Page 62 of Wicked Heirs

“Wow, that’s ingenious.”

“Yeah, that’s Elliot Sabre’s whole thing.”

I finished off my bourbon, then put my glass down on the side. “You haven’t unleashed your power all the way yet, haven’t reached your full potential.”

She swallowed some more marshmallows. “I have a long way to go before I’m even close to being ready to do that.”

“I don’t believe it’s as far away as you think. That storm you created… that takes magic-wielders years to learn. To come from a place of denying your heritage and barely using your magic and then be able to pull that off… it’s remarkable. Because you’ve been so isolated in the human world, then mostly kept at your family home before that, I don’t think you realize just what a miraculous achievement that was, especially when in comparison to other magical beings. The precision of it too, striking head-on on the first try… again, another level, Alena.”

She smiled at my compliments, even blushing a little and waving it off—literally.

I chuckled at this carefree and slightly bashful side of her, showing me inside her in ways I hadn’t been able to access before because she’d been closed to me with the hostile way things had started off. What I’d been able to garner about her had been from my own observations and my strong ability to read people well. But through that there were obviously things that were missed.

The levity subsided all too quickly as she said, “Abigail Rose isn’t afraid of the dark.”

I frowned. “You mean, magical corruption?”

A small nod was her only response.

She clearly didn’t like the subject matter, but now thatI’dtouched on it briefly it seemed she felt like she could actually head down that conversational path.

She definitely needed to, that much was clear.

She’d been bottling her fears where that was concerned up so much that she’d actually turned from her powers and abilities entirely.

She’d cut herself off from them and shut down as a result.

Talking to me was a lot different than talking to her mom who she saw as infallible and completely pure—completely incorruptible.

But me, I was born into darkness.

We were opposites in that respect—Xavier would be the best person to go to where concerns about control were the topic—but wewereboth bound by legacies. For my part, I wanted the Kingdom of the Dark Fae, but not in the way my father wished me to rule. And for Alena, it was clear she didn’t feel worthy and had convinced herself as such that she didn’t want it at all.

“Any being with power as great as hers is prone to magical corruption, because at that level they become automatically susceptible to it. So, yes, she must be fearful of it. I can’t imagine that she wouldn’t be, for good sense alone.”

“Maybe,” she murmured. “But I struggle more than I should. It’s my human side, something she doesn’t have to contend with.”

“I think it’s more than that.”

She eyed me curiously. “Like what?”

“Like Constantine Vale.”

“What?” she asked, with a shudder, just like the last time I’d brought him up.

“He got inside your head.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I heard what he said to you when I was in your dream, which was more of a precise recollection than the wanderings of your subconscious.”

She shoved a hand through her pink hair. “He was so sure that my power had such staggering potential for darkness thathe was prepared to stand against the likes of my mom and take me for himself. That’s no small thing. And he recognized it right away, like it was so obvious that it was a given. When it comes to knowledge and experience, he’s right up there with the best, like your father, my mother, and Xavier’s father.”

“I understand why it shook you, especially coming from him, somebody who was corrupted, combined with his surety, but nothing is a given. You also need to recognize that he had his own agenda. Acquiring celestial magic would have been a mammoth achievement and if he’d been able to control it through controlling you, he could have become virtually unstoppable.”

“Yeah,” she said, nodding to herself as she absorbed my words. “I hear you.”

She took a moment, then floated toward me. “Do you believe it’s inevitable?”

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