Chapter 9 #3
There was no warmth in the answer, but something about it made Alina stand up straighter.
She pictured the birch leaf from yesterday’s lesson, its trembling edge, the almost-smile on Tamsin’s face.
She pictured Kael’s hand over hers, the sensation of energy passing not through her, but between them.
She tried again.
A droplet formed on the tip of a pine needle. It trembled, then fell, striking the moss at her feet with a sound so small only Alina could hear it. She opened her eyes, and saw that Tamsin was watching, too.
“Better,” said Tamsin. If she tried, Alina could almost pretend she sounded approving. She gestured to a patch of lichen on a rock. “Next.”
Alina’s focus narrowed. The lichen was a pattern of green and white, stubbornly alive against the stone. She pictured herself not as the source, but as the channel. She tried to let the Gift pass through, not accumulate. She willed the lichen to change—no, to move, to reach, to become.
Nothing. For a full minute, nothing.
She tried again, and again, until her vision began to blur at the edges. Her hands shook so hard she had to clench them to her sides.
Tamsin’s voice cut in, a razor under the skin. “Stop.”
Alina stopped.
Tamsin approached, stopping so close that Alina could see the tiny scars along her knuckles, the faint green shimmer in her irises that marked her as deep-blooded Gifted. She reached out, not to strike or scold, but to touch the amulet that hung around Alina’s neck.
Tamsin’s hand hovered over it. “It’s hot,” she said, more observation than question.
Alina nodded. “I’ve felt it a few times now. It wasn’t like this before.”
Tamsin narrowed her eyes, then took the amulet in her fingers and lifted it from Alina’s chest. The chain pulled, and Alina’s breath caught. For a second, she thought Tamsin might tear it off, but instead the older woman only studied it, turning the pendant over and over.
“This is not an ordinary bauble,” Tamsin said. “Where did you get it?”
“My mother,” said Alina. “She said it was for protection.” She thought of the queen’s face as she’d fastened it around her neck, the way her hands had lingered, the way her eyes had shied from Alina’s.
Tamsin weighed the amulet in her hand, then released it. “It’s a limiter,” she said, almost to herself. “It damps your connection. Suppresses what’s already there.”
Alina felt like she’d been slapped in the face. “What? But why would she…?”
Tamsin shrugged. “Protection. Fear. The reasons don’t matter. The effect is the same.”
A silence stretched between them. In it, Alina heard the entire world: the drip of water, the distant call of a jay, the shuddering beat of her own heart.
Tamsin’s voice came low, but not unkind. “Take it off.”
Alina hesitated, then obeyed. She lifted the chain over her head. The air felt instantly sharper, every nerve alive and aching.
“Now,” said Tamsin. “Try again.”
Alina focused on the patch of lichen. She felt the usual tangle of nerves, the dread of failure. But beneath it, something new: a surge, a pressure, as if the world had suddenly remembered her and was impatient to say hello.
She reached for the Gift, and it reached back.
The air around her hands shimmered. For a heartbeat, nothing changed.
Then the shimmer grew, a luminous ripple that gathered in her palms and leapt forward, coalescing around her like a second skin.
The effect was silent, but visually spectacular—a field of light that trembled, then snapped into a perfect, translucent shield.
The shield glowed with a strange, opalescent sheen, colors shifting as the sun broke through the fog. The pattern of Alina’s hands was magnified in it—every line, every tremor, mapped in living color and projected onto the space before her.
She stared, awestruck, at the thing she had made.
Tamsin was silent for a long time. Then, in a voice that might have been pride, or relief, or perhaps even envy, she said: “Look at you,” and slowly shook her head.
Alina flexed her fingers. The shield bent, then held. It pulsed with her heartbeat, as if alive.
“What is it?” she whispered.
Tamsin answered, her eyes very wide and very dark. “A barrier. No one in the Caves has managed that in years. Not even Kael.”
Alina felt a surge of warmth, reveling in it for a second before it shattered, replaced with aching terror. The shield flickered, then popped, dissolving into a thousand pinpricks of light that rained down around her. She gasped, staggered, and nearly fell, but Tamsin caught her by the arm.
“Easy,” said Tamsin, voice now the gentlest it had been all morning. “It’s a drain, at first. Your body will learn to pace itself.”
Alina nodded, too breathless for words. She pressed a palm to her chest, feeling the echo of power running through her veins.
The world looked different now: sharper, clearer, more detailed. The trees seemed to lean in, the moss to vibrate with hidden meaning. Even the air tasted different—electric, sweet, alive.
Tamsin stepped back, giving Alina the space to recover. “You’ll do well,” she said, then added, with a hint of her old severity: “If you don’t burn out first.”
Alina laughed, a raw, choked-off sound. She bent to pick up the amulet from where it had fallen. For a second, she considered putting it back on, unused to missing the weight and safety of it, but instead she closed her fist around it and stood straighter.
“I won’t burn out,” she said.
Tamsin’s mouth turned up, just barely. “We’ll see.”
The mist had burned off over the course of their training. The first true sunlight of the day poured into the clearing, melting the frost, lighting every blade of grass, every bead of water, every new possibility.
Alina let the light wash over her, that tentative hope from yesterday raising its head again.
The shield was gone, but its afterimage still burned behind Alina’s eyes—stripes and whorls of impossible color, imprinted on the world like a memory refusing to fade.
She blinked, once, twice, and saw only blinding white.
When her vision came back, the forest seemed thinner, the sunlight too sharp, the whole world tilting gently under her boots.
Then her knees simply…stopped.
There was no warning, no dignified slow sink; just a traitorous jellifying, and the sensation of her body falling away from itself. For a wild, helpless heartbeat, she was sure she’d crash face-first into the moss, mud, and disappointment.
Instead, she collided with something much warmer.
Kael caught her, arms folding around her waist and shoulders with timing so perfect it felt like choreography.
His grip was neither desperate nor casual but a lifeline, as absolute and necessary as the breath in her lungs.
One of his hands splayed across her back, the other curled under her arm, he drew her in with a strength that was careful, measured, and completely unyielding.
Where had he come from? She hadn't noticed him approaching.
The proximity was electrifying. She felt the heat of his body before she registered the sound of his breath, steady and close against her ear.
His skin smelled like leather and pine, with an undertow of sweat and something metallic—blood, maybe, or the aftermath of old magic.
Alina’s pulse stuttered and then took off, a racing mess, her cheeks burning with embarrassment and something else.
For a moment, neither moved. The clearing vanished, the sun, the fog, even Tamsin. It was only the two of them, the space between their faces reduced to nothing, the air charged with a thousand unsaid things.
Kael’s eyes, when she managed to meet them, were molten—dark and gold, like a promise and a dare. His voice was a rough whisper. “You pushed too hard.”
She tried to laugh it off, but her breath hitched. “What else is new?”
He smiled—not a full smile, not from him, but the ghost of it at the corner of his mouth. His grip loosened just enough for her to find her own balance, though he did not let go.
“You should rest,” he said. His voice had none of the mocking edge he sometimes wielded; it was uncommonly gentle. Her heart, the traitor, made a happy little jump.
Their faces were so close that a strand of her hair had stuck to his jaw.
She reached to brush it away, and his hand found hers, steadying it.
His skin was rough, callused, but his touch was unexpectedly careful, as if afraid she might break.
She realized she was holding his gaze, and that she didn’t want to look away.
“Thank you,” she said, because anything else would have been dangerous.
He shook his head, barely a movement. “I’m only saving my investment.”
She huffed a laugh, not sure if it was one of hilarity or disappointment. The sound seemed to linger, caught between their bodies. His gaze dropped to her lips.
The spell broke not with words, but with the unmistakable sound of Tamsin clearing her throat behind them. The effect was as abrupt as a stone in a river; Alina jerked upright, nearly overbalancing herself again, but Kael kept her steady, seemingly unbothered.
Tamsin watched them with an unreadable expression. She’d moved to the far edge of the clearing, arms folded, but her eyes flicked from Kael’s face to Alina’s, then back again, as if recalibrating something in her private ledger.
“She needs rest,” Tamsin said, the words brisk but not harsh. “You can carry her if you must. Don’t let her faint before we get back.”
Kael’s lips twitched, and he gave Tamsin a dry look that spoke volumes. “I’ll manage.”
Alina was still trying to regain her composure, but it was difficult with Kael’s arm braced so firmly around her.
She wanted to protest that she was fine, but her vision was still fraying at the edges, and her knees were untrustworthy.
So, she let him help and did not complain when he steadied her as they started the walk back.