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His eyes flashed with anger. “Because she should have lived and Alaric killed her. Because if anyone can kill him, it’s you.”
She sat back so abruptly, Kialla stopped walking. “I am not here to seek vengeance for your lost would-be sister.” She had her own vengeance to see to, and she still hadn’t the faintest idea how to accomplish that. If Alaric was stronger than the monster she’d left behind... “I am not here to kill him for you.”
“I think you’ll find, once enough time passes, that he’ll leave you little choice but to try. Whether you succeed…” He shrugged. “Well, either you will, or you’ll be dead and I won’t have to look at you and think of her anymore.”
They finished the ride in silence after that, and Clare couldn’t stop the niggling doubt now worrying at the back of her mind. The doubt that maybe, just maybe, the Arrendons didn’t want to protect her. That maybe she was nothing more than a weapon, in need of care and honing before it was pointed at a previously unkillable target.
Except…Verol would hide her away for all eternity if he could. And though she was less sure of Marquin’s altruism where she was concerned, he hadn’t prevented her from leaving them when they’d first arrived in Veralna, when he’d known all along what she was. They were doing everything wrong, if they wanted to use her.
And yet the doubt remained. She was too much a product of her past for it to not.
Chapter Forty-Two
Magic Lessons
Clare, settled cross-legged on the floor opposite Marquin, furrowed her brow and attempted to do as he instructed. As she had been attempting to do for the last hour.
As first lessons went, the day had been a dismal failure, beginning with her balking at the door to the quiet little room they now sat in. Power soaked deep into every inch of the walls, thrumming along the textured stone, stretching across the gaps from door to frame, and reaching up from the floor to caress the feet that walked across soft wooden planks.
She had understood instinctively that it was a room designed to contain, and no matter how patiently Marquin explained that its purpose was to contain power, not people, she could still only think of it as a cage. It had taken her half an hour to force herself inside, and her subsequent attempts to focus on the lesson had been hampered by her general discomfort. It did not help that the Song also disliked the room, if for reasons far different from her own.
Clare feared the possibility of being trapped. The Song held in utter contempt the room’s belief that the Song could be held. Clare felt its scorn as if it spoke to her.
Did Marquin really think these pathetic walls could hold it? It longed to show him how very wrong he was, and a headache thrummed against Clare’s temples from holding it in check.
“This isn’t working,” she growled. And waited. Waited for Marquin to tell her she was too impatient, that mastery required time. Waited for him to tell her that she was untrained and so could not possibly know if something was working or not. She waited for dismissal.
“Power has a vibrancy to it, a cadence in the bones that any mage can feel in another,” Marquin said slowly, instead. “Over time, a mage may learn to mute that power—to disguise to any curious eyes precisely how much power they have. But they can never disguise, entirely, the fact that they have power. Anyone magic-born can feel it. Do you know what I feel when I am around you?”
Her silence was his only prompt.
“Nothing. To mage-sense, standing next to you is akin to dangling one’s toes off the precipice of some great abyss. Were it not for the unique nature of Verol’s Kinthing, I would never have presumed you possessed power at a casual glance.
“Your problem,” he said, softly, “is not that you need to be taught control. Your control is ironclad. You problem is that when that control breaks, you do not know how to negotiate.”
“Negotiate,” Clare repeated, the word tumbling through her teeth like gravel in a churn-bucket.
“Power cannot be contained infinitely. You must give it an outlet, or it will force its way free. The stronger the power is, and the longer it is contained, the more damaging those outbreaks will be. When yours breaks free, your instinct is to contain it again, when you should be trying to shape it.”
“Shape it?”
“Bend it to your will, if you like. Choose what you want it to do.”
“And how do I do that?”
“You have to let it out, rather than it breaking out. You don’t have to let out much. The barest spark will do for the purpose of this lesson.”
“I don’t think that is a good idea.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t think,” Clare said, choosing her words carefully, “that you understand what a spark can do. What it wants to do.”
Marquin frowned. “You have let it out before to specific results. No one could call the actions at the mages’ stables random.”
“No.” Clare swallowed. “They were not random, but…”
“But?”
