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Chapter Twenty-Six: Rhea

Showering with Nox while I try to tell him all about the Middle and Selene proves to be quite difficult. Partially because I don’t want him to think I’m crazy, but also because, when he slides his soaped-up hands over my body, I forget how to speak. Eventually, I find the right words and tell him of my first visit there, what Selene said to me, and my instructions to go east.

“Do you think she specifically meant coming here ?” I ask him, my eyes closed as he massages my scalp with shampoo.

“It certainly seems that way,” he answers, leaning down to kiss my cheek.

I continue, recapping every moment of my time there and leaving out only the details of how I usually went to the Middle after a beating from the king. My fingers tremble when I tell him about that cold, ancient magic. How Selene believes it to be a part of me, a mirrored half to the light magic. He hugs me when I break down over how terrifying it was to feel that magic flood from me, how it didn’t wait to be used but seemed to search for a moment of weakness to unleash itself. My voice grows steady again when I tell him that it was his declarations of love that brought me back and allowed me to cease using the shadows. He cradles my face in his hands, his lips finding mine, as he whispers that he’s sorry over and over again.

And I repeat that I forgive him.

There is another hurt that lingers in his smoky eyes, one that I know he won’t bring up but that my time in the Middle makes me anxious to atone for. “I’m sorry,” I say.

Nox frowns, his brows furrowing together in confusion. “You don’t apologize to me for—”

I place my fingers over his lips, gently stopping his words. “I know there is an imbalance between us when it comes to, well, everything . You’ve had a normal life—” He makes a snort of derision at that. “Alright, a more normal life, even as a crown prince, than I have. I know that I do not always say or do the right things. And I don’t think you should give me a pass on any of it just because—”

“I love you?” he interrupts with a curling smirk.

“Yes,” I say softly, dropping my fingers. “I can’t stop thinking about what I said to you before. How hurtful it was. How, after everything you did for me and with me, I didn’t even let you explain your side fully without condemning you first. You deserved better than that.”

One of his hands moves to tangle in my hair at the back of my head, his hold on me firm. “You were allowed to feel whatever you needed to at that moment. I won’t let you be the martyr in a situation that was brought on entirely by my actions.”

“And I won’t let you bear the weight of something that you had no control over.” Nox’s eyes close, acknowledging the change in the conversation from me to Alexi. “I do not fault you for his death,” I add with a whisper.

He nods, his forehead coming to rest on mine. There’s a perceptible shift in us both, the smoothing over of some of the abraded edges of our hearts. I know Nox feels guilt about Alexi’s death, but it isn’t until now that I recognize how deeply that wound had cut him too.

We finally leave the warmth of the shower, Nox running over to Bahira’s room to grab me some clothes while I dry off. Once dressed, we dine together at the small table in the sitting room, my body already void of any tenderness.

“You’re curiously calm about the fact that I just told you I subconsciously visit a magical place,” I say around a bite of fresh strawberry. The berry might be my new favorite food, its sweet and tart flavor dancing along my tongue.

Nox shrugs, his hand squeezing mine from where he holds it across the table. “It doesn’t seem so fantastical to me. Our magic is raw—both part of the Continent itself and yet something completely different. Perhaps stronger magic runs in the familial line of whichever parent you got it from.” He tilts his head to the side in thought, the movement rustling his hair. “The palace healer thinks that, because you haven’t trained with your magic, it’s a little more wild and unpredictable. Especially because you are now at the age where our magic peaks.”

I trail my fingers over the soft fabric of the skirt Nox chose as I contemplate his words, its dark blue color offset by golden stars embroidered throughout. A matching top, the straps thin and front cut into a V shape that is lower than I’ve worn before, fits perfectly to my body. Clothes made for me, indeed.

“Whatever the reason, I’m just grateful that the other half of my magic has never been used before.” It may be a part of me, but that doesn’t mean I have to give it any access. As if in answer, bitter cold perks up within me like a chunk of frozen water sliding down my sternum before it settles back down again.

“It has.” The words are said so quietly, so reluctantly , that it takes me a moment to realize Nox is responding to what I’ve said.

“What do you mean?”

He lets a few seconds pass by, his eyes scanning my face lovingly and fingers gently caressing my own. “Before I tell you, I need you to know that this changes nothing about who you are. At your core, Rhea, you are good. And kind and absolutely perfect.”

A different tension makes my heart begin to race as my eyes bounce between his.

“I have seen you use your shadow magic twice. Once was right after I told you about Alexi.”

“What?”

“Your magic surged out of you so forcefully, I barely had time to shield against it with my own. It was strong . It reached the plants in the corners of the room and sucked them dry, turning them into something brittle and lifeless.” My gaze falls to one of those plants still sitting there—dead and completely black. I don’t realize that my chest is heaving until Nox leaves his chair to kneel at my side. “Breathe, Sunshine.”

I shake my head, my hands trembling in his as I rasp, “I remember succumbing to the feeling I had—this cold, dark power running through my veins. If that’s what I did to plants, what would I do to you ? What if I hurt you, Nox?” Gods, what if I hurt anyone ?

“You didn’t. And you won’t.”

“What happened the other time?” I ask, already apprehensive of the answer.

Alarm flashes over his features before his throat works with a swallow. “The night we escaped from the tower, when you healed me in the meadow, do you remember what happened with the two guards that approached us?”

“They never reached us. I was able to heal you before they did.” I remembered it clearly. I looked back and saw them coming and then started healing Nox’s wound. I had found it strange that they hadn’t reached us before we were able to get away, but I figured that time had gotten distorted in my memory. That the stress and panic of trying to heal Nox and of exposing my magic to him had perhaps made it seem like time had falsely slowed down.

“No, they made it to us just as you started healing me. They arrived side by side, and one of them laid a hand on your shoulder.”

A spark of memory flashes— a weight on my shoulder, an ear piercing scream. It’s like I have all the pieces of a puzzle scattered out in front of me and I’m left to sort them until they come together and make sense.

“You screamed,” Nox continues, “and then your eyes… They went totally black. Shadows exploded from your body in the blink of an eye, there and gone, and the men went flying back.”

I drop my gaze from his as another memory comes to light, another piece of the puzzle. This one is of icy cold flowing through me and my vision becoming slightly obscured, like a black veil had been placed over my eyes. “You told me not to look back. Why?”

“Rhea, it’s alright.”

No. No, it’s not alright. “Why did you tell me not to look back?” I sit with the memory—those heart-stopping moments when I healed him.

His mouth opens and closes, words he’s trying not to say the only ones that must be coming up as he clamps his mouth shut again. Then, the final puzzle piece clicks into place: the King’s Guardsman in the woods holding Bella captive.

You already have two guards’ deaths on your hands.

“I killed them, didn’t I?” I barely say the words. Afraid that if I speak them too loudly, there will be retribution against me. Or maybe I’m afraid that speaking them aloud will confirm they are true. That it will affirm that there is indeed something monstrous about me. Something that makes me more like my uncle than I ever want to be.

“This doesn’t change who you are,” he repeats, his eyes boring into mine.

“Did I kill them?”

Nox cradles the side of my face, his thumb brushing over my cheek in reassuring strokes. But it doesn’t erase the feeling of a dagger plunging into my heart when he answers, “Yes.”

The next few moments are a numbing blur filled with Nox’s whispered words of reassurance in my ear, his body holding mine up as I struggle to take breaths between my heaving sobs. I had never wanted magic, this disastrous power that was now running through my veins. I had never wanted this kind of responsibility.

Selene had said my magic held balance, but what sort of balance could be found in this? I could apparently murder, but I didn’t have the ability to give life back? There is no equilibrium in that, no sense of symmetry. How am I somehow supposed to be alright with that?

“I will help you train with your magic, help you learn to master it. Everything else will come with time as you begin to explore your freedom, Rhea. Selene is right; you should take as much time as you need to figure out who you are.”

It is odd to have him talk of Selene—to reference the Middle—without hesitation.

Nox continues, his voice achingly soft. “This doesn’t have to be something that derails you, Sunshine. This can be a moment where you begin to own your power.”

So much talk of power—something I had always thought I had none of back in that tower but was now apparently brimming with here. “Does my magic frighten you?” I ask him. I wouldn’t blame him if it did. It terrifies me . Nox surprises me when he responds by laughing, making me scowl against his chest. “That isn’t a funny question.”

“No, it isn’t. But I think this will help you understand why I’m laughing.”

Entirely confused, I let Nox guide me to the balcony off of the sitting room. The summer air hits me, warm and comforting and full of the scent of the trees surrounding us. My hands rest on the wooden railing over the vines of dark purple and green twisting around it. He stands behind me, his hands on either side of mine. Looking out at the forest, my body tingles as fractures of sunlight reach in from the canopies above and cascade down my skin. In answer, my light magic rises up from my stomach like it’s reaching for the sun’s warmth, delicately humming in response.

“I am the strongest mage in our kingdom,” he begins, a faint note of amusement in his voice.

“ Congratulations .”

He barks out a laugh, wrapping an arm around my waist and squeezing my back to his chest. “Smartass,” he says against my ear before gently kissing it. “I’m not saying that to brag but to give you a frame of reference. Over the many years—we aren’t sure exactly when it started—magic in our kingdom has begun dwindling. Younger mages are now weaker, and older mages are losing their magic like it’s being slowly siphoned away. Bahira has been researching it for years, trying to figure out if it ties into where her magic is as well.”

I look at him over my shoulder, a pocket of sun giving his light brown skin a golden glow. “What do you mean where her magic is?”

“It appears she was born without any. The first in our history,” he answers solemnly. “During my Flame Ceremony, when my flame grew higher than it had for anyone else in centuries, we began to test and train my magic right away. Through that, we discovered that beyond having the normal mage abilities—manipulating elements, imbuing items, other small magic—there was something else I could do.” Chills break out on the back of my neck, my gaze trapped within his. He leans down and kisses my forehead before gesturing with his chin out to the forest. “Watch.”

I turn slowly, looking out at the closely staggered trees. My eyes dart around, trying to find the dark purple and black glow of his magic in the forest in front of me. Movement on the ground catches my attention, a shadow like that of an animal moves on top of the fallen leaves. But something about it looks odd, its shape not elongated in the way a normal shadow cast by the sun high above would be. I lean forward to get a better look and then immediately jolt backwards, bumping into Nox.

“What—” The shadow no longer moves against the ground but, instead, glides in the air—wisps of black swirling around as it comes closer to us.

“The reason that I laughed when you asked if I was scared of your magic, of your shadows, is because you aren’t the only one who can wield them.” To prove his point, Nox manipulates the pool of shadows in the air directly in front of us, condensing and shaping them into a bird which he then lands on the balcony between my hands.

I’m momentarily stunned, my body tense as I watch the bird made of shadows hop and flit about as if it is real. “Can I touch it?” I ask, my hand already lifting to do so.

“Yes, it won’t hurt you. Only if I will it to.”

My forefinger grazes the top of the shadow bird’s head, the sensation bitingly cold but also jarringly smooth. “It feels like—like stone ,” I sputter. The fake bird hops closer to me, my yelp of surprise making Nox chuckle.

“It does. When my magic gathers the shadows and makes them into something tangible, it feels like stone. When I keep them more fluid, they feel more like a thin layer of water.” The shape of the bird melts away before my eyes, the shadows turning back into something more translucent. They then slide over the top of my hand, the temperature still like ice, but they feel exactly as Nox said—a barely there caress of something smooth as silk.

“Can your shadows do what mine do?”

Maybe this is why Selene was so insistent that Nox train me. If his magic is unique like mine, then he would be the perfect person to do so.

Nox gently turns me around, his shadows floating in the air behind me now as he places both hands on my shoulders. I marvel at how he can command them without even calling the magic to his hands.

“They aren’t exactly my shadows, as I can’t create them like you can. I can only wield ones that are present, and they can only act as any physical object might. They can’t drain life in the same way yours do,” he says, cringing at his poor word choice. I sigh, my gaze dropping in defeat. Nox places a finger under my chin, tilting my head up to look at him. “You will learn to control them; just as I had to learn to control mine.”

“I don’t want to use them at all ,” I argue. “That magic is dangerous— deadly . I can’t imagine any scenario in which I would need to learn how to wield them.”

Not here, far away from my uncle who can’t cross the Spell to get to me. Even then, I am not sure I could use that magic on him. Would the sting of finding out I murdered someone hurt less if I thought that person deserved it? Or did that line of thinking make me no better than my uncle?

“Rhea—”

“ Please , Nox. Don’t make me use that magic,” I beg him, my panic growing with each heave of my chest.

To learn what I had done to those guards was hard enough thinking about—breathing through. I didn’t trust that magic, and I didn’t trust myself yet to attempt controlling it.

Nox grits his teeth together, his eyes growing darker as that feeling that I had learned was our magical signature thickens the air around us. It is like the brushing of someone’s fingertips along my skin. Only, instead of breaking out in goosebumps, my magic pushes harshly at my bones .

“I will never make you do anything you don’t want to. Ever. ”

“I know,” I respond, gripping onto the front of his dark gray tunic.

His magic pours off of him in waves, the strength of it making me feel dizzy now that I know how to sense it. Nox lets out a low curse before he takes a deep breath and kisses the top of my head, his lips lingering there while I feel the swell of his power lessen.

“I’m sorry, Rhea.” Wrapping my arms around his waist, I lay my cheek on his chest, breathing him in deeply. “I will never force you to use it, but Selene is right when she says that magic requires balance. It’s something we are taught, even as children. You might be able to learn how to wield your light magic efficiently, but completely suppressing the shadow magic… That will have consequences.”

Foreboding pokes at my mind and twists my stomach into knots. I can live with an imbalance of magic and whatever repercussions might come of that as long as the price to pay only affects me . But more death at my hands? I don’t know if there is a way to come back from that.

I don’t think my soul would survive.