Warm arms came out of the fog and wrapped around me, and Kata hugged me as the fog around us grew thicker still.
“Kata!” I cried, pressing my face into her neck. So many emotions rushed through me like pebbles tumbling down a slope, and I looped my arms around her shoulders, hugging her tight.
“I have you,” she whispered to me. “I have you. You must have been so frightened, but you’re safe now.”
“Was that you today?” I asked. “With the ice?”
“No,” she said. “That was another member of the Resistance. There are many Elementae who have joined us.”
“So it was true,” I said. “What they were saying about hunting and killing those with power?”
She drew back from our hug. “I told you that, before you were married.”
My chest felt tight. “I know,” I said.
“And you didn’t think it mattered to you,” she said softly. “Until now.”
For all I spoke of caring for my people, of wanting to lead and save, she was probably right. The weight of this stung, but she put her hand in mine.
I nodded. “I have the power you always thought I did.”
“I figured,” she said, her mouth tight. “I’m sorry it’s not what you wanted.”
I looked at our hands. “If we were back in the desert, this would just be one more thing for us to share. One more thing that makes us sisters in the way that birth didn’t. And maybe I was stupid,” I said, “but I married him. And I’m here. And these powers are illegal, and he hates the people who practice them. And I’m married to him, Kata.”
“You’re not stupid,” she said fiercely. “You protected your family. I would have done the same if I had the chance.”
“Can you fix me?” I asked her. “You can heal—surely you can heal this.”
She frowned. “You aren’t broken. You don’t need to be fixed.”
“Calix knows of an elixir that can take powers away from Elementae. If we can find that before him, I could drink it. I could use it—”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Such a thing doesn’t exist. There is no elixir. Whatever errand he’s on, he won’t succeed. These powers are part of you; they are as essential to your body as your blood. They cannot be removed or rejected.”
“How can you know? You were so young when you left the islands—you barely know about your own power.”
She pulled away from me, crossing her arms. “I know enough! I’ve never heard of something that can curb elemental powers. Even the genocide didn’t destroy them.”
“Then close the Earth Aede. You opened it; you must be able to close it.”
An indignant huff came out of her. “The powers retreated to the Aedes because of the genocide, Shalia. Like a child who runs and hides when their life is threatened. Like I had to hide in the desert after my family was murdered. Like I still hide, because if your husband knew there was still a daughter of the high priestess alive, my life would be forfeit. It is not as simple as opening a box and closing it again. And even if I could—it would remove all the Earth powers. You would do that for your own gain?”
“No,” I told her, desperate, my hands beginning to shake. “But there has to be a way. I can’t control it. It just happens, and I can’t stop it. And soon someone will be able to tell that it’s me.” Visions ripped through my mind, of rage on my husband’s face, of blood and sharp things meant to punish me for this power I never wanted.
“Stop,” she said, and I looked up to her. “You can control it. You have to use it—that’s why it’s unpredictable now.”
“How do I learn to control it? How did you?”
“It’s different for me.” She held out her hand, and the mist curled to meet it in a thin, swirling plume. “Most of my kind show their gifts very young. My gift never arrived. Not that I could see. And then the night came that they say the Three-Faced God Walked, and I could feel my power. And then the powers of so many other people, rushing to me, overwhelming me. Using me as a conduit,” she said. “And—well, you remember when I knew the Aedes needed to be opened again.”
My fingers curled around hers. She had been so sick, and I’d never been more scared for her. We brought her to the lake at Jitra, and the water had healed her, but the search consumed her after that. That’s when she started to leave, and my parents refused to let me go with her. She left first for weeks, and then for months, and I had carried on without my best friend.
“I know …” I rubbed my fingers over her skin in our clasped hands, and she gripped me back, binding us tight, letting me confess my shame. “I never asked about the Night the Three-Faced God Walked. Your nightmares … I didn’t want to ask. I didn’t want to know.”
“And I didn’t tell you,” she said, her voice rough. “Because I love you. Because I’ve always loved you, and I don’t want you to know.”
“But I love you too,” I told her, “and I want to know what you’ve suffered.”
She nodded, not looking at me but at the water. “I don’t remember much. I was eleven. I was a child. I was with my brother when the siege came. People panicked. I was locked in a room with my brother while my mother and sisters went to fight, and my father went to protect them. My mother’s gift was legendary. She could rule the oceans.
“I don’t know what happened. How it could have been. Rian was there, trying to help the Vis people in the war. My mother and all her court were there, in their full power, in their full glory. How could one man have fought them and won?” She looked at me like I would have an answer.
“I heard they surrounded the islands. He had so many men he just overwhelmed you,” I told her.
She shook her head. “It was more than that. They found me and my brother, and my brother started swirling the air into a tornado, trying to protect us. They stabbed him to death.”
I took her other hand, desperate to comfort her, desperate to forget what it felt like to watch my brother burn.
She drew in a short, unsteady breath. “And they spent hours hurting me. Trying to make my gifts appear, but they never came. So they bound up anyone who didn’t have powers—with Rian tied right beside me—and they said we would watch the unclean people be sacrificed to the God. As if they weren’t planning on murdering us too—as if there was any way they would have purposefully left anyone alive to remember.”