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“Airlie. The strongest elements mage to appear in Tartora in generations—and now sister to Calista’s queen. She is the only person or thing Evermund has ever put before Tartora. And in return, he won her heart and secured her loyalty to our kingdom. Winning Airlie as our future queen was a coup I could never compete with—and Evermund wasn’t even trying to be strategic. Even when he wavers, he ends up benefiting the kingdom.” He shook his head. “Who wouldn’t want him to be king?”
I drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, remaining silent because what was there to say? After a moment, Nik spoke again, trying for a lighter tone but failing.
“See? Even you can’t bring yourself to say I’d be a better ruler.”
I sat up straight, indignation filling me. I couldn’t stop Nik from thinking about the other people in his life in any manner he chose, but I wasn’t going to let him work me into his twisted narrative.
“Is being a ruler the only future that matters? Is everyone in the kingdom worthless except the best candidate for future king?”
My indignation ballooned inside me. It felt good to let my feelings out instead of having to bottle them inside as I’d been doing all day with Grey. I scrambled inelegantly to my feet and took two steps away before stopping and turning back, my emotions boiling over again.
“I have no interest in a life at court, or at the Guild, or even in the capital. I certainly have no interest in ruling anyone or anything. So I guess that makes me a worthless, useless person, unfit to be loved by anyone!”
“What? Delphine!” He jumped up, striding after me. When he reached for me, I stepped back out of his grasp. “Of course I don’t think about you like that!” He looked part concerned, part irritated.
I crossed my arms and glared at him. “Then why are you so determined to assume that everyone else thinks that way about you? You didn’t lose something that should have been yours, Nik! You weren’t born to rule—that was never your place. So why can’t you let it go? Why can’t you put your energy into finding what role youaresupposed to fill?”
“Delphine, I—”
I waited, eyebrows raised, but he didn’t finish, seeming at a complete loss in the face of my anger. Spinning around, I dashed out of the makeshift cabin toward the ladder.
“Wait!” he called after me, but I didn’t stop. Climbing up to the upper hold, I checked carefully that I was alone before emerging fully and closing the trapdoor behind me with a bang.
If Nik was determined to be pig-headed, he could stew on his own. It had been a long day—a long three days—and I couldn’t take any more emotional upheaval.
ChapterTwenty-Five
Iwent to sleep with my harsh words running through my mind and woke up to hear them repeated again. But I couldn’t bring myself to regret saying them. I had spent plenty of time thinking about how Nik’s status as both an outcast and a prince stood between us, but it had never just been his position. His bitterness and anger were also a barrier, a well of darkness that I wasn’t willing to be dragged into. If Nik couldn’t confront his feelings about his past and move beyond them, then we could never have a future together.
Part of me wanted to run straight down to the hold, but I forced myself up on deck instead. I hadn’t had the chance to spend time in the fresh air for days, and I needed it. It was also the move Grey would be expecting me to make. I didn’t want him to start questioning why I spent so much time below deck.
He smiled when he saw me and waved from his position next to the wheel. As I neared my old spot by the rail, the ship juddered, swinging sharply left. I staggered and just managed to grab hold before I lost my balance.
I looked quickly up at the helm, but nothing in Grey’s face, or the faces of the two men beside him, indicated there was a problem. When I peered over the edge, I saw a section of frothing water, sharp points of rock appearing occasionally among the white bubbles. It looked dangerously close to the edge of the boat and must have been the reason for our abrupt change of direction.
I sighed, wondering why I wasn’t used to sudden movements of the boat by now. The whole journey had been a zigzag as we followed an unseen, narrow course, and I was long since glad I’d been forced into a hammock. Several of those in the bunks had been tossed out in their sleep when the team controlling our passage adjusted our direction in the water.
The stiff breeze that filled the sails was unnatural too, always blowing steadily and never from the wrong direction. I couldn’t connect with it, but Amara’s influence allowed me to recognize it had power laced through it.
I stared across the water, my eyes instinctively looking for landmarks of any kind and finding only the flat expanse of the ocean. I had always longed to see the ocean, but the more days I spent entirely surrounded by it, the less enthusiastic I became. All I wanted now was land beneath my feet again.
We turned a second time, but I felt the wind shift direction first and had the chance to ready myself, gripping the rail with all my strength. Once we settled into our new direction, I considered my last three days. At least in Grey’s cabin, I had been too distracted to take much notice of the wild movements of the ship.
My mind skipped past the revelation about mesmerizing and back to the two days preceding it. Had we really worked so long and so hard only to get nowhere? Grey had never managed anything close to a wall, no matter how many times I told him to picture himself building it stone by stone.
But why?
The shock of Grey’s lesson had driven the pressing question from my mind, but it floated back to the surface now. Why couldn’t anyone else do what I had done as a new apprentice? I was reminded of how I had started out testing children’s seeds without touching them when other healers always used contact. My ignorance kept driving me to do things other healers didn’t even bother trying. But at least in the case of the testing, other healers of equal strength were able to replicate the feat if they wished to do so. What made the wall different?
“Maybe you need to be squeamish,” I said out loud to the breeze, smiling a little at my own foolishness. “A lifetime of fainting and vomiting would be enough to…” My voice trailed into silence as I considered my own words.
What had Grey said about mesmerizing? It had taken a tragedy of epic proportions before someone stumbled on the skill. What if the same thing applied here? Not a large-scale tragedy but a small, intimate one.
My whole life used to feel like a tragedy—a joke I couldn’t bring myself to laugh at. It wasn’t just my squeamishness, although even Clay had said I had an extreme version of it. My father’s teachings had also played a part. From almost my earliest memories I had wished my power away, longing for a different, weaker seed. Activation had been a frightening, impossible prospect, to be refused and avoided.
What if that was the necessity required to birth this skill? Grey was focused solely on the ability to block another healer’s power, and that was what we had focused on in our attempts. But that had only been an incidental side effect of my original purpose. I had built my wall not to keep others out, but to block my own power. What if, before you could block away your ability, you had to really, truly want it gone?
Phoenix soared toward me, but I barely registered his presence, my thoughts racing and whirling. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. I didn’t want my power gone now, but I had already created my wall a thousand times. Bringing it up was instinctive and easy. But could I have done it the first time without that desperation to keep my own power at bay?
