Page 22 of Fate of the Sun King

“This should be a good spot to conceal us,” Nadir says before he hops down from his horse and ties it to a nearby tree. Tristan and I do the same before we proceed to the center of the clearing.

“I think we need to focus on what made your magic react when we were in Heart,” Nadir says. “You felt threatened, so you released it. What you told me about your dream last night confirms the same.”

Our gazes meet for an anxious moment before I look away. I wonder if he’s thinking along the same lines. I wasn’t the one being threatened at that moment. It was Nadir who the king had been tormenting when my magic broke loose.

I remember that utter rage coursing through me, so visceral it was like I’d been dipped in a boiling vat of anger thick enough to suffocate me. When I’d thought his life was in danger, I’d felt helpless and terrified, and I reacted. I wanted to protect him. Wanted to stop anyone from ever hurting him. It’s a tangle of emotions I’ve found myself examining from every side ever since that night. No one has ever made me feel such an acute need to protect, and given my past, that’s saying a lot.

“Right,” I say, clearing my throat. “Makes sense.”

Nadir turns his gaze to Tristan.

“You’ve never really explained what it is you’re capable of.”

Tristan chews the inside of his cheek before he steps away, putting a safe distance between us, and holds out a hand. He fires a blast of red lightning across the clearing, where it strikes the face of a cliff that explodes in a shower of gravel.

“I can do that,” Tristan drawls, letting the words drift off.

Nadir picks up on Tristan’s evasiveness immediately.

“And what else?”

My brother’s jaw clenches, and he looks at me. I nod my head. There’s no point in hiding this anymore. When Nadir and Amya asked about Tristan’s magic in The Aurora, we’d claimed he wasn’t capable of much.

But that was never the entire truth.

He turns to face the other direction and sends out another ribbon of magic, but this time it’s green—it’s similar to Nadir’s light, though the essence differs. Richer and deeper and made of shadows instead of that bright and glowing Aurora power.

It forks out, wrapping around a copse of trees, twisting into a whirlwind of emerald as the trees start to stretch. Crackling sounds fill the air as their trunks expand, growing taller and broader, branches spreading and sprouting with thick, glossy leaves. After a moment, Tristan drops his hand, staring at his handiwork as though even he can’t believe what he’s done.

Nadir lets out a low whistle.

“You have Woodlands magic, too,” he says, a touch of awe in his voice. “It makes sense, I suppose. Wolf would have been very powerful.”

Nadir asks me, “You have none of this?”

“Not that I know of,” I reply. “It seems I am all my grandmother.”

He nibbles on his bottom lip as if contemplating a thousand possibilities and consequences of this knowledge.

“So when you both said Tristan didn’t have much magic, you were lying.”

“Well, I don’t have much Heart magic. That part is true,” my brother says.

Nadir lifts an eyebrow, but I know he understands why we kept this from him.

“And it was true,” Tristan says, conflict in his eyes. “I didn’t think I had much, but lately, it feels like it’s… growing.”

“Tris?” I ask. “Really?”

He nods. “I didn’t want to say anything until I was sure, but sometimes at night, I wake up with red and green wrapping around me. During the day, it moves inside me, and I have to concentrate on holding it back. It keeps getting stronger.”

“You said this might happen,” I say to Nadir. “Do you remember? When you told me that after what my grandmother did, everyone in Ouranos lost their magic?”

“I remember,” he says. “It was just a guess, though.”

“Looks like you were right,” I say.

“I usually am.”