12
Imet Isaac in a field not far from Dragon’s Hollow where our new safe house was located. It was on the outskirts of the city, a narrow meadow with vibrant green grass wedged between the farthest reaches of the city and the dense forest beyond.
I had been too scared to touch my magic since leaving the Stormvault, and I hoped when I finally did, it felt as easy as it once had. I was excited to be training with another Stormshade, someone who could provide unique insight into my specific type of magic.
A part of me had been avoiding my magic because it reminded me of Nik, and those thoughts quickly dissolved into visions of him pressed against me in the tiny closet of the stone cottage in Siraleth. His leg between mine, tangled in the sheets at Eight Bells.
I wasn’t ready to face any of those complicated emotions.
Despite my reservations about Nik, the dagger he had gifted me, Stormslayer, was strapped to my thigh as I walked across the field to meet Isaac.
“A beautiful day to create a storm, don’t you think?” he asked with a grin.
“I’m not sure creating a storm at all is wise in Istmere, but I trust you,” I replied, stopping in front of him and crossing my arms.
“I am much older and much wiser than you, young Stormshade. This glen is glamoured well enough that not a soul will be able to sense the storm magic we use here today.” Isaac laughed as his eyes fell on the dagger at my thigh. “Are you planning to need that?” he asked with a raised brow.
“No, but you can never be too careful,” I replied, setting my jaw. “I’ve already been kidnapped once…remember?”
“How could I ever forget. Our true queen…kidnapped before I even knew she had come to Istmere. Nikolai should have taken you to the resistance right away.”
Little did he know, Nik had other plans. The resistance didn’t know about his involvement with Donika or my kidnapping, and we decided it was best not to tell them. I hadn’t entirely made up my mind to cast him out of my life forever, and I didn’t know what the punishment would be for such a crime. It wasn’t only me he betrayed, he broke his word to the council of the resistance, too.
I imagined the punishment was death.
“Well, I am here now, and I have lots of catching up to do,” I said, relaxing my arms at my side and cracking my neck.
“Indeed, you do. What have you learned thus far?” he asked.
“Basic magic. How to move things from one place to another, how to generate an element in the palm of your hand. How to create a rainstorm and a tornado, though I haven’t had much practice siphoning power from them yet.”
“Very good.” He nodded. “That is a good foundation. Let’s begin with a simple storm spell. I’d like you to bring forth a storm cloud with rain, but don’t let the droplets of water touch us.”
“I can do that?”
That sounded awfully precise, and none of the magic I had done thus far had been particularly controlled. I decided not to tell him I had burned my mother’s carpet the first time I had called on air and fire. And that I hadn’t even reached out to my magic source since being captured by Donika.
“It’s quite easy. You’ll bring the storm forth as you always have, but you want to use the air to create a protective bubble around us. It uses multiple elements at once.”
I nodded, raising my palms towards the sky. I had used both elements before, but never at the same time. With a deep inhale, I dove into my source, searching for that ember of magic deep within my core.
To my surprise, I found it easily, as if I had never spent any time away from it at all. My fears that Donika had spellbound me or stolen my magic were quenched as I reached into my magic, bringing it forth and out of my fingertips.
The sky above us darkened, the sun only peeking out behind the black rain cloud that quickly formed overhead. The storm cloud quickly eclipsed it, the sun winking out of sight. A soft roll of thunder sounded overhead, and I glanced at Isaac, a question in my eyes.
“Only you and I can hear the storm,” he confirmed with a solemn nod.
My magic surged forth easily, and I closed my eyes to focus. I imagined the rain coming down and felt a cool drop against my cheek as I raised my face to the sky. The rain fell faster as I tried to pull up my air shield, but it was more difficult than I had first imagined. One magic working against the other. The storm came more naturally to me. The air was harder to pull into place.
“Imagine the shield around us, and we are safely within it. Nothing from the outside can touch us,” Isaac encouraged.
“I’m trying.”
I bit my lip as I focused harder, letting the storm go and focusing my magic on the air shield. I sensed it the moment it fell into place, the soft pellets of rain bouncing off the invisible shield with a patter. I opened my eyes, no longer feeling the rain falling against my skin. My gaze traveled to Isaac, an approving expression in his eyes.
“Very good. Now next time, maybe you secure the air shield first, then the storm.” He laughed, shaking out his grey hair. The rain had darkened the blue shirt he was wearing.
“Sorry about that,” I replied sheepishly, my own hair plastered against my scalp, the rain droplets rolling off my leather jacket, “That was more challenging than what I’ve done before.”
“The key is to let the storm go. It has its own energy now. You don’t have to hold the storm and the air. It can be difficult to juggle multiple elements simultaneously.” He took a step closer to me, the air shields still in place. “Now for the hard part.”
“That wasn’t the hard part?” I asked with a huff.
“Unfortunately not. Now you have to hold the air shields in place while you reach back out to the storm to re-absorb it.”
“I can’t let the shields down first?” I teased with a laugh.
Isaac shook his head. “Not only would that soak us with rain even further during this demonstration, but what if it wasn’t rain? What if it was arrows pelting against your shield? Or a sword? You’d be dead where you stand before you could even call out to the storm overhead.”
“Good point,” I acquiesced.
I focused my mind on keeping the air shields in place while also reaching out to the storm, which continued to rain down overhead. I could feel the magic weighing on me, as if it were a muscle I hadn’t quite built up yet. It would get easier the more I used it, but I would be sore tomorrow.
I tried to reach the storm, but failed, the air shield slipping slightly as a few rain pellets fought their way through. Isaac crossed his arms over his chest as he watched me, nodding in encouragement. The air shield around us was a physical weight as I pulled more magic from my core through my fingertips towards the sky above us.
The storm responded this time, sputtering and releasing a grumble of thunder, but surging forwards again. It was raining harder this time.
I released a groan of frustration as I tried again, closing my eyes and turning my face towards the sky. I pulled even more magic through my fingertips, all while concentrating on the air shield around us.
The storm responded again, letting a bolt of lightning loose in the forest at our backs.
I startled, my eyes snapping to Isaac’s.
“You have to remember, the storm isn’t yours anymore since you let it go. You can’t treat it as if it’s a part of you, because it isn’t. You must treat it as if it is a force all its own, but you are stronger. You need to find its source of magic now.”
I nodded, rubbing my hands together, then spreading them wide again towards the sky.
I could do this.
I was a Stormshade, and a powerful one at that. I wouldn’t be bested by a little rainstorm that I had created in the first place.
I pulled more magic first, but this time the intention wasn’t to call the storm back, it was to capture it. I could feel my magic swirl around the storm, the clouds booming together in another clap of thunder. But this time, the storm relented. I could sense the magic source of the storm pulling through my hands and back into my core, an entirely new ember of magic to pull from.
I squinted towards the sun as it appeared once more behind the dark clouds. The clouds overhead turned from a dark, angry grey to a wispy white, then disappeared entirely.
“Very good.” Isaac nodded, moving to my side.
A sheen of sweat appeared across my brow from the effort it had taken to maintain the shield and capture the storm all in the same breath. “That magic is much harder than what you have practiced so far. I am impressed.”
“I had a good teacher.”
The thought skittered across my mind and out of my mouth before I could take it back, and I hated myself for it. I dug my nails into the palm of my hand as I tried to banish all thoughts of Nik from my mind.
Isaac gave me a sympathetic smile as he squeezed my shoulder. “That was a big spell. I think that’s enough for today. I want you to think about using your magic as a weapon and a shield. I know you haven’t had to use it this way before, but that’s the way we need to train.”
“I understand,” I replied, swallowing hard.
Long gone were the days of opening lockers and lifting feathers into the air for fun. I would train my magic with one goal in mind: to end Donika’s reign, once and for all.
I shook my arms out, feeling as if I had finished a weight training session at the gym.
Isaac laughed. “You will be sore tomorrow, wielding magic such as this can often times be an incredibly physical activity. It takes its toll.”
“Just in time for sword training with Warrick tomorrow,” I replied sarcastically.
We started the walk back towards Dragon’s Hollow. Isaac was determined not to let me out of his sight until I was safely back inside the safe house. He had left the glamour up so that we could sword train in the same meadow tomorrow. It was close to our side of the city, and far enough away from Akra that we didn’t need to worry about our storm magic calling any unwanted attention.
Tess had mentioned training her magic with Puck, so I wasn’t surprised when I found the little townhouse empty. Candles softly flickered in the windows as night descended over Prins. I used one of the candles to light a lantern as I made my way up to my room.
I used the time alone to take a long, hot soak in the claw-foot bathtub. The washroom was small, but well appointed. It had decadent smelling salts and soaps, along with soft, plush towels. I washed the day away slowly, luxuriating in the lavender scents and the hot water loosening my sore muscles. I hoped I might be able to find a jug of wine on the first floor, but I wasn’t sure if the townhome would be that well stocked.
I could go for a pint of Dragon’s Ale right about now, but doubted we would be able to show our faces at Eight Bells any time soon. Fletcher’s brother, Kane, had seen us there before Donika had captured me. That might be the first place they searched for us, and I undeniably wasn’t strong enough to take on Fletcher or his brother yet.
I toweled off and reached for the robe hanging on the back of the door, but thought better of it. Robes altogether now reminded me of the night I had spent with Nik. I shrugged into a too-big pair of sweatpants and a long-sleeve shirt Isaac had been nice enough to leave us. I would need to get some of my own clothes if I was going to be staying in Istmere.
I opened the door and padded down the stairs to the kitchen. I rummaged for some food that didn’t require any cooking, or that jug of wine I had my heart set on. When I stood, I caught a reflection in the window before me and startled, one hand grabbing my chest, the other grabbing the edge of the counter before me.
“You scared me. I thought I was alone.” My voice broke the silence, but not the tension.
“Not my intention, I apologize.” Nik leaned against the kitchen peninsula, a lock of blond hair falling across his forehead.
“You’re awfully quiet…” I turned towards him fully, gripping the counter behind me.
“Shadow magic, remember?” He smirked as a shadow curled around his raised hand, slinking down his arm before disappearing under the sleeve of his shirt.
I thought that seeing the shadows would bring on the same terror I had experienced when Donika had tortured me, when she had killed all those innocent people. Instead, I felt a warmth bloom in my chest that I couldn’t explain.
Maybe not all shadow magic was inherently dark.
“Is there any wine in this Godforsaken place?” I asked, glancing around the kitchen and trying not to meet his gaze.
“Diana Barnes…I am shocked.” He raised an eyebrow at me, a smile in his eyes. “Is that what you were down here rummaging for?”
“I’m not Diana Barnes. Not anymore…” I trailed off, avoiding his gaze.
“Well then, Ms. Kotova, let me make a deal with you. I will procure the wine you seek…if you’ll eat dinner with me.”
I hesitated, gripping the counter behind me tightly enough that my knuckles turned white. It was only dinner…what was the harm in that, right?
As if reading my thoughts, Nik cleared his throat before he spoke.
“It’s just dinner—I’m not asking you to marry me. Have dinner with me, wine included. You can’t very well drink on an empty stomach,” he pointed out.
I met his gaze, and there was a challenge in his eyes.
I could do dinner. It was just dinner. Besides, he was right. I hadn’t eaten…and Isaac’s training session had left me famished.
I bit my lip. I never said no to a challenge.
“Deal.”
He stood, coming around the counter to search through the cabinet under the sink. He glanced up at me, his arms resting on his knees as he knelt, and I hadn’t realized how close we were until his gaze locked with mine.
“Do you know how to start a fire?” he asked, eyes locked on mine.
“Do you?” I asked, internally cursing myself for how petty I sounded.
“You know I do.” His eyes smoldered, and I glanced away quickly, regretting opening my mouth in the first place.
“Of course I do,” I replied, moving towards the fireplace in the living room.
“Not with magic,” he called over his shoulder. I could hear bottles clinking together as he moved them around. “This place is only warded for location spells, not storm magic. If you use any storm magic outside the meadow, they might be able to track you.”
“Then no, I don’t know how to start a fire.” I crossed my arms over my chest and pouted, despite my back facing towards him.
He laughed softly, and I could feel the sound crawling over my skin, leaving sparks in its wake. I hated that he still had that effect on me. That I knew exactly where he was, even without turning around. He placed a glass jug on the counter and came around me, kneeling before the grate to start the fire with his own magic.
“I can cook,” I offered, the flames quickly licking against the wood in the fireplace.
The fire cast the room in a warm orange glow, and the heat was pleasant against my tingling skin.
“I know you can, but I want to cook for you,” he replied, rising to his feet.
He was so close I could see the reflection of the flames flickering in his eyes, and despite my body telling me the exact opposite, I took a step back.
“You know how to cook?” I asked. It was my turn to raise an eyebrow.
“Don’t act so shocked.” He laughed as he moved back to the kitchen. He pulled out two glass goblets and filled them with a rich, dark wine. “My mom taught me a thing or two.”
“Tell me about her,” I blurted out, before I could think better of it.
I shouldn’t want to know anything about him, but he was still a mystery to me. He took a deep gulp of wine and found a wooden cutting board, bringing it over to the peninsula. I sat on one of the stools as he started to chop up various vegetables, sipping on my wine as I studied him.
“What do you want to know?” he asked, slicing with expert precision, not glancing up to meet my gaze.
“Where is she?” I asked. He had said his home life had been complicated…but I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant.
“Dead.”
He glanced up, watching my expression from under his eyelashes.
“I’m sorry.” My voice was soft, the only other sound filling the silence the flames sparking in the fireplace.
I shook my head, my eyes falling back to my wine. I shouldn’t have asked. Nobody should have to deal with the loss of a parent…that was a loss I knew all too deeply. I had lost both of my birth parents, but I had never met them. They hadn’t raised me. The loss of Nik’s mother was entirely different.
“It was a long time ago,” he replied, his voice thick with emotion. “We were close, once. I was the only child, so I always had my parents' doting affections. She and my father…” he trailed off, choosing his next words carefully. “They didn’t see eye to eye on how to raise me. My father wanted to move to Akra, to put me in the queen’s army. It would gain status for our family, and it would gain me visibility before Donika. My mother never wanted that for me.” He took a deep gulp of wine as he shook his head back and forth.
“What happened to her?” I asked softly, fearing the answer.
The look in Nik’s eyes told me his family troubles were far more complicated than I had ever imagined.
“He will never admit it, but I think my father…dealt with her.”
He spoke with such disdain, it was clear his relationship with his father was not a good one.
“My father has never been there for me, not once. He was a constant let down as a parent. Always pushing me to harden myself, never show my emotions, to train to be the best soldier. When I needed him the most…he was gone.”
“Nik…” my voice trailed off, my grip on the stem of my wine goblet tight enough that I thought I might crack the glass.
The urge to go to him was so strong I almost pushed back my chair and came around the counter. The only thing stopping me was the image of Donika flashing before my eyes. I couldn’t forget how we had gotten here, the part he had played in all of this.
“It was my father who pushed me to court Donika in the first place. I just wanted to make him proud. I wanted his acceptance, just once.”
He met my gaze and shook his head at the sympathy he saw there.
“Like I said, all this shit with my father…it was a long time ago.” He took another sip of wine before he delicately took up the knife and resumed cutting.
“That doesn’t make it any less difficult to deal with,” I told him.
I didn’t want to feel a lick of sympathy for him, but I couldn’t help it. All I wanted to feel was anger…but in this moment that had melted away, leaving something fragile and raw in its place.
“Maybe…but being upset for even one instant goes against everything he tried to ingrain in me. He left me to those wolves and never looked back. I don’t even know where he is, and if he’s alive or dead. But I’ve found I don’t even care anymore.”
He lifted his face to the ceiling, biting back the emotions that threatened to escape. I had never seen him this unfiltered, this exposed.
“It’s ok to feel vulnerable. To feel emotion. You aren’t just a mindless soldier,” I told him.
Every voice in my head was telling me to reach across the peninsula and grab his hand, but my own hand remained curled around the wine goblet. My emotions were swirling inside of me, a tornado of battling wills. Sadness. Anger. Desperation. Vengeance. I couldn’t separate them from one another, and they were so opposite I felt as if I was being ripped apart from the inside out.
“I know you won’t like to hear this…” he started, meeting my gaze.
“Then don’t say it,” I bit out, afraid of what he might confess.
I was afraid of how it might change the way I felt about him. That it would soften me towards him. I couldn’t let that happen…not again. I wouldn’t punish him in this vulnerable moment, but I wouldn’t open myself up to him, either.
“You brought that side out of me. I never felt more vulnerable…or emotional than when I met you. I wanted to protect you, and when I couldn’t…the utter heartbreak and helplessness threatened to consume me. I’ve never felt like that before.”
He held my gaze and I couldn’t turn away, despite knowing that I should. I wasn’t sure how to respond, and thankfully, he broke the silence with a humorless laugh.
“I know you don’t want to hear it, but the consequences of my own actions have been unbearable.”
He turned to the stove where he added the chopped vegetables to a pot filled with water, his back to me.
The silence was deafening.
Did I believe him? That it had all been real for him? He had said as much in the Stormvault…but after that confession I hadn’t seen him for months. The Stormslayer dagger was proof he was, in fact, thinking of me. But I still didn’t trust him. I couldn’t. He had taken my heart and utterly obliterated it. That kind of broken trust couldn’t be repaired so easily, if at all.
He gave the pot a stir before turning back to me, a sadness in his eyes. Maybe he knew there was no going back to the way things were before between us. That we would never be those people again, and everything that had transpired between us was…unfixable.
What we had was broken, and we couldn’t put it back together.
I took a deep gulp of wine and finished the glass. Nik let out a soft laugh as he grabbed the jug to refill my goblet.
“Nothing like a little light dinner conversation.”
“Tell me about it,” I replied, running a hand down my face.
“At least I knew my parents,” Nik said as he refilled his own glass. “I feel lucky, to have at least had that.”
“I’m not sure that’s any better.” I laughed quietly, shaking my head. “I didn’t know my parents, but at least that meant they didn’t have the opportunity to disappoint me so thoroughly.”
“True,” Nik conceded with a grin. “We both have some pretty messed up family issues, then.”
“I’ll toast to that.”
Nik filled wooden bowls with the warm vegetable stew, and we sat at the peninsula eating and drinking. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to laugh or cry, the sentiments swirling together inside of me to create an undecipherable cyclone.
“I have to admit…this is good,” I told him around a mouthful.
“I told you, I can cook,” he replied, turning to me with a smirk.
“Is there anything you can’t do?” I asked in challenge.
He pretended to ponder it for a moment before responding. “No, I am distinctly good at absolutely everything.”
I gave him a playful shove and his foot slipped off the rung of the stool, almost causing him to fall off. “You are so conceited, Kolya.”
If I didn’t lighten the mood and change the subject, my emotions threatened to pull me under and suffocate me. I didn’t know how to be here…with him. I felt exposed to him in a way that I hated, and that was the very last thing I wanted. I didn’t want him to know how I felt at all. He needed to stay at arm’s length…or further.
I couldn’t be close to him. I couldn’t let him in again.
I could feel my anger transforming into something…different. Something murkier and enigmatic. I couldn’t quite determine how I was feeling, and that might have been the scariest part of all.
It was easier to stay angry with him, to let that fire fill me up and consume me.
“Hey now firecracker, I’ll let you know if I ever find something I’m not good at. But so far, I haven’t come up with anything. That doesn’t make me conceited.” He laughed hard enough that the corners of his eyes crinkled.
I realized that it was the first time I had seen him truly smile since everything that had happened. Despite still being angry with him, despite not trusting him, despite the emotions spiraling out of control inside of me, I couldn’t help but smile back.