Page 127 of Winter Gods & Serpents

Mal laughed and I threw grapes furiously at them both. When had they become so friendly at each other, and when had the Adriatians grown so loose around me?

“You think this is funny too?” I asked Mal.

He shook his head and said, “Hilarious.”

I pointed at both in threat. “I will have both of your heads.”

“It would be an honour. One does not get to be beheaded by a heavenly being every day.” Mal’s turn to tease, making both of them laugh again.

“How do you see what others are feeling, Mal?”

Both turned silent and at my attention. I wanted to know if they knew what was going through my head, that left me an exposed book. Had Kilian known my truth after he had asked me all those questions in Brisk? Had that been why he had said those words in the forest, had he seen how I was feeling and how vulnerable I had felt at the little girl's words and those of mine. I was also curious to know if that was how Nia knew how I felt.

“Empaths and a very few Umbra…like Kil, see colourful shadows around others when we channel our magic, usually circling around their heads if it is a mental emotion like fear or hesitation, lower for others like love and anxiousness, and even lower for lust and arousal,” he added slyly.

That had to be why the elemental kingdoms disliked the spiritual ones, they read what they could not control, emotions were often one's biggest weakness, a weakness that betrayed you in front of an Adriatian.

“What am I feeling now?” I asked to test his theory.

“Well that will be a problem. I do not know, I cannot read yours,” he added, and I scowled in surprise. Did it take some type of key to open, was it based only on strong emotions?

“Neither can my brother,” he continued and then turned to Cai. “He is tired, amused and concerned. But when I turn to you, nothing, empty.”

Was this a trick to confuse me, or had I truly been able to mask my emotions unconsciously to them, but that theory proved wrong. I knew Nia sense me and my emotions, vaguely but she had managed.

“Is that normal, not be able to read someone’s shadows?”

“No, I’ve never seen one without shadows before.”

“Another Adriatian has, how would that be possible?” I asked, confused knowing Nia had, several times.

He shrugged. “If you have established a close bond with that Adriatian they would not need to see your shadows to know what you feel, sometimes they would just be able to. Sometimes unconsciously one can feel emotion like a taste on their mouth or a smell, sometimes a brush against the skin. Stronger emotion like death, love, I can also feel them, sort of like a breeze,” he explained clearing my confusion. “This other Adriatian, is Nia, isn’t it?”

Both Cai and I turned to him. I had just exposed her for my own profit to the people who had sold her body, her mind, her soul and almost her life away. I felt guilt stab me in my stomach.

“You are not to tell her you know, or anyone else if you want to live,” Cai threatened quietly, fiddling with a fork, spaced out and deep into the same thoughts that troubled me.

Nia’s origin was what she hated the most about herself, it was the past she was fighting away to forget. Her blood was highborn Adriatian, her mother had been a nursemaid for her step siblings in her father’s household, and had Nia out of wedlock with the master, a councillor in the Moon court. She raised Nia like livestock, torturing and beating her endlessly for her own demise. And when she had needed money, worked her to death and then finally sold her to a slave owner who had bought her illegally over the border to Fernfoss village where Alaric and I had found her. What doesn’t kill you certainly can injure you, and wounds last and hurt longer than death. It had taken us days to make her eat, let alone speak. She would not approach Cai and Alaric for months after she had come to live with us.

She had the strength to move forward, the one that many lacked. She had not sought out to avenge her past, only to forget it. It took courage to let go with a charging price of closure—though her closure had been forgetting.

“I knew since the Kirkwall trials,” Mal said, surprising both Cai and I. “I am a more perceptive Empath. Kil only confirmed it yesterday when she had felt the soldiers as we had.”

They both had known before and had not said anything, if my father were to know he had single handed let an Adriatian attend his meeting and into secret Isjordian affairs, he would issue an order to kill her the moment he would find out.

I began to speak but he interrupted me.

“I know Snow, when we said we would come to protect you, it was for all of you, including the ones you consider family. If Nia is holding her origin back it would be for reasons I would never doubt, and completely in her right to choose so.”

I nodded grateful for his words, words of comfort I would have never expected myself to be hearing from an Adriatian, but for Nia’s sake I had made my peace with them.

“What else can an Empath like you do, except read others?” There were stories—terrifying stories of how Empaths could inflict so much pain your heart would stop in matter of seconds.

Mal’s eyes darted about the room before he leaned into the table. “Trained Aura can inflict emotion on others, all sorts. It is forbidden by law in Adriata to practice such magic now, the later King took the decision.”

I almost felt my heartbeat lighten in relief. It didn’t feel like a lie, though he had no reason to tell me the truth, but I sensed hesitation. “But?”

He cleared his throat. “But we still have special military units, all under control and evaluated, our King would not allow things to get out of control.”