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“Give it up, Theodore,” Paxton said from a distance away. He had found a chair to settle into and watched us with his muscled arms folded over his broad chest. “She won’t forgive anyone for even a petty offense.”
That pain in the ass loved to keep harassing me.
However, Theodore didn’t take his advice to give up on persuading me. He studied me, not as hard as before, though. “The fire of the Blood Runes acted on its own. I didn’t send it after you. I couldn’t even if I wanted to.”
Both Zak and I looked at him harshly, and he cowered a little and chuckled nervously.
“I wouldn’t want that ritual fire to burn anyone,” he added. “I’m still puzzled why it happened that way. I’ve been doing research, digging into ancient texts. I have no answer, and it bugs me.”
“Observe from the sidelines, Theodore,” Zak said. “If I need your input, I’ll let you know.” He then turned to me with a mini-lecture. “We must put aside our personal likes and dislikes to focus on training, Rosebud.”
I shrugged. But he had a point. I needed to train hard and become powerful. That was the only way to survive in the Academy.
“Show me what you’ve got,” Zak said.
I closed my eyes, avoiding another trip to Hell’s landscape, but I didn’t see any other powers lurking inside me, waiting for me to pluck them.
I opened my eyes and stared at Zak. “I’m trying, but I don’t feel anything.”
“Try harder,” Zak commanded. “And talk less.”
He was pulling rank.
I sighed and shut my eyes again.
“Concentrate,” I murmured. “Go deep. Yes, deep. I think I’m deep enough since I’ve just hit the bottom. Pull now and harness your powers graced by the Olympian gods. Wait! There isn’t a wrinkle in time or a ripple in the well. Okay, let’s keep looking. There’s nothing here, but I’m not giving up. Knock, knock. Who’s there? It’s Marigold, theSilent Blade. I’m calling the house of the god that gifted me with this incredible, awesome power, though I don’t know which house exactly and what power. Knock again, but no one is home. This is interesting. I don’t think any of the gods have bestowed on me a power.”
I opened an eye and looked at a livid priest glaring at me, so I opened both eyes, in case he wanted to do something stupid to me.
I hadn’t been lying. I hadn’t felt any stir of power. All I’d felt when I made a detour to steer clear of my fire magic was this empty echo in the endless, bleak landscape and faint mockery in the echo, calling me a coward.
For the first time, I was afraid of facing who I truly was.
I pushed down an unsatisfied feeling and spread my arms.
“I have nothing to show you, Bolt,” I said.
“That’s not the right attitude for a Dominion soldier,” Theodore snapped, despite that Zak had just told him to only open his mouth when his opinion was required.
Zak glared at the priest.
When the demigod returned his attention to me, his blue eyes softened. “You have power, Rosebud. You survived the trial. You brought out a kind of fire no one has seen before. You put on a shield that even I couldn’t easily take down.”
“You healed yourself and teleported, two feats beyond belief,” Theodore added hopefully. “And you did it before anyone taught you magic.”
Zak nodded, and Theodore puffed his chest out.
“You just need to have the right attitude and try harder, as Demigod of Sky said,” Theodore emphasized.
I twirled my index finger in a circle. “Let’s rewind a little there. You said that my power helped me before anyone had even taught me magic. Maybe my magic can’t be taught. It acts and reacts. And the last time it reacted was to defend me because I was in mortal danger.”
I started to string pieces together.
My magic had been veiled for twenty years for a reason. It wasn’t supposed to be discovered until the threat was too great for my natural abilities to handle it.
The instructors only knew their set ways since there had never been a case like mine before. They followed the same script and formula that worked for everyone else but not for me. I was the unknown, the abnormality.
I had to figure out another way to communicate with my magic.
