Aida’s lower lip trembled. Hating herself for forgetting the truth of her reality in this strange moment, she broke away from the lure of his gaze and turned to watch the wound become nothing more than a puckered white scar. It was one among many others, soon to be forgotten just like her. Firming her jaw, she tugged her hand free to flick her fingers at the shaft still in his thigh.
Er’it did not say a word, but she felt the chilled space between them all the same. Perhaps he read her as she did him. Refusing to acknowledge the pain that thought gave her, she went to pull the arrow out, only for Er’it to grip the head protruding from the other side and yank it free. He didn’t hiss or groan this time, somehow bolstering Aida’s spirits with the fact that it didn’t pain him as much as his shoulder. Setting her hands over the far smaller wound, she pursed her lips. She could do this, learn this one small thing before it was all over.
Concentrating as hard as she dared, she traversed the paths etched deep into her mind now. Following the threads of power Er’it laid out to guide her, Aida stormed ahead of his sputtering denial. Holding the energy that now shone an electrifying violet in a strangling grip, she performed the acts as he had, tempering them as she sensed the sludgy poison in his flesh and blood lessen.
Aida bared her teeth, not hearing the feminine growl emanating from her chest as Er’it attempted to wrest control from her. She kept her power in a stranglehold no matter that she wanted to send it lunging through him to stun and keep him quiet. Some part of her needed this, needed to see and feel what it might have been like.
What it could still be like. Marilsa had showed her another path, several in fact. Choices never a thing she’d been forced to make, Aida floundered as she realized she could do anything she wanted. She could kill Er’it right now and end the entire thing or turn it all back on herself and perhaps end it that way. Terrible and beautiful, benevolent and kind. Heal the land, destroy it further. Everything was a confusing dichotomy, right down to the vivid fire licking up her back from Er’it’s hand and the ice settling deep in her bones.
“Kou’va, stop this.” Careful fingers edged their way higher up Aida’s back, palm splayed behind her shoulders as he tried to urge her closer despite the way she held herself stiff. “Whatever you are thinking, you do not wish it.”
“You can’t see it?” Aida asked in a shattered whisper, faltering as she turned her eyes back to his. Marilsa had told her the truth of it. They told her she had no power of her own to keep her weak and scared, afraid of their magic and what they might do to her with it.
“I can see you do not want it.”
“I never wanted any of it.” Aida scrambled from his lap, pushing to her feet to stand over him breathless with the staggering rage building in her chest. Fists glowing white hot and clenched at her sides, she shouted at him, “I wanted to feel the sun on my face, smell the wind in a field. To run and befree!”
“Sit down, Omega—”
“My name is… I have no name.”
Aida’s laugh was high and thready, control slipping through her fingers as her thoughts began to race in every direction. There were so many paths, each of them with yet more branching from them. Her life could be her own for the first time, for the last time. Nothing could stop her, not Er’it, not Rhyn, not the darkness residing deep in the trees that watched her even now.
“Kou’va, sit down,” Er’it said, voice nearing serene as he pushed at the air with flattened palms. “You are inexperienced. The magic, the power, it makes you think things that are not possible.”
“But it is possible!” Aida shrieked, flinging her hand in a wide arc to the side. The forest burst into life, blades of grass erupting from the ground in thick clumps, speeding through their growth. Delicate flowers sprung into existence with violent rustling, moss hissing as it spread up nearby trees groaning with the sudden weight of full-fledged leaves.
Another wild swing of her arm laid waste to the path leading to the road. Blackened wood grinding, their bone shuddering cracks filled the trembling night, the ground rumbling as they crashed down in a single file line, a veritable wall of destruction.
“You do not want this,” Er’it said as he gained his feet, hand extended palm out to Aida.
“What doanyof you know of what I want?”
“Then tell me.”
“You do not care!”
“What do you know of what I want?” Er’it asked, drawing himself to his full height to tower over her. Her light reflected in his narrowed gaze, turning the bright topaz a shining pale gold.
“You’ve told me what you want.” Aida scoffed, lip curling in a mockery of his usual sneer.
“I have told you what will happen, what I need.”
“There is no difference.”
“Ask me, if you would have the truth of it.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Aida sobbed, hands raking through her tangled curls and fisting the length of it to pull at the strands.
“It does. Ask me.” Chin tipped up, he looked as proud and cold as ever. Yet his eyes, the golden sheen of them so unlike the gloomy crimson of his power, remained quiet, his anger gone, replaced by a calm she craved.
Er’it stood his ground as Aida’s power began to surge in vicious flares around her. Spiraling up into the night, it changed the landscape around them in uncontrolled bursts. He shook his head as Kal edged closer to Aida with gentle rumbles.
“Ask me,kou’va,” Er’it demanded, taking a step forward as Aida began to reach for Kal.
“What do you want?” Weary, on the verge of tears she couldn’t explain, Aida turned to him. Keeping him in her line of sight, a prickle of warning clawed at her spine as sweat broke out on her forehead, a chill trickle of it sliding down her neck to stain the ragged collar of her tunic.
“I want my people safe. To give them a home where they do not have to live in fear of another coming and stealing it all away. Not again. A place where they can live and thrive. I swore it to all of them.”
