by Mary Weber
Colin stoops down and places his right hand on the earth. I tiptoe a few steps closer as his eyes close again. Then the rumbling starts back up, the groan of rocks and dirt moving, but this time it’s deeper. The trees don’t sway so much, and I’m able to stand without wobbling. The ground in front of Eogan creases together and seals shut, and then backtracks toward Colin, closing in on itself as it goes. Like someone is stitching it with a sewing needle. By the time it’s shut completely all the way to Colin’s hand, I can’t even tell where exactly the crack had been. The needles and grass appear undisturbed. Colin straightens and gives a loud whoop.
“There you go. Now again,” Eogan yells at him. “But this time wider.”
“Wider?” I look to Colin, who immediately stoops to obey. I brace myself.
“So you decided to stay,” Eogan says to me, without turning around.
“So you’ve decided to speak to me now that I’ve stood here for ten minutes.”
“Colin’s a Terrene,” Eogan says. “Not as rare as Elementals, nor as dangerous, but still not one to take your attention from while he’s in action.”
Oh.
I squint at Colin. A Terrene? Other than his shaved head, I can’t see anything different looking about him. He’s a bit taller and thinner than Breck, but his face has the same personality. “He’s a Terrene, but I’m assuming his sister isn’t. How does that work?”
“Technically she is, but without any power. Terrenes are always born with a twin. One is gifted. One is cursed. From the country of Tulla originally.”
I wrinkle my forehead. “So which of them is gifted and which is cursed?”
“Depends on who you ask,” he says, not taking his eyes off Colin. “If you put it to him, he’ll tell you his sister’s the best person he’s ever known. Now again!”
He has Colin repeat his earth-moving exercise another five times, and I watch in silent intrigue at what the boy can do. I’ve never seen anyone with such remarkable power, nor such ability to control it. Could I reach this level of restraint?
When Colin’s finished, Eogan instructs him to head off for a jog through the woods to loosen his stressed muscles. Colin looks reluctantly at me, as if unwilling to miss out on seeing whatever Eogan’s got planned for me, but one glance from Eogan and he acquiesces with a nod.
As soon as he’s disappeared through the trees, Eogan strides over and holds out his hand. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
I give him a wary glare and try not to notice how nicely his eyes match the emerald coloring of his clothes.
“I’m not going to hurt you. I just have to know what we’re working with. Aside from the obvious shortcoming of your personality.”
He may be unfairly attractive, but he’s also unfairly awful. “What I’ve got kills people,” I say dryly. However, I don’t duck from his hand when he reaches for me.
His warm fingers touch my neck, right where my heart-pulse is. It pounds a little harder. Does he notice? Because his eyes flash before narrowing, and I swear his face pales the slightest bit. Then he brings his other hand up and places it beneath my chin where the cut from the selling merchant is still healing. He tilts my face so my eyes look straight into his.
“Don’t,” he says when I go to shift my gaze. So I stand there staring uncomfortably into his green eyes while he studies mine. What he’s looking for, I can’t imagine. But having him this close to me makes my stomach fluttery, and I’m acutely aware that his skin smells like pine and honey and sunbeams.
“What sets it off?” he finally asks without releasing me.
I shrug.
His gaze stays clamped on mine. Intent. Drilling. “If I’m going to help you, you need to answer the question.”
“I don’t know. Does it matter?”
“Can you set it off right now?”
“Do you want to die?”
He chuckles and slides his hand from my neck all the way down to my left wrist. Giving me goose bumps beneath my leather sleeve.
“Can I set it off?” He slips his fingers farther down to touch my deformed hand. Before I can jerk it away, he squeezes hard.
Heat surges within me. My blood responds with its wretched craving for destruction. I yank away. “Stop!” But he grabs my hand again before I can retreat farther than two steps back to the house. I turn to slap him, but his expression makes me pause.
It’s careful.
Bordering on comforting.
And I’ve no idea what to do with it because it’s foreign and pathetic and it makes me feel visible. Like an actual person. I detest him for it.
Colin comes running up all out of breath from his jog just as Eogan places his hand back on my neck.
Aside from his panting and foot tapping, Colin stays quiet, seemingly content to pump his chest muscles and make faces behind Eogan’s back. I crack a smile.
Eogan leans in until his face is all I see and his lips nearly touch my ear. I try not to inhale.
“Tell me about the little redheaded girl,” he whispers.
CHAPTER 8
MY MUSCLES TENSE AS MY HEAD JERKS BACK and my skin crawls with the stimulating air. How he knows about the little girl I don’t know, but how dare he use it to summon my curse. He’s not Adora. He has no right to use guilt against me.
A single cloud morphs out of nothing directly above us, and before Colin or Eogan has time to move, a bolt of lightning strikes the ground ten feet away, followed by a deafening explosion of thunder. The friction in the air crackles and another bolt detonates, and then Eogan’s fingers are pressed into my neck again, on my heart-pulse, and suddenly the cloud and static dissipate.
And Colin is using some choice words owner number eight once taught me. “Teeth of a pig, what the litches was that?”
I don’t answer him. I’m too busy sending my good hand flat across Eogan’s face as hard as I can before I turn and stalk away toward Adora’s house. He could’ve killed someone. He could’ve killed us all, idiotic fool.
Eogan waits until I’m all the way to the other side of his cottage before calling after me. “Going to give up that easy?”
“You’re insane!” I holler back and keep walking.
A sharp laugh pierces my irritation. “Maybe so, but why did the storm stop so abruptly?”
“How should I know?”
“Why didn’t the storm keep building?”
I halt in my tracks. He’s right. It cut short. The friction was still forming, I could feel it.
So why did it stall?
I wait a full minute before giving him the pleasure of seeing me return. When I do, I have a scowl plastered on my face just for him. “What’s your point?”
“Does it always stop that quickly?”
I purse my lips. No. It never ends that way. “It doesn’t stop until someone or some animal is dead.”
“Always?”
I nod. Unnerved. Confused. “What’s your point? How’d you do it?”
“You’ve never been able to stop it at all?”
I shake my head and wait for him to answer my question.
He strides over and puts his hand out. “May I?”
I look at Colin, who’s sitting with his legs crossed on the ground. Even though seated, his whole body can’t seem to stop bouncing. He tips his head as if to say it’ll be okay.
“Fine.”
How I didn’t notice it before, I’m not sure. But this time when Eogan’s fingers touch me, I feel it immediately. That sense of calm. It’s like a smooth warmth, trickling through my insides. Dimming the thirst for violence in my blood. I look into his eyes and ask the only question I need an answer for. “How?”
Eogan removes his hand and shrugs. “No idea. It works differently on each Uathúil. Usually acts as a block, and usually I don’t have to be touching them.” He smirks. “As you saw when Colin so zealously tried to kill me. But with you . . .” That curious look emerges again. “With you it displays as a calming influence. Interesting.”
�
�Does that mean you can control me?”
“No. I can just dim the reaction. And only for a matter of seconds, I suspect. If you create a hailstorm on us, it’ll be the last piece of beauty we ever see. Elementals are on a level all their own.”
Great.
He winks at Colin. “So try and avoid angering the storm siren, okay?” Then to me he says, “You ready to try again?”
Colin hops up. “Have her fight me! We can practice against each other.”
“She’d kill you, mate. In fact, why don’t you go stand at the tree line for a few minutes.”
“What? She can’t kill me!” Colin scoffs. He shoots a smile my way and kisses one of his biceps. “Can’t kill magnificence.”
Eogan sighs. “She’d disintegrate you faster than you could blink, Colin. Go stand at the tree line.”
He doesn’t move. Just eyes me as if I’m some strange animal he needs to figure out. “Well, how long’s it goin’ to take? When can we practice together? We gotta get on it—you saw what kind of weapons Bron’s got. And what they did to that mountain! What if they come back to finish us off tonight?”
“Bron’s not coming tonight; that ship was a practice run. It could be weeks before they launch full-scale, and either way, we’re going to take as long as you two need. So go. Stand. By. The tree line.”
Colin throws his hands up. “Of all the—”
“Colin.” Eogan’s deep tone takes on a warning. “I’m not jesting.”
The boy’s face falls. He lets out an “Argh” and stomps off with his head thrown back dramatically. As if the Hidden Lands creator has conspired against him to ruin his life.
Eogan looks at me. “Ready?”
I nod, then flinch as he squeezes my misshapen hand.
“Feel that? Tap into it.”
For the next four hours Eogan prods and provokes me, trying to find what triggers will set off my curse. Sometimes his tactics work, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes I just haul off and swear at him for being such a complete oaf and then clomp off the field. At those moments I hate the training. I hate him. I even hate Colin for perking up from his moody tossing of pine-cones at squirrels to ask Eogan if I can fight yet. Each time, Eogan cautions the boy to “give her space before she returns from her tantrum.” Which is wise since they’d both most likely be roasted meat if they moved even an inch toward me.
But I do return from my “tantrums.” Again and again. Because something about Eogan’s touch makes me want more. It’s neither hungering for my body in the perverse way men crave, nor punishing. It’s different. It’s discovering that, for a few seconds, he can calm the storm within me before it destroys my world again.
It’s safety.
At the end of the afternoon, I know next to nothing about my curse, and I’m no further into learning how to control it, but that crevice of hope in my chest has grown a little wider. Along with an unbearable aching beneath. I find myself scraping for an internal lid to cover the black chasm of my soul as Eogan watches me—studying my Elemental eyes as if he can decipher whatever puzzle defines the curse I am. While Colin is clearly suffering from a level of boredom that’s killing him.
“Colin, go on and head into the house for dinner,” Eogan says finally without moving his gaze from my face. “Nym will join you shortly.”
“Why? What are you two gonna do?”
“She’ll be along shortly. Go eat. And put on a shirt before you stumble the ladies,” he adds with a hint of sarcasm.
“Too late for that. But we’re gonna practice on each other tomorrow, right?”
Eogan sighs and turns. “I don’t know. But in the meantime, believe me when I say that if either of you act out away from me, you’ll have my foot in your backside. So don’t even consider it.” He says this as if it’s to both of us, but we all know he’s directing it at Colin. “Neither of you are to display in public, or Adora will eat you alive once I’ve finished.”
I expect Colin to argue, but he checks himself, obviously having heard this lecture before, and instead sends me a lopsided grin. “I’ll save you some grub. Just don’t let Master Bolcrane do anything new with you while I’m gone.” He gives me one final chest flex and struts off to the house.
Eogan rolls his eyes. “He’s a good kid, but . . .” He shakes his head. “His thirst for excitement will come with a price.”
I can’t be sure if he’s telling me this as a caution or simply making an observation.
“Here. C’mon.” He leads me around to the front of his cottage and, once inside, waves me over to the worktable. Near the wolf. This time I’m careful not to get too close.
“This’ll only take a minute.” He pulls a pot and woodstick from one of the many shelves lining the room and sets them between us. “Pull up your sleeve.”
I bristle.
The circle. I’d forgotten. Of course Adora would have him do it. She’d never stoop to dirtying her hands herself.
And of course he’d obey her like a lapdog.
Any decent feelings I developed toward Eogan completely dissolve. I yank the leather up to my shoulder while my gut knots and turns numb.
He bends over my arm and pins my wrist to the table. I hold perfectly still and refuse to let my cheeks blush with my shame. Maybe my glare will burn a hole through the floor and drop us both into it.
Eogan’s grip tightens. I stiffen. Then the soothing from his fingers sets in.
He doesn’t look at me as he slices a thin cut around the circumference of my right arm just below the elbow. I flinch and bite my tongue to keep from swearing at him. The blood wells up and dribbles onto the worktable, staining it dark with my humiliation.
“What are the other markings for?” he asks softly.
I don’t answer.
“The ones on the other arm.”
How he saw the other tattoos, I’m not sure, but at this moment, he’s no better than an owner. “Just do your job and get this over with,” I whisper.
He nods and says nothing further. Just dips the thin woodstick into the black mugplant juice and rubs its tip inside the cut in my skin.
It sizzles and smokes, eating away my flesh, and I can’t help it. I cry out.
His handsome face grows darker and his hands work quicker.
After smearing the juice in, he wipes the excess off and spreads a thin layer of curing herb on my arm before binding it with a clean cloth. Finished, he stands and waits while I tug down my sleeve to hide all fifteen circles.
Straightening my shoulders, I force down the pain-induced nausea and rise from the table. With my head held high, I walk shakily to the door.
“You can do this, you know.”
I close my fingers around the handle. I don’t want to hear whatever it is he has to say.
“The gift you have. You can learn to use it.”
I shake my head. I want to plug my ears. Stop talking to me, I want to tell him. Stop pretending you have any idea what I’m capable of. You have no right. But none of those words come.
Because it’s the first time anyone’s ever called my curse a gift.
I shoot him a look of disgust. “You’re an idiot,” I say, and stroll out the door.
CHAPTER 9
THE FRESH, STICKY BLOOD SWIRLS AROUND THE old memorial tattoos in my skin. The ones already stained into my flesh in suffocating threads entwined around my bones.
I lean against the stone of my room’s fireplace and push the knife blade farther into my arm, just above my elbow, until the scorching pain sucks the air from my lungs. Then I grit my teeth and draw a thicker breath, arcing the tool around to complete the feathery bluebird that should be flying outside the window rather than grafted into my skin. For a shame-filled moment, I wish it would free itself and carry me from what I am.
But it doesn’t.
It just bleeds.
Leaning back, I grab the drops of black mugplant mixed with ash. Even with my jaw clenched, the agony of spreading the mixture into the fresh cut drags a slew o
f curse words from between my teeth. It hisses and melts, and my already-shaky arm begins shuddering so hard that I’m going to either vomit or pass out.
I grab one end of the strip of torn undergarment and secure it in my mouth and wrap the other end around the new marking as many times as the length will allow before tying it off. I wipe down the blade I stole last night on the rest of the wadded cloth and slip it beneath the loose floorboard. Finally I reach over to toss the material into the smoldering fire.
I’m sorry.
I can’t even whisper the words aloud. Grief—guilt—whatever it is, it keeps my lips shut for the redheaded girl whose summers I’ve replaced with forever-winters.
As if in response, the orange flames lick up around the cloth and then ignite in hunger. The warmth hits my face and dissipates just as fast as the fabric. It leaves me shivering and my stomach lurching. And before I can swallow it down, I’m throwing up into the fireplace, heaving what’s left of last night’s dinner onto the coals.
When the gagging stops, my face is hot and the fire is out, and I’m clinging to the cold stone mantel, my cheek pressing against it while I swear at the floor to quit dancing. Eventually, when it does, I ease back and glance around for something to clean up the mess. But there’s nothing—not a mop, not a cloth. Unless I use one of Adora’s dresses.
I consider it for two seconds, imagining her expression. Which brings a wry smile to my face. Hmm. Probably not.
I’ve only been here three days, but I already know enough to hope Breck’s in a gracious mood today.
I leave the mess and walk to the mirror. Just as I’m about to pull my shirt on, I catch the reflection of my bandaged left arm. Thin. Trembling. The tattooed memorials like an unforgiving trellis of scars, travelling up my shoulder and dipping down beneath the side of my breastcloth all the way to my stomach. The hideous focal point was made in my awkward six-year-old hand. An inked-in cross for the two parents who’d died before realizing the extent of the curse they’d birthed.
I look away and yank the tunic on, hating the fact that no matter how much penance I create, I can never blot out the shame.
