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Pain swelled in my head again.
I had no more strength to think.
With a soft gasp, I sank beneath the water and let it float me downstream, away from everything.
Chapter Forty-Two
. Darro .
THE SUN HAD SET AND risen seven times since I’d witnessed Runa conjuring life with her blood. I’d sat on my haunches in the grasslands, hidden by golden stalks and wrapped in the air’s unique cloak of invisibility.
I was still learning how to use its power for my own.
Rivoza didn’t like it.
It often hissed in my head to stop meddling with its gifts, but...it owed me.
Ever since it’d gagged, bound, and kept me hidden from sight while Runa was forced into a blood bind with Aktor, I’d recognised its...taste.
The taste of its energy, its force.
The first time I’d travelled within its speed was at its mercy—taking me to the forest where my awakening pain had slaughtered so many who didn’t deserve to die.
I’d run from that part of my power.
I’d swallowed it deep and bottled it shut, unwilling to sink into memories that came with such dangerous nightmares. Instead of learning things I didn’t want to learn, I focused on controlling the motes of air that always seemed to mock me. The first time I’d gathered my will to twist the air into a shield had taken everything I had. I was only able to hold the dense wall of air for a few heartbeats.
I’d trembled and sweated, clutching onto something that wasn’t touchable, burning with the effort to manipulate nothingness.
It wasn’t like summoning my shadows, where just a simple thought was enough to conjure and control. Using Rivoza took concentration and finesse that would take time to master.
But I had time.
While Runa underwent lessons with the Nhil’s medicine woman, I practiced in the grasslands to keep myself unseen.
The fourth day of our separation—when I tracked Runa from Solin’s lupic to the glade by the river—I sunk to my haunches and watched her tearing leaves, doing my best to shimmer the air in such a way to keep me disguised.
Runa had faced away from me, and the strain of her shoulders squeezed my heart with guilt.
I didn’t want to cause her pain. I would give anything to snatch her in my arms and run far, far away.
But what the moth had said continued to haunt me. Every minute of every day and...I couldn’t.
I couldn’t trust myself.
I would never forgive myself if I did to her what I’d done to all those unfortunate hummingbirds.
She was safe...for now.
And I would keep her safe by staying away.
At least a part of my spirit was always with her. Just like I could taste the flavour of the air’s power, I tasted her.
Her flavour was like licking the surface of the sun.
The pulse of magic that ricocheted from her as she toppled to the ground whipped right through me, luminous and searing, sharp and bright. The medicine woman had schooled her face to hide the absolute awe that’d hung her mouth wide, carefully guiding Runa to the river to bathe before returning to the clan for a clean wrap.
The deerskin I’d cured for her was left blood-soaked and discarded in the sun.
Runa had sunk into the river and floated with the traitorous water’s current. I’d moved to leave my position of secrecy, ready to leap in after her, but she broke the surface a little downstream, and seemed to speak with whatever element had slipped within her mind.
She’d argued for a time but then fell quiet as the medicine woman arrived with a much finer skin than I’d made. She’d helped Runa dress, smoothing down the sewn-together pieces, tying knotted leather cords around her neck and around her waist, stepping back to admire her handiwork.
I’d felt the wince of Runa’s spirit as she tingled with the lifeforce of whatever creature had been killed to create the new garment. I’d watched in silence as they returned to the clan, staring at the patch of Runa’s blood that’d transformed into a thicket of wildflowers. Just like my awakening in the forest where I’d killed without understanding, Runa had created life without knowing.
Our journeys of remembrance continued to mirror one another, even if our gifts stayed opposite.
But that was seven days ago.
Seven cruelling days of keeping away.
And it was getting harder and harder to keep my distance.
Some days, Runa returned to the medicine woman and sat with her apprentices, sharing different roots, plants, and flowers, listening attentively as they taught her each property and power.
On other days, she was Solin’s pupil.
I disliked those days as I couldn’t see her. The Fire Reader either taught her in the privacy of their shared lupic or he dragged her around the camp to visit other Nhil, doing whatever a Spirit Master did for his people.
Whenever she disappeared into someone’s lupic with Solin, I relied more and more on the thread glowing faintly from her spirit to mine.
