her hair was immediately plastered against her back.
“Ire,” Caelan commanded. Gone was the coaxing, the gentleness. An Alethian general stood in front of her now, looking paler and more spent than he ever had, but no less menacing.
Shivering, Reya closed her eyes and thought of Dread Wolves and Blood Watchers, war and tyrant kings. Seconds turned to minutes.
“Anytime.”
“I’m t-trying,” Reya said. “It’s c-c-cold.”
“Would you like me to come in and warm it up for you?”
The moment the Ire raced across her skin, she opened her eyes and took in his smug expression. Bastard.
“Now what am I supposed to do?”
A spear of flame came barreling for her head, and she shrieked and dove beneath the surface. Spray and bubbles erupted as it hit the water.
“What the rotting hell?” Reya bellowed when she came up for air, wiping the water from her eyes. Steam billowed across the rippling surface around her.
“Worth a shot,” Caelan muttered.
Reya’s blood heated.
“Not all Sages can summon shields,” he began as though he hadn’t just tried to hard-boil her.
“Compulsors and elementals manipulate the physical. Transcenders, perceptors, and healers—their abilities are internal. In battle, we will form ranks to account for this, pairing an elemental with a healer, a compulsor with a perceptor, and so on. The God Power is inherently physical.”
Reya cringed.
“Shields are just concentrations of magic. And they’re effective for two reasons: First, because they’re used in close proximity.
The farther the magic is from you, the harder it is to wield.
Second, a defensive action requires less of your reserves than an offensive one.
It will only be as broad and strong as you make it, so visualize it first.”
He made it sound so easy.
Like he’d read her mind, he added, “It helps to think of it like an actual battle shield. Though, Kellstone-tipped arrows and blades will go right through it. Against anything or anyone else, it’s a solid defense.”
A rippling flame appeared in his hand.
Reya gripped the sword to ground herself and tried to imagine the light curving in front of her.
But as the fire came raging for her head again, she dove beneath the surface before she could even summon a glimmer.
The freezing water warmed, and she came up for air in another billowing cloud of steam.
“The water is meant to protect you from burns. It’s not an escape route for when you panic.”
“It’s a little hard to concentrate,” Reya said.
“If you think you’ll have time to concentrate, you’ve never seen real combat.” This time, the flames singed her shoulder as she dove out of their path. She coughed and sputtered until she managed to get a breath down.
“I swear by the All-Gods, Caelan…” She trailed off, applying pressure on the burn through the new hole in her tunic. Her threat was empty. What would she do? Nothing.
“Your magic will follow your lead. Give it clear direction.”
“If that’s the case, you mind cooling down those fireballs a few degrees?” The burn was not as bad as it could have been, and Reya knew he could heal it. But it still hurt.
“I said I would take you to the edge. Is this the edge of the famous Crimson Dagger?”
Eyes narrowed, she lifted her palm in answer.
“Good,” he said. “Trust it to protect you, and it will.”
She had never trusted it. Not when all it had ever done was bring about pain and death. Though the rash from the Kellstone necklace was gone, she could still feel it, an echo of the cage she’d willingly climbed inside to avoid causing more suffering—hers and others.
This time, Reya pictured the shield taking form along her left forearm—a simple circle, like the ones Etellinian warriors once carried into battle.
Flame ignited in Caelan’s palm as the floodgate opened. Light flashed along her arm, but not nearly enough. She screamed as the spray of the falls turned to boiling steam.
Another bright red burn marred her forearm, sleeve gaping and singed brown. Reya bit her lip to keep it from trembling.
Caelan’s eyes were assessing. “Try again, Reyanwyn.”
She would do this. If only so this grueling exchange might end.
The next flame flickered between orange and blue as if in warning. If she didn’t protect herself, this one would hurt.
It was no chore to get angry, to follow it like a thread to the pit inside herself, to the part that only hurt others. She took a deep, steadying breath and dropped the floodgate a quarter of the way down.
Come on. Light bloomed along her arm, stretching toward the shape in her head. But Caelan’s flames tore through it like paper. Pain erupted down her arm, tearing a scream from her throat.
Reya dove into the chill of the plunge pool, savoring the cool lick on her scorched skin. She stayed there for longer than she needed, relishing her weightlessness and the deafening pounding of the falls until her breath ran out.
“Better,” Caelan shouted over the roar when her head broke through the surface. Whether her cheeks colored with shame or heat or lack of oxygen, she had no idea. “Again.”
Reya scrubbed at her face, already on the verge of exhaustion after only a few tries.
Again and again, Caelan struck, and again and again she failed to protect herself. While her countermoves did manage to absorb some of the impact of the blaze, they were not shields. Her attempts to turn the power into a shield had only made it softer.
“What was that?” he demanded when her last attempt set her flying back into the waterfall. “How many times do I have to do this to make you protect yourself?”
“I’m trying! You think I want to be cooked alive?”
“I’m starting to think you might.” Caelan extinguished the flames, considering her. “Do you want this to be a punishment?”
She ground her teeth. “You told me to use my emotions, and I am.”
“Perhaps it’s time to try another emotion.”
“All I feel is anger, Caelan!” She screamed the words until her voice broke. Anger at herself. Her choices. Her failures. Her own submission. “You said our gifts are a reflection of the giver. Una is supposed to be good!” She gestured vaguely to herself. “But me—nothing I do is good.”
Hers was a curse granted like a gift from a hand wreathed in starlight, from a being that had no understanding of what it meant to live and die.
Una’s antidote to chaos: balance by oblivion.
“Fire at least stimulates new growth,” she went on. “I leave behind nothing, no one. I am annihilation.”
“There is so much more to you than that.”
No words had ever made her more angry. Her whole body was shaking now, from cold, from anger, from the burns.
“I’m done giving you what you want,” Caelan said.
The moment he turned from her, she knew he was right.
Knew she wanted to be hurt. If only as penance for the hurt she caused.
With a cry of rage, she let down the floodgate and threw out her power with abandon.
Caelan felt it coming and whirled as she lit up the space between them.
The forest shook with the force of the collision that followed.
Through the flames he’d thrown up between them, she saw his grimace of pain, saw the sweat of exertion on his paling face. Slowly, his shield began to fray.
Then she saw them.
Their bloodied, lifeless faces stared up at her, brown and sea-blue eyes lightless and hollow. Your fault, your fault, your fault.
“Please,” she whispered.
Reya blinked, and then she was stumbling through the snow, leaving streaks of red in her wake.
Never come back.
White circled her irises. Then there were golden hands on her, and the whole world plunged into darkness.
The next thing Reya knew, she was on her back, staring at the patches of blue sky between the branches above, the rocky shore pressing uncomfortably into her spine.
Caelan stood over her, hands on his knees, dripping wet and looking frighteningly gray-faced. She’d hurt him. Again.
The burns on her arms were gone. She would have preferred them, however, to the agony now racking every muscle in her body and the guilt she felt in her bones.
“I’m done for today,” she said.
“Brush it off.”
She ignored his extended hand and stood.
He reached for her—to steady her or stop her, she didn’t know—but she smacked his hand away. “Don’t touch me.”
Reya used her rage and grief and embarrassment like bricks to reinforce the wall between them. Because she could feel the tears coming, and she refused to let him see. He’d seen far too much of her already.