Set me loose.
Let me destroy.
Maybe I was losing my mind, imagining a voice of pure midnight and bloodshed. I shook my hand out, the tether to the power breaking instantly. The shadow vanished.
“You were doing great. What happened?” If I didn’t know better, I would say the concern on Septimus’ face was genuine.
I shifted uneasily, feeling discomforted. Scared. Maybe my mortal mind was breaking under the weight of pressure and grief. If I told him I was hearing voices… granted, I didn’t know everything, but I knewthatwasn’t normal. “I don’t think the magic wants to help me. It feels… volatile.”
Destructive and all-consuming, it felt like the type of world-ending, corrosive power I wanted nothing to do with. The kind that had no use in helping me survive the Trials.
“It does want to help. You just need to learn how to harness it. How to command it. It will obey you if you instruct and shape it to your will. You need practice.”
I gave him a dubious look. “I appreciate you taking the time to bring me up here and teach me how to summon this power, but I really don’t see how that – or lightning – is going to help me in a challenge of wit,” I said.
“Don’t think so short-term. You might find use for it another time, in another challenge. The power flowing through your veins is not merely darkness or lightning. You have a kernel ofKilian’spower.”
I raised a brow. “Is that not darkness and lightning?”
Septimus scoffed. “He’ll be so offended if he hears that. Kilian’s power is wrath and destruction. His power is rage and fury itself. It is death incarnate. It is not some flimsy lightning shower or shadow control. Those are merely manifestations of the power. Kilian could start wildfires and torrential floods. He could annihilate entire isles if he had his full power.”
My gaze sharpened on him. “What do you mean?”
Septimus winced. “I wasn’t supposed to say that.”
The power that I had felt radiating from Kilian was so overwhelming, so electrifying and dizzying that I did not understand how it could not be his full power. “That’s my second question. Explain yourself.”
Septimus heaved a great sigh. He walked to the edge of the slope and lowered himself so that his legs dangled off its edge. He jerked his head for me to join him. I begrudgingly complied. When I was seated beside him, legs precariously swinging as I resisted the urge to claw back to safety, Septimus said, “There isn’t a simple answer to your question.”
“And yet you promised to answer.”
He sighed again, a burdensome breath that seemed to take some of the light from his eyes with it. “Kilian, Syrina and I have been friends since inception.”
This hadn’t been the start I was expecting, but I waited, letting him gather his thoughts before he continued.
“Centuries ago, Kilian did something that pissed off some really high-powered beings. To punish him, there was a curse placed on him. On the three of us, really, when Syrina and I aided him. The curse… stripped us of our powers. Left only the barest traces behind. We searched across the entirety of Tarlor for a solution – for someone able to reverse the curse, but no one possessed the ability. We approached every single elven on Lortan and Greyhaven.” A faraway look had glazed over those golden eyes.
My thoughts whirled as he spoke, frantically trying to fit the puzzle pieces into place. “If no one can help you undo the curse, then you’ll be stuck forever, unable to access your full powers?”
Septimus nodded slowly. “Unless the person with the ability to undo it has not become elven yet.”
Oh.
A ragged breath escaped my parted lips. The Mortal Trials… they weren’t about turning mortals into elven. I had always suspected there was more to it than that. The entire purpose of the Trials was to find someone with the ability to undo a curse.
Holy fuck.
CHAPTER 13
My mind was reeling. Spinning at a thousand frames per second.
Septimus stood, shaking his head at the questions I hurled his way.
What had Kilian done?
Who had he angered?
Why?
