Mother-of-kracken.
I stall.
The air is wet and cold and drippy and enchanted.
And it tastes of magic.
I drink it in along with the magnificent forest spinning around us. It’s one from another era, much older than Faelen, and gracefully woven in and around hillsides of pale meadows meandering all the way down to touch a slumbering gray-jeweled lake. And it’s completely undefiled by hovels or roads or chopped-down trees.
My skin tingles with the concentration of old magic drifting in the air, and I half expect the breeze to carry songs up from the wood folk or the cries of the ancient elfin battles. My lungs fill with its delicate melody as wisps of fog trail along the skyline, like translucent fingertips lacing through the trees, spreading their aura and the scent of the day’s summer storm.
The warm earth reaches up through my boots, as if it’s alive, pulsing. This place is so unlike anything I’ve ever sensed or seen, and yet something within my cracked soul says I’ve been here before. That I know it just as I know the song it’s whispering. It invokes a homesickness I don’t understand, and my heart is threatening to weep, to stay, to live and drink and drown in it, leaving the world and war behind.
“What is this place?” I whisper.
“The Valley of Origin.” Eogan sounds as in awe as I am. “A place used centuries ago to worship the Hidden Lands’ creator. Until the five kingdoms divided and most people forgot about it.”
He stands there allowing me to soak it in until all too soon our silence grows full of self-consciousness. I can feel it—the charge in the air thickening. I search for something to talk about, aware that from a foot away he’s watching me, not the landscape.
“Tell me about your parents, Nym.”
Not the topic I was searching for. I shrug like there’s nothing to say.
“Do you . . . ?” His voice catches. As if he doesn’t even want to ask. “Do you remember how they . . . died?”
Yes. I glance at my hand. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Did they have other children?”
I fake a laugh. “I think their hands were too full with me.”
“I’ll bet they were.”
My sharp glare is met by that breathtaking smirk of his. Oaf.
“They were older. My mum said they tried for years to have babies, and when they finally did . . . they got me. The world’s anomaly.”
“Were they happy toward you?”
“Yes,” I answer slowly, unsure of what his point is. “Well . . .”
“Well?”
Until I murdered them. I shift away from him and kick a pebble in the grass. Can we just get on with the day’s lesson already?
He stares down at the lake. “Has it ever occurred to you that maybe you were born for such a time as this? And not just because of the war, but for the people who need you?”
I frown. “Has it ever occurred to you that I’m sick of talking about this? Let’s just train.”
His smile turns stubborn. “You don’t have to talk. But you can’t deny that for as long as the war has been going on outside Faelen, her society has waged its own internal war on its lowest-caste citizens. You should know. You’ve been a victim of it.”
My stomach clenches. I’ve no interest in reminiscing about what I’ve been a victim of. I turn away, but his hand grabs mine. “Look, all I’m asking you to consider is that you have the power to change things. What if the reason you were given that power is to defend those without any? Both from external and internal harm. Like a shieldmaiden for your people.”
“A shieldmaiden who’s spent the first half of her life as a monster?”
I tug away, but he won’t release me. Instead he steps closer and looks down with eyes full of pity. “You didn’t know what you were doing.”
I don’t want his blasted pity. “Right, and that makes it better.”
“No, but it’s a far better explanation than simply assuming you’re cursed. And it’s a hulls of a lot better than wasting your life regretting the gift you’ve been given. Right now you’re striving after a redemption you don’t even believe is attainable.”
I doubt “gift” is what my parents were calling it as they burned alive in their beds. “It’s not a gift, and there is no redemption for me.” I jerk my arm until he releases me to walk away.
“And that right there is why you can’t fully control your ability. Because you’re afraid to believe better about yourself.”
“Because I know myself, and I’ll continue to hurt people. I’ll hurt Faelen, and I’ll end up hurting Colin and you. Just like I hurt Breck.”
“Breck?”
I close my eyes. Litches. Why can’t you just shut it, Nym?
“What do you mean? What’d you do to Breck?”
I swallow.
“Nymia.”
Fine.