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His mother? The words pierced my shock, bringing confusion. But for once Grey wasn’t guarding every word, and he didn’t notice his slip or my reaction to it.
Grey had previously said his mother died just after they washed up on the mainland, but his current claim that she had been his activator had the ring of truth to it. When he’d told me about her death, it hadn’t been my own ability that had perceived his words as truth but rather…
My thoughts tangled and stuttered, still struggling to take in Grey’s revelation.
“How…how is that possible?” I asked. “You’re telling me that anyone with a strong enough healing seed could learn a skill like that, and yet no one has discovered it except those mages out on the island?”
“They discovered it before the island,” he said. “Sometimes new developments only spring from desperate necessity. I suppose this particular skill needed a disaster as large as the destruction of an entire kingdom to be discovered. How do you think my ancestors escaped the invaders a century ago—and without anyone knowing about it?”
I massaged my temples. “So, you’re telling me that as a healer I can force someone to believe a lie? Any lie at all?”
“Not any lie.” Grey sounded regretful. “The certainty will fade in the face of direct evidence to the contrary. For instance, if a traveler gets told they stayed in a red house in the last town they visited, they’ll believe it for the rest of their life. But if you tell someone the house they currently live in is red, they’ll shake off the mesmerization in a day because they can see with their own eyes that it isn’t true.”
I considered his words against the examples I’d seen. Miranda had become confused as soon as I showed up, starting to question everything and quickly agreeing to leave. Since Grey had mesmerized her into believing no one from her old life cared about her or wanted her back, that made sense. The simple fact of my arrival had provided evidence that broke the mesmerizing effect.
In my case, there had been no direct evidence available to me about the islanders or their intentions, so I’d had no way to shake off the false beliefs. I’d only managed it because Nik had made me doubt Grey himself strongly enough that I used my wall.
I shook my head at my own foolishness. I should have been using the wall since the moment of my arrival instead of being lulled into a false sense of security by Grey’s manner. I had thought that if Grey made physical contact and tried to push his power into me, I would feel it and be able to take action, but it had been so subtly done, I’d missed it completely.
A new thought struck me. “Can you mesmerize someone without touching them, like with truth telling?”
“Unfortunately not. It’s the greatest flaw to the skill.”
I held in my look of disgust at his disappointment over the limitation. Instead, I tried to remember if Grey had touched me before telling me the story about his history. He must have, but I couldn’t recall the exact details of our interaction.
“It’s especially a pain if the mesmerization needs to be refreshed,” he added.
“Refreshed? I thought it would last forever if it wasn’t directly refuted by physical evidence to the contrary.”
“You’ve studied with the law keepers, haven’t you?” He sounded impatient. “There are shades of gray between no evidence at all and indisputable physical evidence. With enough circumstantial evidence, the mesmerization can start to fade. That’s the mistake I made with the last batch of recruits.” His eyes darkened. “I got arrogant and didn’t refresh the initial mesmerization. I tried to gather too large a group before returning to the desert, and I lost control of the situation.”
From the vitriol in his voice, Grey didn’t like losing control.
Had he reinforced his mesmerization on me? I thought back over our interactions, remembering several occasions when he’d found a casual reason to touch me.
I suppressed a shudder, feeling a sudden desire to scrub every inch of my skin. How was I ever going to bring myself to let him touch me again?
“So this is what makes the islanders so dangerous,” I said, remembering that I was supposed to be pretending they were my main worry, not Grey. But even as I said the words, they didn’t make sense. “But so far they’ve attacked with a blight on our crops and a storm. Those must have been the work of plants and elements mages and doesn’t have anything to do with mesmerizing.”
“Doesn’t it?” Grey looked amused. “I’ll admit, the storm was the work of their elements mages, but are you so sure about the blight?”
“Healing power doesn’t interact with plants,” I said, still sure of that, even in the face of Grey’s revelation.
He smiled slowly, the expression unsettling. “How do you know there ever was a blight?”
“Of course there was! I’ve seen the aftermath of it myself all across northern Tartora.”
“You saw a field infected with blight?” He raised both eyebrows.
I shifted on my feet, impatient. “I saw the fields burned by the Guild mages. You said mesmerizing doesn’t work if someone can see the truth with their own eyes, so there must have been blight. This ability doesn’t allow you to control someone’s actions and force them to burn a field.”
Grey chuckled. “Do you really think you can’t control someone through manipulation?” He shook his head at my apparent naïveté. “The islanders have a hundred years of practice, remember? Although even I had to salute the elegance of their approach in this instance.”
I stared at him, and he instantly modified his expression. “A terrible thing, of course.”
His words rang false in my mind. Grey didn’t care about the lost crops or the ruined farmers. But I couldn’t call him out on it. I wanted all the answers he could give me.
“Are you telling me they manipulated those farmers into burning their own crops?”
