Just when I began to believe my magic isn’t evil, is it going to kill me after all?
“It seems backwards. Shouldn’tIbe the one with water powers, and you have fire?”
“Storm, not water,” he corrects me absently. “Like I said, your familiar doesn’t determine what your power is.”
“How am I ever supposed to sleep again?”
Roiven is silent for a moment, his hand still gripping mine tight like he’s afraid to let go.
“Next to me,” he answers, his voice low. “Where if anything burns, I’ll be right there to stop it. Until you learn to control it yourself.”
I gulp. But I slowly nod.
For a moment a spear of warmth and longing pierces through Roiven’s cloud of guilt, and the emotion is gone just as fast, like he’s stifled it from reaching me.
He stands without letting go, pulling me to my shaky feet. My shirt is charred and burnt, and wet from the fountain, and I'm not wearing trousers at all. But apart from soot my skin bares no evidence of the blaze that almost killed me.
“My room’s next door.”
“Maybe this is a sign it was time to wake, anyways. The Hellions…”
“It’s barely been an hour. Youneedrest. We both do, if we’re going to win this.”
He’s right. Because if the Hellions aren’t attacking now, it could be the last opportunity before I see if Roiven was right to believe in me—to see if I’m capable of ending the monstrosity I once fought for. And while there are a million more useful things I could be doing, like trying to find my familiar or understand how to wield my magic, right now I’m more exhausted than I’ve ever been.
Aria knocks on the open door to announce she’s back. I tear my eyes away from Roiven and am startled by how bad the room looks as I examine it with fresh eyes. The shock of the fire is stillwearing off. Everything is burnt, the stone roof blackened, the furniture reduced to charcoal.
Roiven’s sister approaches and hands me a folded set of clothes.
“You’ll be alright?” she asks me. Her eyes are rimmed with red, and I remember that she can’t have gotten much more rest than either of us. She was at Lusern, too.
“I’m fine. Thank you for healing me.”
“Get some rest. Both of you,” Aria says.
“We will,” Roiven tells her.
“I should wash. And change,” I say, gripping the clothes tight in my living hand.
“Do you want my help?”
I’m tempted to say yes. But I think there are some things I need to do for myself. Whatever’s between us is fragile enough without me leaning my full weight on him.
“No. Next door?”
“To your left,” Roiven confirms. “If you need anything, you know you can call for me. Through the bond. Youcouldhave called for me.”
“You came anyways, didn’t you?”
“But maybe I could have come faster,” he says hoarsely.
I shrug, and he and his sister leave. But as he walks to the door Roiven glances back at me over his shoulder, his golden eyes burning as they run over me, bare-legged in my tattered shirt.
I know, because I haven’t taken my own eyes off of him.
38
I don’t know which one of us started holding the other’s hand, but when I wake up to knocking on the door, Roiven’s fingers are loosely intertwined with mine, the lines of our bond touching. I blink groggily awake. Our eyes meet, and then he draws his hand back and rises from the bed.
