I keep trying. Keep breathing. Finally, something starts to gather—slowly at first, then jerking toward me all at once, like a fist slamming in just underneath my ribcage. I barely resist the urge to buckle over.
“Wait,” I breathe, holding up a hand as calmly as I can.
He recoils, reining in the power he summoned with obvious effort.
After we've both collected ourselves, I lift my head and somehow keep my voice from shaking as I ask, “How do you feel?”
His answer sounds like a confession: “…Lighter.”
I readily believe him, because the opposite is true for me; it's as though I've taken in a tiny piece of the darkness, but I can't guide it out through my hands the way I normally do with elemental spells. I can't forge it into anything. So now it's just sitting in me, clinging to my insides, heavy and cold andwrong.
I don't tell Reave all of this. I don't want to worry him. It doesn't matter, though; he reads me far too easily.
“That hurt you, didn't it?” he asks.
“It didn't.”
He fixes me with a stern look.
“Hurtis not really the right word. It's uncomfortable. But that doesn't necessarily mean bad. Discomfort can lead to good things, too. Growth is rarely comfortable.”
“I don't even like the idea of you being uncomfortable.”
“I used to sleep on a mattress that had been desecrated by rodents, surrounded by the burned-out remains of my childhood home and the graves of almost everyone I loved. I'm used to a bit of hardship. I'll survive.”
His expression shifts through several different shades of horror at this reminder of our very different backgrounds.
I sigh, placing a hand on his arm, determined to bring him back to the present. “Just trust me. Please? Let me try again.”
“If all it does is transfer the curse to you, that isn't any better. I don't want to lose you, either.”
“The curse isn't going to affect me the same way it does you and Arlo.”
“You don't have any fucking idea how it's going to affect you.”
“I know I have a divine dragon bond giving me strength that neither of you have. I'll figure everything else out, if you would justlet me.”
“Infuriating, stubborn woman,” he growls—and I notice a flicker of darkness pass through his eyes with the words. His emotions getting the better of him.
I shouldn't take advantage of this. IknowI shouldn't. But I'm tired and afraid and desperate to make some sort of progress, so I keep pushing him.
“You can't carry everything on your own,” I snap.
“I'm not trying to.”
“You have to let me do this.”
“I don't, actually.”
“I'm not asking for permission.” The glare I fix on him is the final provocation—it cuts through his careful armor, dismantling it, and though what happens next lasts for only aheartbeat or two, I’m certain I see it: the shadowy-blue rot branching just beneath the surface of his skin.
This is my chance.
I reach out my hand reflexively, like I could hook my fingers around that darkness and simply yank it out, as if uprooting a cluster of weeds. My fingers don't actually grasp anything except bitingly cold, empty air. I beckon with more authority than I actually feel, and to my surprise, something responds, flooding into me all at once. The weight of it doesn't concentrate in one spot this time; it creeps like a crack spreading through glass, destabilizing me, making my entire body tremble.
Reave's eyes widen slightly at the sight. “Stop,” he orders. “Now.”
But I can't stop.
