Eogan waits until I’m all the way to the other side of his cottage before calling after me. “Going to give up that easy?”
“You’re insane!” I holler back and keep walking.
A sharp laugh pierces my irritation. “Maybe so, but why did the storm stop so abruptly?”
“How should I know?”
“Why didn’t the storm keep building?”
I halt in my tracks. He’s right. It cut short. The friction was still forming, I could feel it.
So why did it stall?
I wait a full minute before giving him the pleasure of seeing me return. When I do, I have a scowl plastered on my face just for him. “What’s your point?”
“Does it always stop that quickly?”
I purse my lips. No. It never ends that way. “It doesn’t stop until someone or some animal is dead.”
“Always?”
I nod. Unnerved. Confused. “What’s your point? How’d you do it?”
“You’ve never been able to stop it at all?”
I shake my head and wait for him to answer my question.
He strides over and puts his hand out. “May I?”
I look at Colin, who’s sitting with his legs crossed on the ground. Even though seated, his whole body can’t seem to stop bouncing. He tips his head as if to say it’ll be okay.
“Fine.”
How I didn’t notice it before, I’m not sure. But this time when Eogan’s fingers touch me, I feel it immediately. That sense of calm. It’s like a smooth warmth, trickling through my insides. Dimming the thirst for violence in my blood. I look into his eyes and ask the only question I need an answer for. “How?”
Eogan removes his hand and shrugs. “No idea. It works differently on each Uathúil. Usually acts as a block, and usually I don’t have to be touching them.” He smirks. “As you saw when Colin so zealously tried to kill me. But with you . . .” That curious look emerges again. “With you it displays as a calming influence. Interesting.”
“Does that mean you can control me?”
“No. I can just dim the reaction. And only for a matter of seconds, I suspect. If you create a hailstorm on us, it’ll be the last piece of beauty we ever see. Elementals are on a level all their own.”
Great.
He winks at Colin. “So try and avoid angering the storm siren, okay?” Then to me he says, “You ready to try again?”
Colin hops up. “Have her fight me! We can practice against each other.”
“She’d kill you, mate. In fact, why don’t you go stand at the tree line for a few minutes.”
“What? She can’t kill me!” Colin scoffs. He shoots a smile my way and kisses one of his biceps. “Can’t kill magnificence.”
Eogan sighs. “She’d disintegrate you faster than you could blink, Colin. Go stand at the tree line.”
He doesn’t move. Just eyes me as if I’m some strange animal he needs to figure out. “Well, how long’s it goin’ to take? When can we practice together? We gotta get on it—you saw what kind of weapons Bron’s got. And what they did to that mountain! What if they come back to finish us off tonight?”
“Bron’s not coming tonight; that ship was a practice run. It could be weeks before they launch full-scale, and either way, we’re going to take as long as you two need. So go. Stand. By. The tree line.”
Colin throws his hands up. “Of all the—”
“Colin.” Eogan’s deep tone takes on a warning. “I’m not jesting.”
The boy’s face falls. He lets out an “Argh” and stomps off with his head thrown back dramatically. As if the Hidden Lands creator has conspired against him to ruin his life.
Eogan looks at me. “Ready?”
I nod, then flinch as he squeezes my misshapen hand.
“Feel that? Tap into it.”
For the next four hours Eogan prods and provokes me, trying to find what triggers will set off my curse. Sometimes his tactics work, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes I just haul off and swear at him for being such a complete oaf and then clomp off the field. At those moments I hate the training. I hate him. I even hate Colin for perking up from his moody tossing of pine-cones at squirrels to ask Eogan if I can fight yet. Each time, Eogan cautions the boy to “give her space before she returns from her tantrum.” Which is wise since they’d both most likely be roasted meat if they moved even an inch toward me.
But I do return from my “tantrums.” Again and again. Because something about Eogan’s touch makes me want more. It’s neither hungering for my body in the perverse way men crave, nor punishing. It’s different. It’s discovering that, for a few seconds, he can calm the storm within me before it destroys my world again.
It’s safety.