Chapter Twenty Seven
MILA
Mila studied the current cutting a visible wake behind the Rosenvatten. Fascinating, the swirl of the bubbles as they charged to the air. She focused on their tiny forms bursting to life so she didn’t think of Pedr lying in his cabin, half dead.
She couldn’t.
It was too much.
Intolerable, living in a world where every moment was proof against Pedr recovering.
Pedr should be doing Arcanist things, not withering in agonizing death.
She may not have seen him for fifteen years, but the sea had been his home.
For him to lose command of it was the worst kind of punishment and torture.
Her shoulders straightened.
No.
She wouldn’t even think about it.
Instead, she’d pivot all her attention to what she could do, which is what she’d been trying to do for ages. Harness her pedigree-given arcane abilities.
Mila stared at her palms, as if the crossing lines, thin lines, fat lines, slashing lines held the answers. When she turned her attention inward, she could feel the arcane within. Like a great vessel, it spanned all of her physical form, yet felt . . . empty. Like a vessel waiting to be filled.
In her mind, she asked, Will you obey me? and attempted to summon a rope from the other end of the bow. According to Stulla, bringing an object was one of the simplest uses of arcane, and something Mila had to try daily for years.
The rope pile remained.
Mila frowned.
How could she feel the arcane, yet do nothing with it?
Recalling Draven and Pedr’s ease with their abilities, she couldn’t help falling down the same path she’d trod all of her life: despair.
Hopelessness. Through all of Stinna’s lessons, Vaela’s demonstrations, and Venna’s education from her garden, Mila ended at the same conclusion.
She couldn’t use the arcane abilities, she simply had them.
Loathe as she was to think about those infuriating, horrifying days learning from Stinna, she couldn’t stop their resurrection. Stinna had been an effective Siren Queen: she knew how to wield the arcane in many ways. Ghastly ways, but creative.
Mila re-focused on producing the desired result of summoning the rope, but with Draven in mind.
Could she channel her inner wyvern and make something happen?
The hard-as-granite mental wall that she butted up against returned, and not a hint of movement shifted the coarse threads.
Her weakness was tantamount to frustration.
Why didn’t the arcane work?
A deep voice rolled behind her.
“The ability may not respond to you at this time because of your extensive confinement away from the wyverns.”
She whirled.
Draven stood back there, white hair glossy around his shoulders, a half smile on his eager expression.
Sometime in the intervening hours apart—he vanished below deck before dawn and emerged again now—Draven washed up and changed into robes of deepest sapphire.
Beneath the long garment, he wore a cream colored shirt.
Mila bowed her head, but didn’t bend her knees. Mother had required a more obvious show of obeisance, but Mila didn’t know what to do with Draven. He didn’t seem the type to require physical respect.
He laughed. “None of that. Not between us.” Affection brightened his use of the word us and made her toes curl under her feet with surprise. “I sensed you attempting to use the arcane just now.”
Her eyes widened.
“You sensed it?”
“An impressive attempt.”
“That means Onskar?—”
“I don’t think so,” he said quickly, with a pondering air. “You see, I know you’re alive, and you are my flesh and blood, which I believe makes me more sensitive to your usage. We are also in close quarters,” he swooped a hand in the air, “and Onskar has neither advantage.”
Mila’s arms relaxed. “Knowing I exist and sharing blood makes it easier to sense the arcane use?”
“Well, yes,” he added brightly, “because I was also waiting to see if I could sense it. It’s very easy to find that which you anticipate.” Draven studied her with deepening curiosity. “Do you feel the arcane?”
“I do.”
“And yet you cannot use it?”
“No.”
“When you try, what happens?”
She gestured to the unmoved rope.
“Nothing.”
“You command it?” He added with an amused smile, “The arcane doesn’t take requests. It desires direction and leadership.”
Mila laughed. “That is one of the first lessons Stinna gave me.”
“Hmm . . . after all those years trapped in the castle, it’s a feat of sheer ability and prowess that you manage to sense it now.”
She bit back a hoot of laughter. “Is it an accomplishment? Seems more like a pathetic failure, if you ask me. I’m supposed to be Onskar’s equal, remember?”
“Yes,” he said evenly, “but what’s that got to do with the arcane?”
Her thoughts bottomed out.
Wait . . . what?
Draven turned his face to the wind and continued to speak as if he hadn’t thrown a huge curve into her understanding. “I’m not afraid to say that I believe the fault for your lacking ability belongs to Vassi.”
Mila set a hand on her chest. “But I continue to fail, not her. I’m the one who can’t figure out what’s stopping the arcane from obeying me.”
Draven tapped the bottom of his ear. A wyvern gesture, likely, that was supposed to mean something she couldn’t fathom.
“Yes, yes,” he said quickly, “but you are only part siren, are you not?”
“And?”
“And part wyvern?”
“What has that got to do with it?”
“Vassi only exposed you to the arcane abilities that the sirens wielded, and not the wyverns, which means that half of you has been dormant all this time.”
She leaned back with a shocked, “Oh.”
“My imperfect and untested theory is that, having never been exposed to a wyvern, you were incapable of commanding the arcane or channeling your full abilities. You never had the opportunity for full expression of yourself because you never met me, which wasn’t part of my bargain with Vassi.
But . . . I digress. Now that the wyverns have returned . . .”
His trailing voice left plenty of implication. Mila comprehended what he said slowly, and with great effort. His bold statement re-wrote some of her history, casting candles in places she’d never known existed.
“You’re saying that the arcane is different from being to being?”
“Perhaps. Again, it’s a theory. Onksar once told me that the arcane is free-flowing through Elestra.
” His brow furrowed, head tilting. “Though that statement doesn’t exactly match my observations, because arcane is different between sea, land, sky, and soul.
Onskar has told me many things about the arcane and most of them don’t make sense.
There are obvious contradictions in his own words, the reality of the arcane versus his explanation of it, etc.
It’s only been the last thousand years that I’ve questioned what he said, since there was little else to do while trapped underground. ”
The idea boggled Mila. Who could question Onskar? Her aunts lived in too much fear of him. They spent all of their days deftly avoiding his attention at all costs. To outright question was akin to disobedience, and the very idea flirted with outright panic.
If Draven smelled Mila’s fear, he gave no sign.
He pressed a hand to his chest. “Onskar claims that the arcane that I use could be the same arcane that Vassi uses, and vice versa. Yet we see that the Arcanist of the Sea cannot access the sky arcane. Is it physical? Does it travel? I don’t know.
At different times, he has stated that it obeys by race and can interchange races at any time. ”
“That’s confusing.”
“It is.”
“And contradictory.”
“So is Onskar.”
“Does he do it on purpose? Create confusion, I mean.”
Draven smiled, as if she’d asked the right question.
“I think so, Mila. I think so. Can I prove it? No. He is effective at what he does. Testing, isolation, reading souls. There’s a reason he is the Arcanist of Souls.
But I suspect, because of this attempt to sow misinformation, there’s an opportunity to outdo even Onskar. At least, I hope so.”
Like water in a sieve, she couldn’t grip all these thoughts or observations.
Her mind thought of her aunts first. In all of Mila’s arcane lessons, none of her aunts mentioned arcane attributes, nor Onskar in any fashion, except blind terror of him.
How strange that their love for her should be so intense, so binding, so thrilling, and deep as shackles on each.
Mila spread both hands.
“What can I do? I’ll do whatever it takes to save Pedr.”
He sighed, considering her with a plumbless perusal. That he should be her sire gave a surprising and unexpected rush of pride. Not to mention rage. For a thousand years, Mother locked him in those mountains and had never once introduced them.
All that time . . . wasted.
She smelled his despair with a startling ferocity, as if he shared the path her mind created.
“There are a handful of irrefutable arcane rules that I have observed,” he said a bit more spritely, even though his energy hadn’t fully recovered.
“I believe it’s a good starting point for us to discuss.
Easy rules to prove, too. For example, there is a finite amount of arcane in Elestra, and we share use of it between wyverns, sirens, and Arcanists.
The Arcanist of Souls is the Seat of the Arcane.
He, or she, can hold over half of the ability, which is why they can command, aid, and assist souls. Everything holds a soul.”
Mila blanched. “Onskar holds so much power?”
“One cannot be very powerful if one doesn’t possess the majority.
” Draven sent her a little wink. “It has always been this way. The sirens and the wyverns each collectively hold far less, but not nothing. If you’d like a number, I would say the Arcanist of Souls holds sixty percent of the arcane abilities and power, and the sirens share fifteen percent amongst all twenty of them. Same for the wyverns.”
“That adds up to ninety.”
He elevated a finger, his brow rising with it. The quirky way he hid a laugh when he said, “Ah! She does math!” brought another smile.