Several tense moments pass. She lets out another whispery note, blinking and lifting her face to the sun.
She still doesn't tell me how to gather the energy from the world around us.
But then she begins to show me.
The skin around my eyes—not just my scarred eye, but both—feels tight and warm, like it's stretching to accommodate something larger than simple sight. I blink, hard, and when I open my eyes again, I'm facing a yard that's suddenly swarmed with color. Everything pulses gently around its edges: the grass is a vivid, living green threaded with gold; the stone of the palace walls is laced with pale silver veins; the creek shimmers with waves of cool blue light.
In the air itself, loose and floating like dandelions in the breeze, are wisps of all these different colors and more.
Breathe in, Sesca commands, and I do, and those glowing wisps pull toward us, weaving together and then separating again, rising and falling in a mesmerizing dance. Watching it makes me feel like I’m standing at the beginning of time itself, watching the gods and their dragons knit the world together thread by luminous thread.
I don't think it's actually me that's drawing the energy in—it's her—but it illustrates her point well enough.
As easy as breathing?I wonder.
With enough practice, she replies. But her tone is guarded, and words of caution follow close behind.The rot in them is likely burrowed far deeper than this, however. My eyes can't see it. I don't know how yours could. Sensing it alone might not be enough to safely take hold of it.
I can feel the frustration building in her, the fear, thewords she can't bring herself to say. She doesn't like not knowing how to help me.
I lean against her foreleg, giving the smooth scales a reassuring rub.I haven't been able to see properly for years, I remind her.I'm very good at figuring things out and feeling my way through.
She restlessly kneads the dirt with her claws, a low, unhappy rumbling in her chest. But then she curls her tail around and lets the feathered tip of it gingerly pat and plop on top of my head. It's a little gesture of affection she sometimes does, particularly when her affection is tinged with exasperation—as it often is toward me.
My vision slowly returns to normal. The world seems unbearably, depressingly drab for a long moment afterward. Blinking the last of the divine brightness from my eyes, I tell the others what she's shown me, and we continue to discuss theories and what little we know and understand.
“Is there a way Arowyn could practice this?” Briar wonders.
“She could try sensing and manipulating whatever lies in me,” Kestrel offers.
I hesitate only a moment before deciding it's worth a try.
I close my eyes and breathe in deeply, feeling for something like what I sensed on the night of Arlo’s transformation—that cold, wrong-feeling current.
There's something faintly similar in Kestrel, I think. But when I open my eyes to see if it might have manifested as glowing wisps or otherwise, there’s nothing there. Disappointment shoots through me, my focus slips, and all awareness of what might be the curse goes with it.
I close my eyes and try again, but the result is the same.
Again and again I try, but I never manage to see or grab hold of anything.
After several minutes of this, I give up, shaking my head. “Reave told me you never really use magic,” I recall. “So the curse likely hasn’t spread as much in you. Which is why I don't think there's enough for me to grab hold of. Maybe if I had more experience spotting it, it would be different, but...”
Kestrel frowns, hugging her arms around herself and bowing her head in thought.
I look toward the palace, thinking of the frail prince, of how sad and anxious he must be, trapped in his room with no real understanding ofwhy.
He's so riddled with this disease that I would almost certainly be able to spot something in him—but the idea frightens me. Because if I were able to see the darkness, what would I do next? What if some latent power I have lashes out, and I can’t control it because of how much deeper Arlo’s curse goes?
What if I only make thingsworse?
I sit with this very real fear for a long moment, only to set it aside the way I've set aside every fear that's ever threatened to stop me.
I change tactics, borrowing Sesca’s vision once more and studying the natural elements all around us. I try to breathe the essence of them in on my own this time. Practicing and hoping that I’ll eventually be able to do the same with theunnaturalelements I’m hunting for, whenever I do manage to spot them.
This quickly becomes overwhelming, though; even absorbing just a few tiny wisps makes my body feel like its stretching, threatening to split at the seams.
There’s a reason Sesca takes these things in and forgesthem into more manageable spells before passing them on to me, I guess. And though she tells me I have the potential to do this myself, eventually, it’s something that will likely require far more practice.
I keep trying, but after an hour or so, I’ve still made no real progress. Finally, I surrender in frustration and flop onto my back, glaring up at a sky that seems too bright, too clear, too perfect. Like it's mocking my attempts to focus on the dark curse over this palace.
