“Reminding your heart of who you are, and what your Elemental race is for. What you were created for.” His chin brushes my hair as he leans in, sending goose bumps down my skin. “Now this is the part where you let go.”
What? How? I start to panic, but something inside of me shifts, as if the magic filling my lungs is speaking and I should listen. And I know instinctively that it’s stirring me, inhabiting me even as it’s whispering that it’s incapable of inhabiting evil. The thought emerges that, therefore, there must be a goodness within me that predates my curse. I exhale and cautiously allow the siren within me to respond.
I brace for it. But instead of my power exploding like a thunderstorm, it comes as a gentle tide. A heart surrender. Almost painful in its approach, beckoning tears to my eyes as it renders my defenses nonexistent. And suddenly I can’t remember why I ever needed them anyway because the very power I’ve spent my life cowering from is, at its core, pure.
A mist forms on my face, my neck, my lips.
Eogan’s hand slips down to mine. “Open your eyes.”
His face is the first thing I see. Tiny, jeweled water droplets cling to his dark eyelashes. The drips shiver as he smiles before they release to join the millions of others floating around us—around the entire valley—in rainbow-lit colors. As if the world’s gravity no longer holds sway over the elements.
I stretch out my hand and the rainbow mist collects on my skin, molding to me like a colored suit of glass. I lift my arm higher and the water ripples into place along it like crystalline armor. Then I’m reaching farther, toward the distant lake, where I can feel the energy flow as I pull at the air. The lake waters churn and move, no longer gray, but brilliant and alive as a geyser shoots up out of it to follow the arc of my hand. I tug it harder and, like a serpent, it rises into the sky, ready to do my bidding. Beside me, Eogan swears.
I release the water in a giant splash and turn to the storm clouds lacing the valley. With a flick of my wrist, they crack and release a lightning bolt, but before it can land, I tug it closer. It hits down ten feet in front of us. The static from it stays in my fingers as it zaps back and forth on the watery shield. I lift my hand to show Eogan.
He starts to touch it, and when I pull back because it’ll kill him, he smirks and grabs my hand, then presses it to the center of his shirt-covered chest.
The energy releases a glow on his body, and suddenly his skin is fire and lightning and northern night skies, igniting the air around us. He grins, eyes brilliant as they smolder down at me, his heartbeat alive against my hand, sending my stimulated lungs lurching into my throat.
I swallow and try to relegate my emotions back toward some level of safety while the storm in his eyes crackles in amusement. “You have no idea how extraordinary you are,” he murmurs, and suddenly I can feel the hunger pouring off of him as thick as it’s leaching from me.
My jaw drops. The clouds in the distance roar and the floating droplets ascend to create new clouds of their own as a gale picks up, whipping my hair back.
Eogan raises an eyebrow, and his eyes blaze. As if the same lightning storm assembling above us is now poised at the edge of his gaze, determining whether or not it will engage. His breath shudders as my mind forms a definition for the look in his eyes: Craving. Conflict. Apology. Written in colored-light reflections across his handsome face. The pulse in his neck quickens. His inhale is hesitant as his gaze slides down to my lips.
My rib cage curls. Wavering. Terrifying me with how badly I want him to kiss me again.
He pushes a hand along the side of my neck and into my hair, then runs a thumb down my jawline as he tilts his face to hover an inch from mine. His finger stops beneath my trembling lower lip.
My world pauses.
His eyes flicker. An agonized smile, and suddenly he’s clearing his throat. But his voice is still husky when he says, “Look up.”
Confused, I trail his gaze up to the storm surrounding us.
The winds should be ripping the ground up from beneath us and tearing the forest and the sky from its very axis because the hurricane is stronger than anything I’ve ever created. But instead, everything remains untouched, seeming to move in time with the chaos, in a wild cyclone of light and water and rainbows, a shield of lightning and snow with us directly in its eye. Abruptly, I am falling, swimming, flying apart inside as the siren within me finds the door to her cage flung open and deliverance to be near. Deliverance. Freedom. The words sear themselves to my heart.
I smile at Eogan. I can feel control emerging.
“Now do you believe you were created for better?” Eogan whispers.
His body trembles as his mouth grazes my skin just before he rests his chin in my hair. I close my eyes.
When he sighs, it’s one of self-control.
After a moment, he pulls away and his face has already transformed into his very official, disgustingly polite self. “Come on. We need to get you back, or you’ll be late for Adora’s party.”