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Why couldn’t I have the damn water?
There was no point in dwelling on it, though, so I wormed my way out of my dress and shut my eyes. My fae-style, fireproof fingerless gloves had to stay on, of course; we always wore those suckers. They were supposed to ground us so we had a way back to ourselves if we got lost in our elements.
When I focused on my fire, the flames erupted over my hands and arms without a problem.
The fire was demanding. It wanted to be free, to burn wildly.
But releasing my hold on it wasn’t as simple as I expected.
I’d basically dug my nails into that control, forcing it into submission. Now that Tariq had told me I wasn’t as in-control as I’d thought, I could see how the flames had been fighting at my hold, forcing me to dig in deeper and hold them tighter.
I focused on my breathing as I slowly released my grip on the flames. But with my subconscious screaming at me that I needed to stop—that I needed to hold the fire tighter, to do whatever I had to in order to stop myself from burning, it was honestly painful.
And it didn’t help anything that I was completely, absolutely terrified of what would happen if I were to actually let go of the power.
But I had to, didn’t I?
I continued forcing myself to release the flames, inch by inch and breath by breath. It was physically painful, like something sharp in my chest, but I ignored that.
I had to ignore that.
As I peeled back my hold on the magic, I felt my fire slowly swell over my skin, stretching further across my bare body. I was burning brighter—the fire was getting stronger.
It took what felt like an eternity (but was probably only half an hour) to finally remove the last bit of my grip on the power. And when I released it, I exploded.
Fire blazed from every damn pore. It burned bright, and hot, surrounding me in reds and oranges and yellows and golds and whites and blues.
It was stunning—absolutely stunning.
And terrifying—absolutely terrifying.
Not the fire. I wasn’t afraid of the fire.
But that feeling of wildness?
Of freedom?
Of breathing deeply for what may have honestly been the first time in my life?
That was overwhelming. And terrifying. And as much as I tried to wrestle with the fear, to stop myself from burying the claws of my control back into the magic, I failed.
I crashed to my knees as I subconsciously wrestled the power back down, and down, and down.
My chest rose and fell rapidly, panic coursing through me along with the emotions charging around in my head like they were bucking bulls.
“Good work,” Flame called from the river. He still faced it, with his back to me so he wasn’t looking at my naked body. “Do it again.”
I groaned, and he laughed.
But my shoulders already felt looser. And my heart already felt lighter.
So I steeled myself for the wrestle, closed my eyes, and focused.
Chapter15
The restof the morning passed so, so slowly. It took me a long time to finally let go of that control—and no matter how hard I fought, my paranoid conscience continued to reign over my reflexes, forcing me to keep clamping down on that magic again, and again, and again.
When lunch time came around, we didn’t bother going back to the castle, just finding some fruit and veggie plants nearby and making a meal out of that. All of us were used to living on whatever we could forage, after so many months crossing the elemental lands and searching for the kings.
