Page 17 of A Crown of Tears and Treason (The Curse of Silver Secrets and Cruel Shadows #1)

Chapter

Seventeen

EVIE

“ I t should have been a normal night. I went to bed, plotting my fiance’s murder and checking for any traps hidden between my sheets. Then I get jolted awake by a six foot five Commander telling me one of my cousins might die and that the Blood Brotherhood master healer, who I trust less than their king and queen, are doing their best to save said cousin. I thought for sure Dax had gotten into a row with his poisonous fiancee. Then I found out it was you,” Allie said, her forehead crinkled with concerned wrinkles. “And that you fought the most venomous snake in all of Malhaven. In your own house.”

“And I won.” I raised my steaming cup of tea to Allie’s face in the portal and took a sip. I shivered at the bitter taste, but Goose had been right. It helped with the pain–and to give me some courage to seek out Adara later.

“You did.” Allie sighed in relief and gave me a small smile, before the creases returned with a vengeance. “I still can’t believe their magic can freeze us. Bastards. How did you break past it?

“I honestly don’t know.” My brush with death was still a blur. “One second I couldn’t move, and then my chest heated up. I felt…” I licked my lips. My gaze wandered, willing my mind to grasp onto the shreds of memories trying to escape my grasp. “Like an inferno tried to break out of me. It let me move enough to cut myself, but I couldn’t control it. Or direct it.”

When I finally looked back at Allie, she was staring at me with a strange expression on her face. Was that…pride?

“It’s always unnerving when your magic first manifests,” she said, beaming.

The cup almost slipped from my fingers. “That wasn’t your magic?”

“It was yours .”

The realization struck me with the power of a hundred lightning bolts. Thousands.

I’d done magic.

I had done magic .

Well, the magic had done whatever it had wanted, but I’d been its very willing conduit.

“I did it,” I said slowly, not really believing it, a smile blooming on my own face. “I did it!”

“You did!”

“I–” I tried jumping to my feet, but the bands swathing my leg burned. The skin was still raw and red underneath the white gauze. I hissed and sat back down. “I can’t walk, but I did that .”

Allie pierced me with her forest gaze, endless and intimidating. “Do it again.”

“What?”

Allie nodded encouragingly, scrapping her chair closer to her own side of the portal. “Do it.”

“I don’t know how I managed the first time.”

“You’ve felt magic through my spell. Your power must be hungry to come out after that first whiff, so let it. Don’t worry, I’ll guide you through it.”

I wiggled in my chair, careful not to jostle my leg, eager to stretch my power and find its limits. There was still a hint of hesitation dampening my enthusiasm, but I shook my head, splayed my palms on the table, and took a deep, centering breath. “Let’s do it.”

I was in the Blood Brotherhood Capital, almost two months away from marrying Zandyr, and doing magic. I blinked away the ghosts of my parents’ disappointed gazes, instead focusing on Allie’s smiling face.

“Close your eyes and breathe deeply,” Allie said, voice a lullaby.

I did as she instructed, blood pumping fast. I flexed my fingers on top of the table, grounding myself in the feel of the wooden grooves.

“Reach inside yourself. Remember the sensation that coursed through you when you felt the first tendrils of magic. How was it?” Allie went on.

I frowned. “There weren’t any tendrils.”

“No?”

“No. It was more of a…burst?”

“Burst. Well, everyone’s magic is different. Focus on that burst.”

I did. My body recalled the pain. Despite the hot, aching skin on my mangled leg, and the shivers coursing through me at the memory, I struggled to remember.

“Hot. Everything was hot,” I muttered. “Coming from my chest.”

“Your…chest?”

“Yes.”

Allie went silent, but I continued. “I felt like I was caged, the power barely out of my grasp. But I couldn’t–I couldn’t access it. Until I did.”

My arms shook with the strain of trying to dig through myself for that charged sensation.

But there was nothing there now. No spark, no thrill, no burst, no magic.

As the sweat pooled at the base of my temples, my eyes flew open. My fingers had turned white from pushing against the table, as if trying to burrow into the wood itself to find power.

“I can’t,” I said, voice hollow. All my excitement evaporated, leaving me as cold as I’d felt back in that cabin.

“You did it once,” Allie said evenly, index finger pressed against her lips. Her face had turned to stone, no emotion.

“Because I had no other choice.”

“You can’t rely on risking your life to bring out your power.”

“I know.” My shoulders sagged as I pushed against the table, disappointment beating at me. “How was it for you?”

Allie’s lips quirked. “I was about eight, a year after Clara manifested for the first time, as she likes to remind me. Dax had been running after me with a beetle in his hands, trying to tangle it in my hair. I tripped and blue tendrils began shooting out of me, waiting for me to direct them. And I did, straight toward Dax. He fell on his ass, eyes wide. I also like to remind him of that.”

The hollowness inside me grew. So many memories I hadn’t been there for. “And after that? How did you access it again?”

Allie hesitated. She opened and closed her mouth, but that damn finger was still pressed to her lips, as if she didn’t want to speak at all. “Once I first manifested, it was like a pocket had been carved inside of me. All I had to do was open it and the power was there.”

I deflated even more. If only it would be as easy as sewing a pocket inside myself.

“It takes time,” Allie said with a patience and gentleness I didn’t know she was capable of. “First, you have to learn how to access your power whenever you want. Then I can teach you how to wield it. How to recite incantations, how to detect spells, how to curse your enemies. But I can’t find your power for you.”

I sighed, wiping the sweat off my brow.

“Practice and patience, Evie. Power doesn’t come easy and it always has a price,” Allie said. “That’s the hardest lesson of all.”

I looked down at my wrapped leg; the white gauze was now pink. I’d bled through it again. Poor Goose had almost passed out when he’d helped me patch the wound up this morning. Nothing came easy.

“I’ll practice,” I promised her, determination beating away the frustration. I had sixteen years of training to make up for, and one miracle born out of deathly desperation couldn’t undo the time I’d wasted.

Clanks in the courtyard stole my attention away.

“You’re doing that thing with your ears,” Allie said. “Fascinating.”

“What thing?”

“They move and the tips redden when you’re listening intently.”

Like a doe in the forest when a branch snapped behind her. The sounds in the courtyard grew louder.

“Excuse me, but I need to investigate. Either someone is fighting in my courtyard or the Capital citizens are trying to tear down my house,” I said.

Allie narrowed her eyes. “Don’t even joke about that.”

Joking made this entire situation less frightening. “I don’t make promises I can’t keep.”

“Don’t die,” Allie said, trying to sound light and easy, but coming out pleading.

“Don’t kill anyone.”

Allie pursed her lips, looking back at her door. “I also don’t make those kinds of promises.”

As the portal dissipated into the air, I limped out of the library, trying to leave my failure amongst the books. But the discouragement clung to me like a bad smell as I reached the veranda, only to find Goose staring out at the courtyard with disbelief.

I couldn’t believe the sight before me either.