Page 54 of Calling of the Crown

“Really? What n—”

Jesiah suddenly spun, throwing a shard of sharp ice at me. I immediately held my palm up, and with a firm mental hold, the ice froze midway to me. With my guidance, it melted back into water, dripping into a puddle on the ground between us.

Jesiah crossed his arms over his chest, and he smiled with pride. “Excellent reflex.”

Adrenaline pumped through my veins, and my heart pounded furiously. The attack was so sudden, and I hadn’t expected Jesiah to do it then. Though I should have. Every time we met for practice, he tried to catch me off guard and send some sort of attack my way. He was training my reflexes and abilities, but it was annoying. The random attacks always put me on edge, and it took me a while to resettle and let my guard down afterward. To make matters worse, I was already wound up. I didn’t need more things thrown my way—figuratively or literally.

Lowering my arm, I forced a smile. “Thanks. Back to the news you mentioned.”

“Right,” Jesiah said as he came to face me in the middle of the room. “Like I said, it’s not much. Kumar has only been able to decode a handful of words like, ‘life,’ ‘water,’ ‘death,’ and ‘loved ones.’ He doesn’t know what the text says about any of those things or how they tie together, but he’s working on it.”

He wasn’t joking. That really wasn’t much. Disappointment swept over me, but I quickly tried to fight it. At least it was something. That was still more than we knew when I’d first found the book. It was just frustrating, because there was a reason the water wanted me to find that book.

I closed my eyes and massaged my temples. “It’s progress at least. I hope—”

Something hard smacked into my gut, sending me flying backward. The wind left my body in an instant, and before I could find the ability to breathe again, I hit the floor hard on my back, rendering me immobile from the shockwaves of pain flaring up my body.

“Jesiah!” Rune snapped. He suddenly appeared beside me, reaching for me with gentle hands. “That was too rough.”

“Too rough? That should’ve been easy to avoid. What have I said, Bria?” Jesiah reprimanded as he came to hover above Rune and me. “You have to keep your guard up at all times. What if I had been an enemy Fae, eager to take you down and sully your plans? I could’ve easily killed you just then because you weren’t focused.”

Straining to inhale, I narrowed my eyes at him. “We’re the only ones in the room. No one here wants me dead, so forgive me for allowing myself to get distracted.”

Jesiah sighed. He grabbed my other arm, and he and Rune helped me to my feet. I swayed for a moment, but I quickly called water to me from the trough. It immediately engulfed me, and the moment it coated my skin, the pain in my back fizzled into a distant memory.

If only it could take my stress away, too.

I sent the water back to the trough, and Jesiah’s brown eyes tracked it. When all was calm again, he met my eyes with an understanding look. “I know I’m being hard on you, but it’s for your safety. Your powers are getting stronger, which is amazing, but what’s the point if you don’t use them? Every time we practice, you’re always on the defensive, never offensive. You’re going to have to learn to fight and attack when necessary.”

Unease wound my shoulders tighter, and my stomach soured. “That’s not who I am.”

“No, it’s not,” Jesiah agreed firmly, his mouth flattening into a scowl that resembled Angus’s, who stood quietly to the side. “But it’s who you have to be. You are soon to be Queen. A leader. A fighter. I understand it’s hard for you, but—”

“You don’t understand,” I snapped, backing away from him. I was suddenly feeling boxed in by Jesiah, Angus, and Rune. Something heavy fired through my veins as I grabbed at the ends of my ponytail and tugged. “You don’t understand at all. I wasn’t born and raised in this world. I wasn’t trained to fight and kill. I wasn’t brought up believing I was a fucking Queen with a thousand Fae relying on me!”

“Bria,” Rune tried, but I barely heard him.

Everything sounded far away, muddled to my ears as my heart pounded and my chest heaved on breaths that didn’t seem to come.

“I’m being thrown a hundred different things at once and being pulled a dozen different directions. I feel like I’m barely passing at being a Princess, and even at that, I feel like a phony. Everything is foreign to me. Everything is weighing me down. I just–I just—”

The air filling my lungs slipped out of reach. I was gasping, falling.

Everything went dark.

I was floating, drifting, moving. I was calm, peaceful, and light. I was …

I …

Chapter Twenty-Four

STAY.

Safe.

Calm.

Stay.

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