Chapter Twenty-One #3
He pauses to think, for once not ready with an answer.
“It’s a conduit of sorts. From what I’ve read about Queen Arianrhod, she used it for precision strikes in battle.
With each crack of the whip you should be able to send a paralyzing bolt of lightning at an enemy.
In theory, at least. You’ll have to trust your gut to guide you in putting said theory into practice. ”
That sounds less than ideal.
Soren senses my hesitation, reading me easily despite my firm mental shields. “What did it feel like the last time you used your lightning?”
“The only time, you mean.”
He sighs, his breath stirring the hair at my nape, sending a shiver down my spine. “What did it feel like?”
“Like my skin was about to explode. Like every nerve ending in my body was immolating. Like I was about to die and I did not truly care, because if I was dead I wouldn’t be in pain anymore.”
He is silent, mulling that over. Eventually, he lifts his hand out in front of us and, with a surge of maegic, calls forth a globe of water from the cove. As it comes closer, I see he’s captured one of the electric eels within it.
My eyes widen as it halts five paces from us, hovering in midair. “What are you doing?”
“Research.” I can hear the smile in his voice. “Look at it. Really look. What do you see?”
I study the vibrant yellow eel, its serpentine body undulating as it makes slow loops around its floating cage. It is horribly ugly, with a gaping mouth full of razor-sharp teeth, slitted nostrils, and dark beady eyes inset in its head.
“I see…a very unfortunate-looking neck scarf.”
He huffs out a chuckle. “Okay, then what do you feel?”
My lips are parted to deliver another snarky retort when, suddenly, the eel releases a high-voltage electrical charge.
The whole globule of water lights up like the sun, pulsing with power.
Free arm knifing around my midsection, Soren hauls me backward a few steps as the air turns static all around us.
“Skies!” I don’t know whether to laugh or screech as he sets me back on my feet. “I certainly felt that.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“Did it feel like your lightning? Or different?”
“Different but somehow similar. Like a lower chord of the same song…Softer, smoother.”
“Because it’s using the water as a conductor.
When you last used your lightning, it came out of you as it does a storm cloud, in violent arcs that spread across the sky.
Pure, untempered power.” He steers the eel away, depositing it back into the shallows where it disappears with a flip of its tail and another white-hot pulse.
“With a comparable conductor, you might be able to suppress the surge and send it straight down the whip in a concentrated charge. Just as we did on the Selkie, the first time you used your air currents.”
“Finesse,” I say wryly.
“Precisely.”
His maegic whispers through me, his mind settling over mine in a blanket the moment I drop my guards to admit him.
“I will be your conductor, skylark. Put me to use.”
I fight another shiver. “You make it sound simple.”
“It is simple. Your power is a natural extension of your will. Yours to manifest, yours to shape however you see fit.”
“And if I hurt you in the process?”
Even mentally, his smirk is audible. “I can take it.”
Gods, he could be cocky.
I grip the handle tightly as I close my eyes and search deep inside my maegical reserves.
The swirling hurricane within is somewhat subdued by Soren’s presence in my head, its maelstroms soothed into a quiet I only ever experience when we channel.
I let it wash through me, a balm to my soul, as I call forth the storm to the forefront of my mind.
And I see it.
Feel it.
There, deep in the darkness.
A flicker.
A flash.
My power.
My lightning.
“Step back.”
He does not question my order, complying instantly. I am momentarily afraid the distance will sever our mental connection, but our bond has strengthened significantly from those early days. We are just as tethered at ten paces as we are when pressed tight together.
I open my eyes as all the fine, feathery hair on my body lifts to stand on end.
The charge gathers beneath my skin, volts skating down my limbs, pulses pricking at my nerves.
I swing my arm at my side, shaking off some of the tension that tightens my muscles.
Preparing myself as much as I can for what is to come.
My body tingles from the roots of my hair to the tips of my toes as the buzz grows to a voltage I struggle to contain.
Now or never.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I swing my arm up high over my head, then snap it back down.
The whip lashes out with a violent crack and, as it does, I watch a bolt of lightning ripple down my arm, then race outward along its taut gold length.
The result is a singular arc of brilliant light that shoots like an arrow straight over the cove into open sky.
It dissipates in a blink, the light almost faster than the eye’s ability to track it.
The initial crack of the whip has faded long before the boom of thunder resounds back to us, vibrating from the clouds down onto the sea, strong enough to make the sands tremble beneath my boots.
Gods, that feels good.
The sensation is incredible. Never before have I experienced such a surge of power—not the morning I fought the arachnida nor the afternoon of the Frostlander battle when the dizzying rush of the water cannon swept away my morality.
Not even the night of Fyremas, when my lightning turned the tide of battle against the ice giants.
My own self-satisfaction is underscored tenfold by an immense flood of feeling down the bond.
Soren.
He is proud of me.
More than merely proud, he is…
Awed.
By me.
I turn to him as the lightning cools from my skin, feeling like I might explode into a million pieces.
My hair floats all around my face, platinum wisps awhirl.
I am pure electricity, a hum of static in the shape of a woman.
I do not know how to tamp it down, nor how to release it.
My emotions fray, all inhibitions zapped to aether.
I expect him to be ten paces away, but he’s right there, a whisper from me, so close our chests graze.
Our eyes lock instantly. His are pure sapphire.
I’m sure mine are a wild storm. I have no idea what my expression looks like in this moment, but his…
His radiates so much intensity, I can hardly take it in.
Seeing it amplifies the currents of electricity running rampant through my bloodstream, pitches up the sibilation inside me to new heights.
Skies, I could drown in that look and die happy.
The deluge coming out of him makes it difficult to breathe as we stare at each other.
One, two, three endless seconds. The whip hits the sand at my feet.
I do not bend to pick it up. I cannot look away from him, not for anything.
Not even for a priceless relic. And he knows it.
For my own emotions are laid utterly bare, exposed by the bond as we continue to channel.
There is no hiding from him. Not now. He can feel everything inside my heart, each desperate pound, each aching beat that seems to sing his name over and over, a constant refrain I can no longer deny.
One that, if I am honest, has been playing there for a while now, at first the faintest stirring, now a tune I would know in darkness, in distance, in death.
Soren, Soren, Soren.
The tingles of electricity that still race up and down my limbs are gathering at the tips of my fingers, urging me to reach out.
To reach for him. To close that infinitesimal gap that separates us before another moment passes.
To remove that impossible distance dividing his body from mine and finally—
We both feel it at once.
A ripple through the bond, strong enough to shatter the moment.
Heat.
Fire.
Burning leaves on an autumn wind.
I reel back as though I’ve been struck.
“Fuck,” Soren growls, pure frustration.
Fuck, indeed.
Our maegics disconnect as I slam my mental guards back up.
I take several hasty paces away, unable to look at him.
Unable to look inside myself, for fear of what I will see there.
Instead, I stare down at the sand, attempting to slow my racing heart.
Attempting to come to terms with the new duality inside me, where two warring tethers are wrapped around my rib cage, slowly pulling me apart.
One, a soothing tendril of deepest ocean.
The other, a burning furl of smoke and flame.
I have not felt the second for three long weeks, but there is no denying what its abrupt strengthening means, even before my eyes shift out to the bay where a ship with russet-brown sails embroidered with a familiar sigil—the flaming mountain—cuts smoothly toward the sea gate.
My bond to the Remnant of Fire simmers with an awareness I have not experienced since I left Blister Bight.
I press a hand to my heart, wishing I might suppress its ache.
Pendefyre is in Hylios.