“I can fight! Let me kill him!” Ryland yelled, his anger ripping out of him before Wyn and Sain placed their hands against him, his face calming a bit.
Ryland’s outburst was the breaking point for Ilyan. The calm he had projected evaporated as he rose up to his full height, towering over the table toward Ryland. The edges of his voice rumbled as his anger surged in an oppressive weight. “Not until you see us all as your allies. Including Joclyn.”
“And she can do that? She tried to kill me!” Ryland countered, his eyes narrowing dangerously as he stared into Ilyan. Although he tried to stay strong under the power of Ilyan’s aura, I could see his resolve lessen, his anger dampening as he curled away.
“She has been trained; she is strong. And the sight has shown us that she will be ready! I know she will be!” Ilyan roared, his confidence in me like a rolling balm over my skin. “Besides, they do not want you. They would rather see my head on a pike, and Joclyn’s body in a pit. Would you like to be bait, Ryland?”
“She will never be fit to face our father; she is weak and will get us all killed,” Ryland hissed through gritted teeth.
The two men stared malice into each other from over the table. My jaw clenched while Ilyan’s muscles tensed in warning. I could feel Ilyan’s anger move off him in waves as it intersected with mine. My pain and anger at Ryland’s words grew until I couldn’t control it, until it boiled out of me in a torrent that I couldn’t help but release.
“I am not weak,” I growled through the tight clench of my jaw, while my magic rippled and bubbled until I was all but willing to let it explode out of me.
Ilyan moved back to an upright position at the snap of my voice, his arm moving around my waist in an attempt to pull me into him, but I moved away from it. My anger and pain mixed together violently, and my breathing picked up. I knew I should accept Ilyan’s comforting touch—that I should calm myself—yet I couldn’t. I didn’t think I needed it.
Right then—even through the anger, and the pain, and the fear—I could still feel myself. I could still feel Ilyan’s dream. Somehow, I was controlling the waves of fear and anger, instead of letting them control me.
My thoughts remained, and when I looked up to Ryland, when my eyes met the blue of his for the first time since I had walked in this room, I didn’t feel panic, and the walls didn’t turn to blood.
I just looked at Ryland, letting all the things he had said to me over the past few days meld together into a furious conviction that took over every part of me. I could hear his disgust at discovering I was a Drak. I could feel his fist against my cheek, his taunt that I was nothing with Ilyan, nothing without him. That was wrong, though, because I was something.
I grit my teeth as my muscles rippled, the blinding rage dimming my vision.
“I do not need you, or anyone else to make me strong.” I didn’t take my eyes away from him as I spoke. I could see his own anger pulsing just under the surface, waiting to escape and attack me, no matter how hard Wyn and Sain tried to control it.
My magic flashed once, and I slammed my fist into the table, a powerful ripple of my magic resounding through the room in a tangible cloud. It moved through the others in a gust of wind that sent them off balance, their clothes and hair whipping around them in the torrent.
I could hear their yells of surprise as the wind grew, the roar of my magic a snap in their ears. My magic exploded into the paper under my hand as the power moved through the air, flying through the ancient fibers and into the space that surrounded us.
Like the ripples of a wave against smooth water, my magic surged again as I prompted it. The flux of energy saturated the map as the markings that dotted the surface wiggled and moved over the top. Ink spread over the paper as my magic did, thick black lines rising from the map like wisps of smoke, the grey vapor growing and multiplying as they moved and danced in the air above the aged paper.
I didn’t look away from Ryland as my magic spread through the forest, focusing on everything that surrounded us. I saw the fine, red hairs of a Trpaslík’s beard, and the glowing green rocks of a fire. I saw them in the shadows of my eyes as I looked through Ryland, the images becoming part of me. I brought them into me, pushing them into the inky tendrils that floated above the map, morphing them, changing them into a perfect replica of what we were surrounded by.