Chapter 18
Chapter
Istill had that night of the festival in my mind.
The way Aidenar had looked at me, the hunger in his eyes, the anger in him when he punched that man to the ground.
I did not know how much of it had been the wine in his veins, and how much had been truth, slipping into that moment like a forbidden thought.
A day had passed since the festival, and rumors of the nobles’ brawl had already spread through the palace.
Nothing new, apparently. My father, as the stories went, had himself been part of such revelries many times.
I walked beneath the palace arcades on my way to another lesson with Aidenar when I heard raised voices. I knew them both very well.
“Can you leave me in peace at last?” Aidenar’s voice cut through the silence, sharp with restraint. “Father is gone, so now you turn all of it on me.”
“Leave you in peace? Do you have any idea what’s at stake for us?
” Cassandra answered frostily. “I do everything in my power to extend our Regency, and you? You do not take this seriously at all! Our chances dwindle by the day. It is time to seal the alliance with the Salvadore Family. If you continue to delay, Velena may change her mind, and we shall stand alone. The palladium mines are not enough. We need influence at court and strong alliances. Best of all would be an heir.”
I went still. The word heir clanged inside my skull.
“An heir?” Aidenar laughed, though the sound was cold and hollow. “You can have all your plans but let me decide about my own life.”
“Ha! Deciding about your life, you?” Cassandra scoffed.
“Were it not for me and your father, you would have achieved nothing. And don’t think I don’t know what you are doing with the islander girl.
You think I don’t know she wields power.
Her family means nothing anymore. Fuck her if you need to but at least get the vote. ”
I wanted to hear no more. I withdrew into the corridors. I felt no anger though, only an emptiness. Cassandra had the gift of cutting deep with a single sentence. I stood in the old gallery and watched the rain upon the gardens. I loved those moments when the sky wept in my name.
So that’s what I was. A vote. Nothing more.
Aidenar entered nervously, but when he saw me, his expression softened slightly. My head was a mess. I couldn’t think but I didn’t want to show how distracted I was from what I’ve heard.
“I wished to try something different today,” I said. “You control the air, so you practically control energy everywhere. I want you to start creating small spheres of energy. Like I used to with water. Focus, control, enlarge, shrink. Let them become your weapon.”
He nodded, though he looked tired. I told him to gather the energy into a ball the size of an apple. But his irritation was preventing progress. Try after try, ending in failure and a burst of scattered air.
“Steady now. You nearly had it,” I said, urging him on.
The spheres swelled, at times to the girth of a pumpkin, then broke like soap-bubbles. With a sufficiently concentrated energy sphere, one could destroy walls and ravage ships.
“It won’t hold once it grows,” he snarled.
“Empty your mind. Think only of the sphere.”
Another sphere shattered with a crack.
“Try to concentrate. Focus,” I said, softer now.
Again. Another try. The sphere grew, began to tremble and hum, glimmering with a thin blue sheen, and again it failed.
“That is enough for today. You cannot settle your thoughts,” I said gently.
Sweat ran along his temple. I could see he was on the verge of collapse.
“I am never enough,” he rasped and the sphere he held struck the floor.
The last thing I felt was a great rush of air that hurled me against the wall.
Darkness swallowed everything.
I walked among the shadows.
Silence lay thick as smoke. Cold stone pressed beneath my bare feet. I wore a black, heavy gown that wrapped about me like a serpent. I heard that darkly smooth voice again.
“To them you shall never be of great worth,” he whispered. “They disdain you, they scorn you, yet you are a goddess. You command the water, the sea, the very flesh that carries their blood. They shall never appreciate you as I would.”
He stepped out of the gloom. The same man. Tall, black hair, his eyes dark as the night sea before a gale. His face was calm, but there was power in him that unsettled breath and bone.
“They are unworthy of you,” he murmured on. “He is unworthy of you.”
“I can set you free. I can show you what dwells within your reach.”
“An end to the Families and the Dominium. Only you and power without bound.”
He looked into my eyes, and I felt myself sinking into the night. But in my mind I heard another voice. My mother’s song. She had sung it when I was a child, a lullaby of the sea that never betrays those who belong to it.
Water began to seep into the chamber, a trickle at first, then quicker. In moments it swept across the marble, rising to our knees, to our waists. The man in black frowned.
“Do you think he would fight for you?” His voice turned wrathful, bitter as gall. “He wanted only your power. You are a toy to him, a diversion, a passing pleasure. Nothing more.”
The cold waves rose higher, until it reached my neck. The last I saw was his face, anger and disbelief upon it. Then he was gone. The water covered me entirely. I felt no fear. I drifted in the deep, light and unbound, as though I returned to the place that had always been mine.
I opened my eyes. I was laying in my own bed.
Sunlight cut the remnants of sleep like a blade.
I blinked and tried to lift my lids. Warm rays danced upon the linen and touched my face, but each breath was a stab.
My ribs burned at the smallest motion. I tried to rise, and a thin sound broke from my lips.
Then I saw him. Aidenar slept in the chair beside me. His white shirt was rumpled, his hair disordered, as if he had held himself upon the verge of sleep for many hours. The sun fell upon his face, brightening the gold in his hair and the clean line of his jaw. He looked like a young god.
“Aidenar… what happened?” I whispered.
His eyelids stirred. He woke up and started upright.
“You are awake.” His voice was hoarse, full of relief and feeling. “I am so sorry. I did not mean… I lost control.”
Before I could answer he caught my hand in his. His touch was warm, a little unsteady. I tried to gather the scattered shards of memory. His anger. His frustration. A blaze of light. The impact. Then nothing.
“What happened?” I asked softly, looking up at him through my lashes.
“It was me,” he said, and his voice broke.
“I couldn’t hold my power. I threw the sphere...
it exploded between us, throwing you against the wall.
” He fell silent, and in his eyes I saw something new.
Shame. True shame, raw and rending. But I knew that feeling.
I knew what hurting someone with your power meant.
“How long have I slept?”
He hesitated. “Three days.”
Three days. I looked at him more closely. I had never seen him so dimmed.
His voice grew faint. “I don’t know what to say. I might have killed you. I cannot control it.”
He still held my hand. I felt the tremor of his thumb as it brushed my skin. He looked into my eyes so intently that my heart stuttered in my breast. Before I could shape an answer, the door flew wide.
“Lady Nerissa!” Mirabel swept in with an armful of garments. “Thanks be to the gods.”
In her joy she began to buffet Aidenar with the clothes, heedless that she struck the Regent’s son. Then she flung herself at me and embraced me so hard that I cried out.
“My deepest pardon,” she squeaked, springing back.
Aidenar rose and straightened, and something flashed in his gaze, something between relief and sorrow.
“I shall fetch the medics to examine you now that you are awake.” He hesitated as if he would say more, then only turned toward the door. “I won’t interrupt you any longer.”
I watched him go. I slowly started remembering everything of that day.
Cassandra words, the vote. Then the flashbacks of my nightmare came. “You are a toy to him, a diversion, a passing pleasure. Nothing more.”
The next days passed in recovery. I did not see Aidenar. Mirabel said he was probably burdened with duties, but I knew he avoided me. Perhaps for fear that his power would break loose once more. But I was rather certain I was of no further use to him.
At the next Gathering meeting, Aidenar sat as always, silent beside his mother. He didn’t look at me even once. It was as though I did not exist. After the council, he disappeared quickly. Dricus was absent again, likely attending to his own affairs.
When everyone had dispersed, I sat alone on the stone bench of the Veymaris Family. So that was it. I felt as lonely as the day I had sailed into this city. I caught Velena watching me from the corner of my eye, her expression full of contempt and satisfaction.
I retreated to my chambers. I was ready to go home. I had had enough of this place, these people. This false brightness and hidden motives.
Mirabel burst into the room without knocking. She looked at me with concern.
“My Lady, is all well?”
“We only have to endure until the vote, and then we return home.”
Mirabel hesitated. “Do you miss him, my lady?”
“Whom?” I asked.
She said nothing, only looked at me as though the answer should have been obvious. But it wasn’t. Whatever I wanted, it did not matter. My path led only homeward. Nothing held me here.
I nodded toward the bag she carried.
“A gown,” Mirabel said. “For the farewell ball.”
“The farewell ball?”
“Yes, do you not remember? Lady Cavareth mentioned it at the end of the council. This will be the last ball of this Gathering.”
I had already stopped listening to her. The farewell ball. Another glittering hunt, where lords sought alliances and mothers cast their nets for brides.
“I had not planned to attend.”
Mirabel’s mouth curved into a sly smile. “You may not have intended it, my Lady, but we shall not leave such a gown to languish in a chest. If not for the ball, then I shall have you parade it through the training hall with Kael and Brenn.”
I laughed. That would be an interesting sight.
“Very well,” I said. “I will go to this ball for the sake of your gown alone.”
Mirabel smiled, warm and triumphant.
The dress was perfect. Dark green. Simple, yet bolder than anything I wore before.
A deep neckline that bared the shoulders, a slit that climbed to the high of the thigh.
The cloth fell with weight and softness together, answering every step.
I tried it on without a word. Years of drill and training lived in my body, in the strength of my arms, in my waist, in the straightness of my posture.
The gown was like a second skin. I left my hair unbound.
Let it fall along my shoulders and back, loose as the waves that heed me.
Most ladies wore as many gems as they could bear, to show the status of their Family and the power of their elements. They threaded palladium and stones into their braided hair.
I needed no jewels and no intricate dressings. After the accident the whispers had thickened. More and more people were starting to suspect something was different about me. I decided that there was no more hiding. No more pretending.
I wore no Elementar. No stone. No ring. Nothing that might serve as pretense or veil. I looked into the mirror and, for the first time in many months, I saw a woman who didn’t bow her head. A woman who knew her strength.