“Very well,” he said. “Zeph, I can escort her back to her chambers if you wish.”
“Just don’t leave the palace without me,” he said, waving us forward.
I laughed, shaking my head as I joined Kairos, and Zeph turned around. “Can I revise our destination?” Kai asked.
I glanced back at the castle thoughtfully. “As long as we don’t leave the palace.”
“We won’t.”
“Then certainly.”
“Good,” he said, offering his arm in the Trifectate way. I took it. “Osmost brought a letter from home,” he told me softly.
“He did?”
He nodded. “From Mother and Father. Cael is to be married to a d’Skorpios girl,” he said.
“Soon?” I asked. Traditionally, desert weddings were very fast—it was only mine that had been planned so far in advance.
His mouth turned down a little. “It’s probably already happened.”
My heart ached. I didn’t like to think of them living their lives when I couldn’t be there with them. “Oh,” I said softly.
“And Aiden is living in Jitra. Courting some Tri girl over the land bridge,” he said to me. “Can you imagine?”
I shook my head. “I can’t imagine the land bridge as a thoroughfare instead of a boundary,” I told him softly. “What else?”
He shook his head, and I nodded. There was so much more, of course, and I mourned the small things I would never hear about because they couldn’t be communicated in a precious, secret letter.
“Have you heard from Rian? We all heard that they raided the Summer Palace.”
He looked at me. “He said he didn’t find any prisoners.”
I drew a breath, nodding. “That doesn’t really mean Calix kept his word, of course.”
“No.”
“But it’s something,” I allowed.
Kairos lifted a shoulder, and I understood. He would never approve of Calix or this marriage, and even if I needed to cling to the hope that my husband still had a shred of humanity left, he didn’t.
“But that’s not why I came here today,” he said.
“It isn’t?”
“No,” he said. “You need to practice.”
We had just discussed our brother’s treason and a secret letter from my family, and yet at the thought of someone overhearing about my ability, I looked around us. There was no one in sight, except guards in the courtyard we were leaving behind to go down the road past the garden.
“No one can hear,” he whispered. “And no one can know. But you still need to do it.”
Nervously, I nodded.
Up ahead, I could see the entrance to the garden, with guards standing there, and they bowed to us as we walked past, not speaking.
Kairos led me farther, under a stone archway. “That leads out from the castle to a walkway in the cliffs,” he said. “We’ll go there next time.”
The path was growing steeper, and we walked down to another stone arch with a heavy iron gate in it, and yet another guard. “My queen,” he greeted me, bowing.
Kairos nodded, and I asked the guard, “Please unlock the gate.”
He obeyed, and we walked out past a small dock with two oared crafts and onto a long, rocky beach that lay in the shadow of the massive cliff the castles stood on.
Far down the beach, Kairos stopped me. “Here will work,” he told me.
“What am I supposed to do?” I asked.
“Use your gift,” he said. “Use it the way you were always meant to. Use it so it won’t control you.”
It wasn’t the same as the desert, but I took my soft slippers off to dig my feet into the cold gray sand and I felt the threads leaping against my hands at the touch of so much stone. We were up on the dry part of the beach, and yet I felt the tide as if it were rushing over my skin, dragging on the rocks, taking smaller bits of sand, and curling it into the gentle, rolling wave in this protected cove.
With a deep breath, I stretched out farther along the threads, to the distant rocks that the violent ocean gnashed against.
“You don’t need to reshape the earth,” Kairos told me, following my gaze with a smile. “See what small things you can do.”
I pulled the silver comb out of my pocket and held it up, curling one tine at a time and straightening them out. “I’ve been doing this,” I told him.
He nodded. “Rake the sand,” he said, pointing down.
I followed where he pointed and looked at the bands of color. There was a dark line that didn’t feel like rock—perhaps it was a shell of some kind, ground up into the sand. There was glittery white, and that was rich and vibrant against my hands. The thick bands of wet gray were heavier, like they were sleeping and didn’t have any interest in being woken.
Sweeping my hand, I watched as the white rock pulled against itself, forming a blob and sliding up the beach.
Smiling, I left it there, and then nudged at the gray sand. It was almost like it sighed against my power, and it let me move it, scooping it up the beach to join the small pile with the white sand.
I saw a series of small stones in the surf, and experimentally I pushed against them. My power felt like it ended by trying to pass through the water, but I remembered being submerged in the communes, and I knew it wasn’t quite so simple.
I reached my power along the sand, under the water, and I connected with the small rocks.
First one, then two, and three, they leaped out of the water. I caught the first and second, and with a grin, Kairos caught the third before it hit my hand. “Good,” he told me.
Laughing, I sprayed him with sand.
It seemed like I was getting stronger. My power wasn’t wrestling me for control—it was there for me to use, in small, secret ways, and despite not having the power himself, Kairos was as good a teacher as he had always been with weapons, or fighting, or even teaching Catryn how to win an argument.
I spent my days at the mill or at the Erudium, where they wanted me to preside over their Consecutio, the day of contests when boys would claim they were men and fight to be eligible to join the army and pick brides.
I heard of the Resistance, in murmurs and mentions that weren’t meant for my ears. Actions here and there in the country; stealing money or crops, distributing it to the people. Protecting the Elementae, and building an army of them.
Calix and I had settled into being married over the past few months. I couldn’t love him, knowing what he’d done, but we were peaceful together, and it felt like enough to build our future on. I had bled once, right after I returned from the communes, and though I tried to explain that my cycles had never been very regular, he didn’t speak to me for days. I dreaded the day that my blood would return, and wondered if it was something he could frighten out of me.