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“This is the last one,” she says, digging in his arm again. “It’s a big one.”
Numair groans as she takes the shard out and drops it into a metal plate. I chew on my lip, guilt washing over me in waves. If there was anything I could do to make the situation better, to make Valdus forgive my reckless behavior, I would. Then, I realize I’m not just the carefree princess everyone might think.
“Can I try?” I ask before I can stop myself.
On the other end of the kitchen, Valdus lifts his gaze from his boots where he’s leaning on the counter and probably thinking of a way to get rid of me, but it’s for Numair’s answer that I wait.
“As long as it doesn’t kill me.”
“You have a pretty poor opinion of me,” I answer, taking a step closer.
“Not worse than the one you have of me, it seems.”
I wince, unable to ignore his cutting remark, and hide my reaction by tucking my hair behind my ear. I put my palm an inch higher than where the first gash starts and close my eyes. My cheeks gain color as the seconds pass and I still can’t feel anything.
It’s only when another minute passes that I see darkness swirl in my mind, seeping from the place where his cuts are.
I take a deep breath and force ethera to drip from my body and toward his wound. The darkness swallows it whole, but with each drop I offer it, the gash becomes smaller, until there is no sign of it left. Even after the light seals the last of the blackness, I take a moment before I open my eyes. An angry red mark is all that’s left under the drying blood on Numair’s arm.
I step away, rubbing my temples where a prickling pain has lodged. The silence in the room is so loud, I have to look up.
They all stare at me wide eyed, mouths open, and I know they’re horrified by what they’ve seen. A life binder. I’m nothing but a monster they’ve heard about in tales traveling through the desert.
I’ll never learn, will I?
My gaze searches for the closest door, for a way out and away before they decide to kill me, but I’m rooted in place when Valdus pulls away from the counter.
“Everyone out,” he simply says, and I know Evanae has twisted my path yet again.
21
Iwant to scream for Numair and Inara to stay, not to leave me alone, to help me face whatever is to come, but I can’t utter a single word. When the door to the old garden closes and cuts off my last path of escape, my heart is eager to burst out from my chest.
“You are a binder,” Valdus says.
I only manage a small nod.
“You are a life binder,” he repeats, slumping down into a chair.
An apology jumps to my lips, but I refuse to voice it. I’ve spent my life pleasing everyone, cowering under their orders. My mother. My father. Ajaia. But I won’t be ashamed of this. Not of the energy pulsing through my veins. If anyone in the desert thinks it’s wrong, to oblivion with them.
I square my shoulders and swallow the last apology lingering on my tongue. “I am.”
Valdus rubs his lower lip, still too shocked to say anything other than to state the obvious. He must be thinking about how to give me to the guards without revealing himself or the rebellion.
“If you no longer want me here, let me leave. You’ll never hear from me again.”
Valdus lets out a mirthless chuckle. “Somehow I doubt that.”
“Whatever you do, don’t turn me to the guards. Please.”
“Do you really think I would do that when I know what people from this desert do to binders?”
Valdus looks down at his palm, curling his fingers over thin air. Once, twice, and the realization smacks me so hard I gasp.
“Poetic don’t you think?” he says. “They thought I wouldn’t be able to bind metal, now I can’t live without it.”
I shiver at the thought that someone would cause him harm only because of a hint of binding. Yet everyone in the desert lives in fear, no longer being able to discern the truth from the tales my father feeds them. I’ve seen The Key to the Empire myself. Tortured and humiliated, the woman is nothing but another cog in the vast array of defenses the emperor has built around himself. I wonder how swiftly Magnar would turn Valdus into another slave of his regime if he discovered that this rebel could bind metal. The punishment waiting for me would be much worse if my father learned I could do the same thing he did. Before, I simply didn’t want to return to the palace. Now, I know I can’t ever go back. Even Bonar might no longer want anything to do with me if he uncovered my secret. My only hope of survival is to stay hidden amongst the renegades of Magnar’s regime, in hopes the emperor will never find me here.
