The threads felt thickened, pulsing with life and energy and making my breath rush faster. The wind swept through the open space powerfully, and I felt like it was trying to push me away. I pressed on against it, seeing two bowls on pedestals the height of my waist on either side of the room. One, I could see from several paces away, was full of fire, still burning, despite the wind and the fact that there was no evidence of a way someone other than me had been there—or could have even breached such a place.
I went toward the other bowl. It was full of liquid, but it was too shadowed and still to tell what it was.
“Water,” I realized, walking toward the middle of the space. I could see for miles in either direction, out into the bluish darkness of uninhabitable mountains and back over the lightening blush of the valley. The wind pushed at my skirts and my hair, cooling my skin. “Wind. Fire. Earth.”
The second I stepped in the center, the nexus of the four elements, the threads around me snapped. I felt my power like a growing thing, rising from the rock and weaving through my skin. The rush—the power—was unlike anything I had ever known, like it was wrapping me and seeping into me at the same moment.
Like this place was the source. Like it was the fount of my power.
Drawing a deep breath, I pulled myself out of the center, and it was only then that I noticed the dark stain where I had stood. It was old, months old at least. Perhaps because of my awareness of this place, I knew what it was without explaining it—blood. And more than that, I suspected I knew who it belonged to.
Kata had been here. This was the Earth Aede. This was the place she had visited, the place where my power had retreated when harm had been done to it, when my husband sought to wipe it from the face of the earth. It had been waiting for Kata to come and align it with the other elements, waiting to be free.
Without knowing it, Galen had brought me to the source of my strength. The source of my power.
I held up my hands. This power coursing through me was eternal, indestructible, but I was not. I only had a finite amount of time with this gift, and I was wasting it, watching as others with my power were tortured, experimented upon, hunted, and killed.
I would not stand idly by anymore.
My heart beating hard, rushing my blood fast and powerfully through my veins, making me both shiver and feel superhuman in the same intoxicating moment, I went back to the mouth of the cave and looked out.
My hands rested over my stomach. I couldn’t feel her in there yet, but I knew in that moment she would never be raised by Calix. Maybe I would have to wait until she was born, or maybe Kairos and I could find a way to stand with the Resistance before then, but I would not let her come into a world where she watched her mother stand passively to the side.
I was trembling with the frightening clarity of my thoughts, but slowly I walked down the stairs back to the outcrop Kairos had left me on. With barely a thought, the staircase to the site shifted and faded back into rock, and pressing my hand to my heart, I sat down on the outcrop.
It was only moments later that Zeph, Theron, and two other guards came racing out, Galen shouting orders at them to search the city.
“What’s going on?” I called.
Galen halted, spinning around and taking long moments before looking up enough to see my perch.
“What in three hells are you doing!” he roared, his hands on his hips.
I folded my hands in my lap. “I couldn’t sleep. I came out here.”
I saw Zeph lean in, and from the scowl that Galen returned to him, I wondered if Zeph had previously offered a similar explanation.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “What are you looking for?”
“You,” he said crossly. “You weren’t there, your brother wasn’t there, I thought you …” He trailed off.
“Ran away?” Kairos asked, coming from another exit with a skin of liquid. Osmost swooped and landed on his shoulder, and he walked past Galen without looking concerned. “I tried to convince her to.”
This made Galen’s glare worse. “Well, what on earth are you doing up there?” he demanded. “You’re climbing? In your condition?”
Kairos raised an eyebrow as he stepped onto the stairs.
I saw color in Galen’s cheeks. “Oh, hells,” Galen said, turning away. “Do whatever you want.”
Zeph chuckled.
Kairos climbed up and handed me the skin. “It’s some kind of juice they make from flowers,” he told me.
“Thank you,” I said as he sat beside me, letting his legs hang off the edge. “Why don’t you all come up here?” I called. “The sun will rise any minute.”
Zeph and Theron seemed to take this as an order from me and immediately started trotting up the staircase. Galen crossed his arms and drew a long breath, making his chest rise under his arms. He looked up at me, and even at such a distance, meeting his eyes hit me hard.
I wondered if he would come with me if I joined the Resistance.
He let out the breath and climbed the stairs.
Zeph and Theron crested the outcrop, and Zeph sprawled out on the rock beside me, while Theron stood behind us. Galen was slow climbing the stairs, and I turned to see where he was. He was stopped, a few stairs below the top, and he was looking at all of us, at the rock, at the sky. His throat worked, and his eyes skittered around again as he took another step.
Was he scared of heights? Surely calling attention to it wouldn’t soothe his pride. I met his gaze, questioning, and his throat bobbed again, but he came to the top of the stairs, and stood beside Theron. Galen clasped his hands behind his back, and we all waited in silence as the blue blushed to pink, then to a bright orange, then the whole sky burned with the raging color and light that matched my traitorous heart, and the true, full beauty of Trizala was revealed.
Control
The vestai’s wife took us on a tour of the city that lasted most of the day. With little sleep and after the exertions of the day and night before, my strength wasn’t what it should have been. It worked to my advantage, though, when I was allowed to rest and their people came to greet me, bringing me babies and children to kiss like it was a blessing.
I kept my purple hood off. Everyone asked me the questions with or without it, and after the first time or two of issuing the lie, Galen answered for me, telling curious folk that the Resistance had staged a rebellious act and soldiers had had to put it down while I was caught in the middle of it. I was grateful. The words turned to ash on my tongue.
That afternoon, I ate a little and promptly vomited it back up. Thoroughly exhausted, I went to lie down in my chamber, not expecting to sleep.
My baby seemed to have other ideas, however, and I woke to Galen gently shaking my shoulder. The big windows showed nothing but darkness, and I yawned.
“I missed the sunset,” I said.
His eyebrows pulled together. “You fell asleep,” he told me.
Sitting up in the bed, I saw he had a plate of food in one hand. “What’s that?”
“The vestai’s wife made these,” he said, pointing to pale, hard-looking squares. “They’re baked ground grains. She said they were the only thing she could eat when she was in her first few months with her sons.”
I took one, biting into the crisp edge. It didn’t have much flavor at all, and I could see why they would be easy to stomach. I nodded, taking another bite.