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He doesn’t pull his hand, doesn’t fight me, while the pounding in my head gets stronger. An inferno rages inside me. So much fire. Fury is becoming fire—horrifying, destructive fire. But I can also sense the air around me and the water in the river.
I step away from him and launch a barrage of ice pebbles.
He blocks them. Of course he does. I sense the air around him and make it push his body, but he blocks it again. Then I feel a gust of wind involving me as we both glide over the river. I throw an ice spear at him, but it breaks and falls in the water.
We land on another island, and he stands in front of me, his arms relaxed, as if he didn’t consider me a threat. I throw more ice pebbles at him, try to imprison him in an ice wall, then try to push him with air. He manages to block everything.
“So that’s the real you,” he says with an infuriating smirk. “I was wondering when you’d remove that mask of the well-behaved princess.”
I try to take the air from around him, remove his ability to speak, but instead, air is removed from my lungs. The asshole is fighting back.
Not only that, he’s chuckling. “What are you going to do about it? I stole your secrets, wife. Aren’t you angry?”
I focus on the river water, and throw a surge of sharp icicles in his direction, but he pushes them away before they reach him.
And the worst is that he goads me even more. “Come on, wife. Show me.”
Air. I focus on air. All the air around him, air inside him, and pull it towards me. Marlak falls to his knees, a hand to his throat, but he’s smiling.
“What’s so funny?” I roar, and as I do that, I lose touch of my magic.
Not my magic. His.
What have I done?
I’ve just shown him exactly what I am, exactly what a darksoul can do with blood magic. And for some reason, he thinks it’s hilarious.
“I want to see you,” he says. “The real you.”
I close my eyes. If I don’t calm down, I might kill him, and the idea horrifies me.
My knees feel as brittle as the ice I was throwing at him.
Marlak has seen the real me, and it’s not this furious creature gone berserk with anger.
The real me is the one who would never want to see him hurt, the one who’ll jump from an unreasonable height straight into danger to save him. I try to take a deep breath, but my chest is shaky and my vision blurry.
He’s in front of me now, all traces of mockery gone from his face.
“I’m truly sorry, Astra. I swear I didn’t mean to do that.”
I glance at the palm of his hand, terrified to find a wound, but, to my relief, there’s only a minuscule cut. I sigh. “Why did you provoke me?”
“Because you hide what you are. You hide your power. You hide your anger. Don’t you think it has a price?”
What I am. He knows what I am. The words sink in slowly, sink in and lodge into my stomach like a boulder. I’m shaking and it’s no longer anger. “What are you going to do?”
“Now that you’ve spent your fury and might hear me? Apologize.”
Blood rushes from my face, my legs wobble, and a new buzz fills my head.
He continues, “It’s fine to have magic, Astra. You’re no longer in Krastel. Nobody cares about it here.”
I’m not sure I understand what he’s saying, but at least I get my voice back. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“I know. It was wrong. I didn’t mean it. I just heard someone hurt you and wanted to know who it was. I just wanted the name, wife. And then I was in that memory and somehow couldn’t get out. Trust me, I didn’t want to see any of that.”
My greatest shame.
