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My hand finally lands on something warm on the side of the stone. The texture is the exact same as every other inch of it, and yet it couldn’t feel more… amenable. There’s something about this spot, this area of the stone, and I realize I’m frowning down, my brows furrowed and sweat starting to bead at my temples.Effortless, Rory had agreed, but whatever sensation I’m feeling now as my hand hovers over the welcome spot is altogether overwhelming.
Power seems to cascade down my body, and I feel like Alice — only instead of my body morphing from tiny to tall, it alters between weak and strong. It takes seconds at most, and yet it feels as though time has slowed to sludge. I squat down, extending my hands to the sides of the stone, and, gathering the strange power that has seeped within me, do the impossible andlift.
It isn’t effortless — but it also shouldn’t be possible. The stone hovers above the grass until I gather it completely into my arms, carrying the boulder almost as high as my hips. The weight of it isn’t a factor — the only strain I feel isn’t in my arms but curiously in my mind, as I attempt to forge a connection with the hewn boulder in my arms. There’s the tickle of something unknowable and scary, something I can’t understand and that isn’t taught in textbooks here. Strange music sings to me.
All I know is that I’m not the one carrying the stone — that it’sallowingmeto lift it. And how ridiculous that should seem, a stone giving me permission. But I know deeply, intently, that I have its blessing, as peculiar as it is. And just as quickly as I’d lifted it, I return it to the ground.
My arms don’t even ache. Instead, my mind roars with questions. I’m lost, dizzy with the realization that suddenly hits me when the stone is free from my arms: that it should not have happened. There is no way, following the rules of physics and basic strength training, that I should ever have been able to carry that stone.
Very slowly, I turn to Rory.
And his expression is a picture.
His parted lips are the first thing I notice. His arms have fallen by his sides. His gray eyes, however, are cool and clear and solely for me. They lack surprise and flash with triumph.
“I’d hoped,” he mutters to himself. “I’d thought — but I couldn’t be sure.”
Rory approaches me steadily, the advance of a lion — not to its prey anymore, as it had been between us in the past, but toward his mate. He cups my cheek. My hair blows in the soft breeze, tangling around the tips of his fingers, and I gaze up at him wordlessly. There must be a million questions in my eyes, because he takes his finger and plants it gently on top of my lips.
“You’ll find out soon enough.” He embraces me securely, wrapping his arms around my waist. In the middle of the cold empty pitch, Rory holds me safe and keeps me warm. “But you’re mine, little saint. You belong here with me.”
* * *
Luke’s skin is as soft as a baby’s. I stroke his hand while he soundly sleeps, taking the night shift in the medical wing and working through the large pile of homework I’ve neglected for the well-being of the ex-prince in front of me.
Really, though, I can’t concentrate. My mind is elsewhere, on an empty pitch with Rory’s arms circling me like wings. Being powerful, hauling boulders that defy physics — and it only becomes more obvious when I study the examples in my physics homework for gravitational force. Rory’s whispered,You belong here with me, as though there’d ever been any doubt that I’d always be by his side — but something different now to his words, a statement of irrefutable fact instead of mere possessive opinion.
Poor Luke, though. His left leg is raised in a sling, and the majority of his lower half is bandaged from the waist down. He’s a sight for sore eyes but at least he’s able to sleep off the pain.
I don’t know if I’ll be getting to sleep tonight.
Ever since lifting that boulder, the world feels strange.Lochkelvinfeels strange. I’d felt it before, the occasional prickles of something special, something mysterious, like the castle had been alive and listening. But it’d been easy to dismiss as fantasy.
This isn’t a fantasy anymore.
The power I’d felt coursing through me as I’d lifted that boulder… That’d been all too real.
Tonight, the chiefs have taken turns to care for Luke. They’re taking no chances leaving him alone. Baxter might insist an attack on Luke is a flight of fancy but I disagree. I’m starting to get the impression that Baxter is a coward — she avoided punishing the girls when they were scapegoating me last year, and now she’s avoiding punishing anyone who makes a scene against Luke.
It’s as I’m ruminating on this that the door opens. And, to my surprise, the last person I’d expected to see walks into the medical wing.
