Chapter 16 #2
He blinked. Miss Kiappa had said they didn’t use their wells to operate their magic, but they didn’t make any of their own power?
Only gathered it from outside themselves?
How had he not known that? She was a bloody book.
A wealth of knowledge Hothan had passed to her that never got written down, because that man believed experience trumped all else.
“Tell me more. What makes you call it chaos?”
“Mmm, I could have the twins explain it to you, it would be an excellent assessment tool . . .” Her eyes drifted to where said children were engrossed in a “wild jumps” contest. “No,” she mumbled her decision, then launched into an explanation that not only impressed him but forced him to revise his entire understanding of naughtbirins, or as he’d recently come to prefer, but was soon left reconsidering, tishtafiran.
Gesturing wildly as she spoke, Nesrina kept splashing water into his face, forcing him to swipe at his eyes, time and again.
Like she forgot he was an elemental mage, she even offered him an explanation of his own magic.
If it had been Isahn, or Hevva, or anyone else trying to tell him how he worked, he’d have scoffed.
But hearing her speak so passionately was worth it.
“In my understanding, elemental mages control the flow of power from within, from your wells. When your power is used up, it’s gone.
You can’t create any more air or move it around, because your well’s dry until you regenerate.
Our resource, the chaos”—she spun her finger in the air—“it’s external, not internally generated.
It’s everywhere, all around us, all the time.
When I teach the twins, we work with manageable amounts of it, like from a candle flame.
It’s more straightforward for them to manipulate.
” She punctuated her explanation with a crooked grin that made his heart somersault.
Nesrina’s eyes grew unfocused for a moment as she lost herself to thought.
“I’m also trying to sort out the pairing problem.
It’s difficult, since I don’t have one myself. ”
“What’s the pairing problem?” His limbs hummed as the excitement of a good conversation on a thrilling topic took hold. He enjoyed the buzz.
“We usually come in pairs. I’m an exception,” she explained. “Sibling sets can create stronger illusions together. Most of the time, they’re born years apart, like my father and my aunt. The eldest trains the youngest.” She raised her brow and side-eyed the twins.
“Not with them.”
“Not with them. But what’s a little added challenge?”
“So, you usually create an illusion, or an object, alone, but siblings can do that together? How?”
Her sigh told him he was opening a can of worms. “Yes. By imagining the exact same thing at the exact same time. It’s a skill that normally takes ages to build, but the twins have done it inadvertently.
Worse”—she lowered her voice to a whisper—“I have no experience with it. I should write to my aunt.”
He nodded, trying to think of a suitable follow-up question, then gulped, losing his train of thought when she began bouncing, pushing off the bottom with her feet, then dropping down, then pushing up, over and over again.
Her breasts bobbed, cresting the surface each time she rose.
“Tell me more,” Kas croaked. Not the well-thought-out inquiry he’d been aiming for, but it would do.
“You’ve read Thanin’s article.” She glanced up at him.
Up and down, up and down.
“It was pretty accurate to my experience. Like elemental mages, our capability depends on our inherited power cap, but we don’t have to stop and recharge the way you do.
This is why learning control has been such an integral part of my lessons.
They don’t have a well to run dry if their magic goes wild, they can only stop themselves. ”
Her gaze left his face, focused on nothing at all as her teaching voice transitioned into her thinking-aloud tone he’d come to find so endearing.
“I don’t think Thanin’s a tishtafir, or I believe it would’ve informed his work differently.
” She found his eyes again, the tutor resurfacing.
“You create chaos too; all elemental mages do. For example—” Miss Kiappa’s eyes widened slightly, and she dunked out of sight.
Trying to follow her thought process was fascinating. Why had he tried to convince himself she was dull? He scoffed.
She reappeared with an appealing little gasp that captured his attention, as usual. “For example,” she started over, more certain this time as she met his gaze with conviction, “when we argued, a few weeks ago . . .”
“In the library?”
She nodded and a delicate blush climbed her bouncing bosom—she’d started that damned bobbing again. “You were bombarding me with chaos.” Her tone was mildly accusatory as that delicious flush reached her rounded cheeks. “I drew from it to create a windbreak.”
“Oh, so you did that on purpose?” Kas teased, mouth quivering as he bit back a smile.
She dunked underwater again, the bubbles breaking the surface her response.
With his arms crossed over his chest, he waited for Nesrina to come up for air. When she did, her eyes lingered on his pectorals, highlighted by his stance.
She tried to force her gaze off of him, twice, before a look of frustration crossed her features, and she focused resolutely on his chin.
Kas considered vexing her further, maybe flexing an arm, but decided he’d rather listen to her speak. “Have I seen you make anything else?” he asked with genuine curiosity.
She chewed one side of her bottom lip before replying, “Well, yes. This bathing costume’s made from a bit of energy from the stream.”
“That’s not real?” he squeaked.
She laughed, and the tinkling sound sent a shivering pulse straight from the bottom of his stomach to the tip of his—
“I needed something to wear. I couldn’t be out here in nothing but my shift.”
“You’re sure about that?”
Her eyebrows popped, and it was his turn to dunk beneath the surface.
When he came up, Kas took a stabilizing breath under the guise of requiring oxygen. She didn’t need to know he’d inadvertently spied on her. “What else can you make?”
“What can you dream up?” she asked. Sunlight dappled her face, glittering across her starry freckles and drops of water that were far luckier than him as they trailed down across her pillowy lips.
“Lots of things. But I don’t think most of them are . . . appropriate for the children in our company.” He winked. Fuck it, she put him on edge.
“Oh!” Her startled gasp let him know he’d been successful. If that hadn’t given it away, the scarlet hue climbing her neck certainly did the trick.
He gave her a moment to calm down—himself too, if he was being honest. “In the library . . .”
“Yes?”
“When we were”—he cleared his throat—“arguing, I felt my magic pull into yours, I realize that now. And the candles, they—”
“Froze?” she offered, nodding at the former part of his assessment.
“Yes. Why did that happen? The stream’s not frozen, but you’re using your magic now, on your—” He gestured to her bathing dress, trying not to imagine what she was wearing beneath it, and failing.
What would happen if he grasped her about the waist and lifted her onto the shore?
Would the action startle her enough to make her release the illusion?
Would her nipples be hard pebbles poking through her thin shift?
He dipped low in the water again, ensuring it was well above his waist.
Kas watched, entranced, as her gaze dropped from his face to chest, and trailed down farther, following the line of his body hair as it disappeared beneath the water. She can’t—his hand flew down to ensure his manhood was safely tucked away, hidden beneath the ripples—good.
“It all depends on how much chaos I draw in. I pulled on . . . a lot in the library that day.”
“And you used it all to create a fun little hedge maze for me to navigate?” He laughed, enjoying the way her blush hung around.
“I did not, actually. I used a bit and released most of it back whence it came.”
“You crafted all of those shrubberies, and still released most of the chaos, unused?” Kas eyed her curiously. She must have been exceptionally powerful. To make an equivalent sized wall of air would have taxed his well considerably, and he was well endowed, magically speaking . . . and otherwise.
“Weren’t you listening during our lesson today?” With a raised finger, she nearly prodded his chest, but snapped her hand back at the last second, looking shocked.
“Not well,” he admitted, omitting the reason for that.
“When we create things with our magic, it’s an outer shell, the inside is hollow. The level of detail can vary.”
“I believe I understand. Those shrubs were complex though, with leaves and branches, not like . . . a child’s drawing.” He skirted the dragon-incident on the palace lawn.
“Yes, but each leaf is an approximation, almost like . . . a drained eggshell.”
“Fantastic visual.”
She scrunched her shoulders and his heart thundered, making him drop lower in the water, lest she see his chest hair start quivering.
“What’s the biggest thing you can make?” he asked.
She didn’t answer for a moment, busy thinking. In front of him, across the pool, the twins stopped shrieking at one another, entranced by something. Kas followed their eyes upstream to where water typically cascaded down over the man-made barrier. Nothing but a trickle flowed.
A massive shadow fell over him, blocking out the warm afternoon sun. His eyes flicked to Ataht and Della, who looked past him and up, up, up, into the sky.
Kas spun, his ripples the only movement in the stream, and slowly raised his eyes, half expecting to see a dragon bearing down, a larger version of the one the twins created at the palace, or something like that. It was the biggest thing he could think of at that moment.
What he didn’t expect to find was an enormous, stationary mountain that looked like it had always been there, where the woods and his lened home stood moments before.
He followed the craggy outcrops up, and up, and up to the snowcapped peak, high in the sky, before turning his wide-eyed gaze on the woman to his left.
It was his turn to be speechless. She was extraordinary. Powerful beyond measure, and so ridiculously humble about it. “My house better be under there.”
She laughed.
“Can everyone see that?” Ataht inquired.
“Yes. Everyone outside. Because the inside . . .?”
“Is hollow! It’s a shell,” Della explained.
“Correct,” Nesrina agreed in her most charming teacher voice.
Kas’s eyes grew round. “My gods—” The complaints he’d be hearing from his people. “They’ll think they’re going mad!”
“Oh!” She released the illusion, and a pop was the sole sign it hadn’t been his imagination. Then, as if a god calligraphed the sky in magenta ink, the word “sorry” swooshed through the atmosphere above his home.
Kas laughed. “They’re going to think the gods have returned.”
The message warped and expanded: “Not a god. Just Nes.”
“What if they’re on the wrong side of the words?” Della asked.
A reversed line of text appeared below the first.
Grinning, a steady rumble of laughter flowing from his lungs, Kas turned to the spectacular Nesrina Kiappa.
She returned his gaze with one of her own, accompanied by the cutest damned smile he’d ever seen.