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There was a long minute of silence, and then the crackle of her magic surrounded us again, softer than before. She pulled her lip between her teeth as the moment stretched. The tendrils of the earth shifted around my ankles, growing restless. She made a frustrated half-grunt, half-whine in the back of her throat. I couldn’t help but croon just a bit, trying to alleviate some of her frustration. Her shoulders relaxed, and she let her lip pop free. Then, like a switch flipped, her magic roared around us both, as strong as a sudden tempest in the Surmeda Ocean.

The jar shattered in my hold, the shards cutting into my hand and hers as they fell to the floor in a tinkling mix. She jumped with a harsh shriek, retreating a few steps before freezing entirely.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” she said. Her voice shook as much as her body. “I don’t… That was…”

I stepped around the wreckage, ignoring the bits that dug into the soles of my feet.

“It’s all right.” I let the words be a croon in truth, warm and weighty. She hadn’t been this skittish since shortly after we started our journey home. “All of us lose control like that, especially when we’re learning.”

“But you’re bleeding.”

She shoved her hands behind her back and eased another step away. I stopped mid-step, not wanting to provoke her into running out of here before I could address her wounds.

“So are you,” I said instead. Then I held out my unblemished hand, ignoring the smattering of cuts that traced up my arm. “Let me fix them before they cause you any more pain.”

She stared at me with that distrusting, panicked gaze she’d had on the Pass. Her heart fluttered in her throat, faster than a hummingbird. I knew her scent would be edged with her fear and unease if not for the pendant. For the first time in days, I was grateful the vanilla and oranges were hidden from my senses. I already wanted to pull her to me, and the protective rage her fear-soaked scent would trigger would help neither of us at the moment.

“Amethyst, let me help you.” This time, I laced a command through the words.

She moved toward me on instinct, wanting to respond on a visceral level to the alpha bark. Her hand shook like a leaf in my palm, though, and her breathing was choppier than I’d ever heard it. I didn’t waste time on anything dainty or fanciful. I let my magic surround her hand the way Reuben had taught me when I needed to learn how to patch my soldier’s wounds while training with them after my father declared me general of his armies. Her skin responded as eagerly as mine always did, knitting itself back together in the span of a few breaths.

“It tickles,” she whispered.

My smile was soft but easy as I released her hand.

“I thought it would hurt like with Reuben,” she admitted into the silence.

I shook my head. “Simple cuts are often not painful. It’s the more severe wounds that are painful to mend.”

When she didn’t say anything else, I turned to deal with the shattered glass. Her breath caught.

“Your feet.”

With a casual flick of my wrist, I gathered the shards of glass with my own magic and guided them into one of the vases of flowers to be dealt with later. Then I healed each of my feet before I could get any more blood onto the tiles. Amethyst stayed at arm’s length, her body held in that same uncomfortable panic I hadn’t really seen since she’d admitted to being from her Arizona.

“I’ll be right back,” I murmured. “Let me just get a rag to clean up the floor.”

I didn’t bother to go to one of the actual closets and instead grabbed a small blanket from the nearest sitting room, knowing Vincent wouldn’t care if the servants couldn’t get the stain out. When I returned, Amethyst hadn’t moved, her gaze on the drops of blood smeared in the center of the room. She stood frozen while I cleaned up the last of the mess, too, her gaze taking me in as thoroughly as she had the mess.

It was only when I’d set the blanket next to the vase of flowers I needed to fix that she whispered, her voice low enough it blended with the growing night outside, “What are the Alholím?”

AMETHYST

Callum’s hesitation was loud enough to practically scream. His frown pulled on his scars. I contemplated taking back the question, telling him he didn’t actually need to tell me what they were. But that part of me was the scared little girl who was terrified to lose her place in her first foster home. The reality was that I was twenty-five and no longer that helpless little girl. I couldn’t act on her wishes. Even if the vulnerability required to learn about this new realm made me want to peel my skin from my bones at times, I had a responsibility to learn about it anyway.

So I stood in silence, waiting for Callum to decide what he wanted to tell me about the Alholím. He grabbed the edge of the sideboard, his knuckles white with the force of his hold.

“They were another race that lived mostly in the mountains of Ferias.”

I waited for more, but it seemed like that was all he had to say.

“Were?”

“They were destroyed in their entirety during the Great War.”

A pang of sadness rolled through me at the thought of an entire group of people being lost even if they had left a legacy of fear.

“Why were they feared?”