I bounded onto another boulder. “Look, I just want to be in control of my mind.”
“Against me,” Tyrrik said shortly, heaving a sigh.
I puffed out a breath and turned to face him. “Against everyone, okay? I want to know I have control of my innermost thoughts, and no one will know them unless I will it.”
He jumped, moving from stone to stone ahead of me.
I hurried to catch up. “Surely you of all people understand?”
He stopped, and I pulled just short of barging into him. He glanced at me over his shoulder, black eyes searching my face. “If I do this, will you trust me?”
I clenched my jaw, keeping the scream of frustration inside. He was always manipulating me. “How about, for once, you give something with no strings attached?”
Darkness flooded his eyes, but I stayed where I was, staring up at him defiantly. He spun and continued over the boulders at a faster pace.
Another no-answer, but I wasn’t about to retract my words.
We reached the apex of the bend and began around the other side. Hopefully we’d take to the air soon. I was eager to stretch my wings again and maybe score that ruby.
“Think of our telepathy as flow of energy,” Tyrrik said when I landed next to him.
I ground to a halt, watching him continue. “What?”
He inhaled through his nose, his face fixed in the mask I knew too well. “You wanted to learn how to block me.”
Everyone, I immediately corrected.
“Do you want to learn or not?” he asked, jaw clenched.
Sheesh, someone wasn’t used to not getting his way. I couldn’t understand his tone. He was offering to teach me but also didn’t want to, and there was another element I couldn’t identify.
“Yes, Tyrrik. I would love to learn,” I said demurely. I peeked through my lashes as he threw me a suspicious look through his narrowed obsidian eyes. When he turned back around, I poked out my tongue.
“When you communicate with me, you send a bolt of energy through our Drae connection. If you send a lot of energy, if your emotion is high, not only do I hear you, I also get a sense of the sentiment behind the words. If you put a lot of energy in and focus, you’d be able to send a visual too.” He faced me, his features soft and open. “Maybe even a smell and touch.”
“Whoa.” Those threads actually did mean something. Staring up at him, I scooted closer as I asked, “Really?”
He grinned, a wide carefree smile, and the boyishness it lent his face stunned me. I stumbled on the uneven ground, and my heart flipped.
“You okay?” he asked, frowning as he closed the distance to help.
I regained my step and ignored his hand but couldn’t stop the blush from creeping up my neck. I forced a laugh and quipped, “Pretty sure I’m a Drae and a Phaetyn.”
“So, if you send out energy to communicate, you simply draw it in, in order to—”
“Become a fortress of silence,” I finished in awe.
“Sure,” he said drily. “Something like that. Want to give it a try?” When I grimaced, he added, “Perhaps try to identify how it feels to communicate telepathically first.”
Testing, testing, teeeeeesssstiiinnng.
Tyrrik winced, and I smirked, but now that he’d pointed it out, I could see the thinnest of tendrils weaving between us when we spoke. I’d seen them intermittently ever since I shifted. I focused on the thin threads of energy; their essence was black and blue, a silky connection linking the two of us. I worked on pulling the blue threads in, but the notion of drawing anything in with my mind was counterintuitive. Even with my Phaetyn powers, I tended to push, and pushing was what I wanted to do here as well, not pull. I suddenly wondered if I would be able to see my Phaetyn power now too. Wow. I could fly, sense crazy far, and now feel and even see my energy. I tried to grab the wispy form, but couldn’t make sense of it. I had to put it in normal terms. Letting my mind wander, I thought of my mother towing water in from the well. Lowering the bucket and hauling it back up, the rope winding around the wooden reel.
Taking a deep breath, I did the same with my energy, imagining it was the full bucket of water and I was at the top of the well, pulling it up to me. Gathering that energy, my energy, closer and closer.
“That’s it,” Tyrrik whispered.
He was right in front of me; I could feel his presence, but I ignored him as I continued drawing the energy in like winding up the rope in the well to get the bucket of water at the end. As our contact disappeared, I shivered at the loss. It was uncomfortable, unsettling. But I kept drawing the energy in until it was within my body. “Now what?”
“Now, you practice holding it there,” he bit out. “See if you can hold it until we take flight.”
I took a firm grasp on the energy and opened my eyes. When my hold didn’t break, I began to walk after Tyrrik again. “That will keep my thoughts private?”
“Your thoughts, yes. I will teach you to block others from invading your mind once you have the hang of pulling your energy in.”
He was right. A light sweat broke on my forehead as I held my energy tight. The idea of keeping others’ thoughts out sounded fantastic.
“You did well.”
I smiled, feeling his pride through the link he sent, though the tendril of Tyrrik’s thought made me battle to keep hold of my own energy. After a moment, I had control again and cleared my throat. “Thanks.”
Over the next thirty minutes of travel, the boulders we hopped over flattened into a clearing. Tyrrik scanned the area as I focused on keeping the thread of energy inside. He jerked his head to a raised shelf and grunted in satisfaction as we crossed to it to find a small drop on the other side.
“Think you can manage that?” he asked.
It was a quarter of the drop of yesterday, but I couldn’t manage a witty retort. Instead, I nodded agreeably. “I should be okay with that.”
“You can release your energy now. We’ll need to shift.”
I’d been wanting to for more than twenty minutes now. With a heartfelt groan, I let the thread fly free. My energy shot straight to the other Drae, and I shivered in bliss as we reconnected. My gaze went to his face which lit with a fierce joy as our energies brushed against each other.
That . . . seemed unusual. Unease skirted down my spine at what that could mean. He better not tell me I was his other half or something stupid like that. “Umm, so all Drae can do energy thread stuff, right?”
His face smoothed. “No.”
I felt him pull his energy back, and I narrowed my eyes. “No, what?”
He schooled his features. “Not all Drae can do ‘energy thread stuff.’”
“But Drae other than us can, right?” I wasn’t sure I could handle that kind of special right now.
“Yes, Ryn. We’ve already established we’re not the only two Drae that can do energy mojo.”
I grinned. “You said mojo. I knew I was rubbing off on you.”
He rolled his eyes, and the air around him shimmered.
Drak, he’d known I was procrastinating. I could feel him gathering his power into himself.