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Thea’s hands were shaking. ‘Wren.’
But her sister wasn’t done. ‘I created the suppressant when I was fourteen and felt the first crackle of power at my fingertips. You showed no signs, but I knew it was only a matter of time. Then, six years ago, when you were crying on the clifftops about that stupid stablehand, I felt it ripple in you as well. So I stole your fate stone and treated it with the same suppressant I had been using for years. You’ve been none the wiser all this time.’
‘But I asked you, that night Cal and Kipp were hurt. I asked you and you laughed in my face. You made me sound insane —’
‘You weren’t ready. And you were so easily deterred, even though you’d felt the power yourself. You dismissed it. You let a few words deny the fabric of your very being.’
Thea stared at her hands, for the first time noticing the blackened marks at her fingertips. ‘Until today,’ she croaked. ‘When I used lightning against arheguld reaper.’
Wren jolted, failing to hide her shock. ‘Yes, well… Magic can overpower even the strongest of alchemies in the most desperate of situations.’
‘How… How do you know so much? Does anyone else know?’
‘I’m a scholar,’ Wren replied matter-of-factly. ‘As soon as I started showing… symptoms of magic, I started my research. But no, no one else knows, though I think that Warsword of yours suspects.’
‘He’s not my Warsword.’ Thea felt sick. ‘But if we have magic, that means… This can’t be, Wren. We’re just orphans abandoned to Thezmarr, nobodies.’
Wren was watching her carefully, monitoring her response. ‘Nobodies don’t have magic, Thea.’
Suddenly, it was all too much. Thea felt none of her lingering pain, none of her exhaustion as she lurched to her feet, heart hammering wildly, breaths coming in short and shallow.
‘Thea, I did it to protect us, to protect you.’
‘No.’ Thea backed away from her sister.
Wren reached for her. ‘How many lives do you think you have left, Thee?’
But Thea could take no more. That pit of power inside her yawned wider, a chasm of magic within sending a blazing current through her veins, demanding to be freed. Pushing aside her injuries, the bloodshed and the black marks at her fingertips, she left the fortress, and for the first time in their lives, Wren did not follow.
Althea Zoltaire found herself atop the jagged black mountain cliffs of Thezmarr, looking out onto the darkening horizon. The sun was long gone and the swollen clouds loomed heavy over the churning seas below.
‘You have magic,’Hawthorne had declared on his porch, what felt like a lifetime ago.
And her sister had laughed when she’d repeated those words.‘Can you imagine?’
All her life, that crackling in her veins, that strange sensation creeping across her skin, that restlessness… Pieces of a long unsolved puzzle started to fit into place.
And then there had been the reaper, struck by the lightning at her hand, its shriek still ringing in Thea’s ears, its blood still coating her skin.
Thea’s fingers went to her fate stone, her curse.
Wren had used her obsession with it against her so cunningly.
Liar, the voice in her head hissed. Her sister had betrayed her.
With a strangled sob, Thea ripped the leather string from her neck and, with all her remaining strength, threw the piece of jade over the edge of the cliff with a scream.
Without its weight, without it suppressing all that came naturally to her, she was knocked back.
Power barrelled into her, lightning crackling at her fingertips, stealing the breath from her lungs. Rasping for air, she staggered forward, something calling to her out on the horizon.
She didn’t know what she was reaching for, but when she did, her arm outstretched, her finger pointing to where the sky met the sea —
Three thick bolts of lightning carved through the realms, brighter and stronger than any she’d ever seen, threatening to split the world apart as if in retribution for her turmoil.
And Thea felt it in her bones, in her heart, in her soul.
The lightning belonged to her, and she, to it.
