Chapter 32
“I thought you were going to train me.” Elysia grumbled as she studied the organizational flowchart of the different types of reapers and their roles within the volt.
Grim gave her an unamused look. “You’re going to need to know these things.”
He was right, but it had been a month of this, meeting with Grim and being restricted to physical training and flowcharts.
She had thought they were going to be working on mastering her magic, and instead, she was learning about how reapers could shoot acid to incapacitate anyone who stood in the way of their duties.
Maya had said she wanted an apprentice and then continually disappeared whenever she was needed.
Which meant Elysia’s magical training had come to an abrupt and unfortunate halt given that neither Grim nor Aidan knew how to train someone with magic like hers.
The extent of Aidan’s knowledge had been what he taught her, and he had no idea how to proceed from there.
She eyed Grim and fought back a grimace. Death by unnatural stomach acid was not on her to-do list. Pushing away the paper, she raised her eyebrows hopefully. “Or you could show me your wings. That could be educational.” She hadn’t even known the reapers had wings.
Grim ran a hand over his short dark hair before shaking his head and tapping a finger on the paper. “Memorize this and I’ll consider it.”
An hour later they had moved onto the rules of reaping, and her innate curiosity had taken over.
She’d scribbled page after page of notes, constantly interrupting Grim to ask questions and understand the function and limitations of his reapers.
They were neck-deep in a discussion on which mortals were considered theirs to reap when Grim’s office door flung open with a bang.
Maya stood in the doorway wearing a tiered lilac dress that floated around her body and made her gray eyes and freckles pop.
She flounced into the room, the woven basket on her arm swinging.
“Sorry I’m late, I knew this was going to be boring.
” She glanced around. “Gods, are you ever going to decorate in here?”
Elysia clamped her mouth shut. His office was extremely plain. It was like he had sucked out all the charm found in the rest of the house and then hung up two plaques for his reaping accomplishments as if that fixed things.
Grim’s over-muscled shoulders hiked up as he scowled. “Foundational knowledge comes before practice.” His fitted shirt bunched against his enormous biceps as he folded his arms.
Maya leaned against the wall and crossed her ankles delicately and smiled. “Well, it’s my turn now. Come along, then.” She nodded at Elysia and pushed off the wall expectantly.
“We aren’t done yet. I haven’t even taken her on a reaping,” Grim growled.
Elysia perked up. “You were going to take me on a reaping?” She really wanted to see a reaping in action.
“Liar. You wouldn’t have taken her on a reaping for weeks. I know how many lectures you have stored away in that terrifyingly dull brain of yours.”
Grim heated. “You didn’t get to go on a reaping because you were the worst student I’ve ever had.”
Maya lifted one shoulder lightly. “I’ve met your reapers, so I find that hard to believe.” She glanced at Elysia. “Dumber than rocks, some of them. Very strong, though. Great at lifting things and putting them down.”
Elysia’s hand went over her mouth as she pointedly looked away from Grim. Once she’d collected herself, she reached across the desk to touch Grim’s arm. “Tomorrow, same time? I appreciate you teaching me. I learned a lot today, and I’d really like to go on a reaping.”
Embarrassed, he flushed, clearing his throat and tidying the papers strewn across the desk. “Glad you found it helpful.”
Maya made for the door. “He’ll live on that compliment for weeks. Let’s go already.”
Grim pushed away from his desk, his chest puffing. “I’m monitoring.”
Maya halted and slowly spun back around, a strange white light cracking through her eyes. Elysia barely held back her flinch, her gaze darting to Grim, who was now pressing his hands against the top of the desk and leaning over it as if daring her to cross him.
Her eyes flashed back to their usual gray, and Maya gave a tight smile. “I thought we’d moved past this.”
His thick jaw tightened, but he didn’t answer, and Maya’s mouth thinned in response. “You want to waste your day watching me teach her what she should have been taught since infancy? Fine by me.”
She stormed out of the office, her boots striking heavily as she disappeared down the hall.
Elysia raised a brow as she looked at Grim, waiting for him to explain, but as a man of few words he remained true to form, simply rolling his shoulders and staring after Maya like he wished there could be more eliminating and less monitoring.
“You don’t trust her,” Elysia stated, trying to leave an opening for him to expand on.
His dark brown eyes cut to hers. “You shouldn’t either. Aidan has his reasons for allowing her to be here, but I don’t share them.”
Elysia entered a room in the estate she’d never seen before. With buttercream yellow walls, lace curtains on the windows, and floral upholstered furniture, it looked like a grandmother’s dream.
Maya spun in a circle, her dress flitting out around her. “The boys have their offices, and I have this.”
Elysia took a seat on a cracked warm brown wooden stool. “And what is this?”
Grim stationed himself near the door like some kind of silent, disapproving sentry. “It’s where she tests her shit and her other unnatural practices.”
Maya nodded and set her woven basket on a table. “I needed a magically reinforced space that could handle my inventions and unnatural practices, as Grim called them.”
Elysia looked between them warily. “Which would be?”
Maya busied herself grabbing objects out of the basket.
She placed an hourglass, gold-faded iron scissors, and what looked like one of Aidan’s ledgers on the table.
“We’ll work with those later. First, you need to understand what you’ve even been doing all these years because, my gods, do you have it all wrong. ”
Elysia moved from the stool to the purple and gray rug, coming to a cross-legged position. She wound a strand of hair around her finger, thinking hard.
“How could my magic be anything other than finding secrets? Even here or somewhere like Bellia with full access, that’s what happens.
” She gestured emphatically as she continued to process aloud.
“I call on my magic, it homes in on what I’m seeking and yanks me around until I find it, or I can sort through the visual and emotional cues that flood in from whoever. ”
Maya gave Elysia her full attention. “You’re not finding secrets. You’re looking for power sources.”
Elysia shook her head ,already disagreeing, but Maya cut her off.
“As you’ve already learned from working with Aidan, there are different types of power you can transmute.
When you were in Kava and magic was almost non-existent, you were most drawn to the few people who had magic you could have stolen to use for your own if you’d had the capacity. ”
“What about all the mundane secrets and information I collected in Kava? Or how I can purposely seek information now?”
Maya paused, giving her a soft crooked smile.
“Our magic is in relationship with us. You’re hypervigilant to emotions, mood, information because you needed to be, so your magic learned to use this as well.
Growing up where you did, your magic would overtake you, latching on and dragging you around because you were finally giving yourself what you needed.
I imagine the sensation of being controlled has lessened now, but you still trained yourself to be able to find weaker sources such as emotion or information, which is excellent.
We can simply improve that skill instead of starting from scratch. ”
Elysia was dumbfounded. “But I never made or did anything once I found a source.”
Maya shrugged. “It was Kava, and you had no idea to even try. You removed a stranger’s pain, didn’t you?
I realize the realm did the transmutation once you dropped the solidified raw magic into the river, but you managed that with Aidan’s awful teaching.
It likely won’t be that simple learning how to do something with the power you take, but if you’d grown up somewhere normal, someone would have explained all of this to you when you were a child and over years you would have mastered it.
Some of magic is innate, some is always training and practice. ”
Elysia looked over at Grim. “Is this true?” Her mind was spinning, bouncing back through the years, wondering at every time she’d thought she’d been racing after secrets.
Grim sat on the floor with one knee bent and one leg out in front of him and nodded like this was obvious.
“People used to call anyone with this power rippers. Usually, people have their proclivities and tend to rip from specific sources and transmute similarly. You developed an affinity for mental and emotional information, but given how drawn you were to plants in Kava, there’s a strong chance nature may be a good source for you.
Ripping other people’s magic and power may prove difficult, but it’s worth attempting for battle purposes. ”
Her eyes went wide as a very specific memory returned to her at his use of the word ripper.
Her voice lowered. “Last time I was in the mortal realm, I—I used a man’s power.
When that man broke my ankle and was going to keep breaking my bones, and I don’t even know what happened, but I took it and—” She paled, her stomach souring at what she’d done. “I broke all of his bones.”