Maeve’s mouth fell open. Reeve smiled triumphantly.
“Easy,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to evoke more of that lightning from you.”
Her eyes narrowed. Then widened as she remembered. She looked away from Reeve, down at her hands.
“How?” she asked, shaking her head. “I put all my Magic into those crystals. All of it. That lightning. . .it’s Dread Magic. I know it is.”
Reeve nodded. “It’sunheardof Dread Magic,” he corrected her. “Magic, your sister can also produce.”
She dropped her hands back beneath the water and looked up at him, at a loss for any explanation.
“My father couldn’t do that,” she said, partially a statement and somewhat of a question.
“No,” Reeve assured her. “He couldn’t. The first time you used it was the night he died. Is that correct?”
She nodded. “I think so.”
“Has Maxius ever?”
Her thoughts drifted to the little Magic her son had been able to produce. How Mal was helping him grow stronger and find that inaccessible and dormant power inside of him. But that was before.
She shook her head and then asked, “How long was Maxius here?” She braved the question, her own sense of time completely ruined.
“Which time?”
Maeve’s head hit the wall behind her. Reeve’s words dug deep, a reminder of her failure. Of relying on him again and again. Of how he didn’t trust her, shouldn’t trust her, and yet he came every time she called.
Likely sensing the guilt running through her, Reeve spoke.
“You trusting me with his life may, strangely, be the greatest honor anyone has bestowed me.”
“You took him without question.”
“What question was there?” asked Reeve quietly.
Maeve held his gaze for a moment and then slipped deeper into the water until it covered her lips. Pride kept her from expressing gratitude. Gratitude she’d never be able to repay.
“You have to eat,” said Reeve with a sigh. “You have to eat and actually sleep. Your body doesn’t have the things it once relied on to keep you well. And I think,” he hesitated, “that you need to do more than sit around the palace and read.”
She rose, only an inch, in order to reply. “I’m just so weak in your eyes, aren’t I?”
Reeve’s head moved to each side. “You’re so strong, it makes me feel sick. So resilient. You’ve been forced to build armor that didn’t exist on you years ago.” He nearly smiled as he said. “I have no doubt you’ll be the last one standing.”
Chapter 28
Sleep was a thing of the past. A foreign notion and a dream itself.
Maeve.
Thunder crackled far across The Black Deep, always sounding like his approach. The rumbling of a distant footstep, always angry. Always seeking pain. Always seeking to break her further.
It banged louder and louder. He was coming closer and closer.
Down the hall.
Maeve.
He was already here. He’d made his way across the Black Deep to finally put an end to her. To break the crystalized Magic protecting Maxius and fulfill the prophecy.
