Page 47 of Entranced By the Basilisks

I glare at him then widen my eyes. “Have you killed that way?”

Ari’s jovial nature drops and he’s a deadly, powerful creature looking at me. His smile is edged with amusement.

“I am very old, Emilia, and have lived through many battles. Yes, I’ve killed using my gaze. Each kill was warranted, but I have killed all the same. I was Askari before being Ari.”

I swallow. “What does that mean?”

Ari shakes his head as if to dispel his own lethality. Before my eyes, his personality shifts to that of the salacious, joyous man I’ve come to know. “Eh, that’s a tale for a different time. We’re getting distracted.”

“Right,” I say, not wanting to dwell on my reaction to seeing his darker side. The flash of fear didn’t spiral into something larger. Instead, it tantalized me. “I have weapons on my face that we have to disarm.”

“They are gorgeous weapons,” Ari teases, and I look away with a blush.

He’s in front of me in the next moment. I freeze instead of jumping. He touches me. It’s soft, his hand on my face, stroking my cheek before lifting my chin so our eyes meet. The sight sends a shiver down my spine, but heat races along the same path. There’s a vulnerability to holding his gaze and I can’t imagine that I’m successfully hiding any of my emotions right now.

“And the sizzle of power behind them is serious enough to take out a roomful of people if you will it,” he says.

“I don’t want that.”

He grins. “Then that’s what we’ll work on. Do you feel comfortable enough to close your eyes?”

I’ve had my eyes closed for most of our training session, but not like this. Not with him touching me.This is an adventure.I nod and close my eyes.

Without my sight, the sensation of his skin against mine is poignant.

“Breathe for me, my ember. Calm your heart.”

Nowhe wants me to relax? How can I possibly relax with him touching me? As if my body is striving to contradict my brain, it relaxes. It’s slow and comes with each small brush of his fingers over my face. A fingertip traces over my eyebrows, down the bridge of my nose. My inhale shudders when he traces the sensitive curve of my upper lip.

Hidden tension falls from my shoulders and a drowsy warmth takes its place.

Ari’s thumbs come to rest on my eyelids, gently rubbing the skin back and forth. I blow out a breath at the same time as I feel the brush of his. We’re so close like this.

“Can you feel the burn?” he asks softly.

I go to crease my brows but halt the motion, not wanting to scrunch my face and disturb the peace. “What burn?”

“Now that your body is relaxed, can you identify anything different? I say a burn because that’s what your power feels like to me.”

With that direction, I go looking. I deepen my breath and sense the tightness in my chest first. The churning there is reminiscent of my anxiety, but now that I’m focusing on it, there is a heat, a sear to it.

“That’s magic?” I ask.

Ari makes an airy, satisfied sound that’s almost a hiss. “That’s power and the use of it, manifesting it, that’s magic.”

Please don’t tell me that anxiety has turned into my power source.The thought is ridiculous, and in retrospect, wrong. There are similarities to the way my body responds to it, but it isn’t the same. There isn’t a mental chatter heightening each action until I can’t hear myself think.

This is more like a swirling vibrancy of sensation that I only notice when my breathing slows.

“Now that you’ve identified it, can you feel the way it’s channeling toward your eyes?” Ari asks, his thumbs still touching my eyelids.

I frown and Ari shushes me until I relax my face again. I focus on the sensation of my power and try to follow it. There is a burn in my eyes, under his thumbs. It’s not physical or emotional, but the more attention I pay to it, the more I recognize the light sensation.

“Try and stop it,” Ari says, not offering any more guidance than that.

How do I stop it?I muse. Distracted by the sensation of the power brimming from my chest and out into the world. First, I try to imagine it’s like turning a faucet off, cutting the power at the source. The power wavers but ultimately doesn’t change.

“How?” I ask, keeping relaxed even at the stab of frustration.

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