Page 2 of Sins of His Wrath

Feeling the air beyond the wall, she began to move the white fire away from her. It sparked, writhing even wilder, pushing against her hold, fighting to come back to her. Its tendrils crackled across the room in a series of bright flashes and it lurched toward Mama.

Fear clutched Naya’s chest. She opened her mouth to tell the old women that it was too strong, and Mama might get hurt, but there was blood dripped over her bottom lip and down to her chin. So she closed it and shook her head firmly instead. She couldn’t do it.

The woman’s dark brown eyes stayed locked on hers as she moved closer to stand next to Mama. “You need to stop thinking about your magic like everyone else. You are connected to everything in this empire.Everything.” Her eyes burned into Naya’s with an emotion she couldn’t place. “Your power and reach is much larger than you think.”

Naya grit her teeth and forced her voice out as blood poured over her bottom lip. “It’s too strong.”

“It is not too strong for you,” the woman said firmly. “You need to change your perspective. Controlling this magic has nothing to do with strength, not for you. Use your awareness—if you are aware, you can touch. Broaden your senses, take everything in. Make everything else small and then look at the magic again.”

Naya’s brows furrowed.If you are aware, you can touch?She didn’t understand half of what the old woman was saying.

Mama squeezed Naya’s hand. “You can do it, Naya,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “Just clear your mind and try. Start from the beginning, like when you were first learning.”

Naya nodded, swallowing the blood slowly filling her mouth. Since she’d learned magic from before the age of five, it was so instinctive that she never thought about how she did it anymore. But Mama was telling her to go back to basics.

Taking a long moment, Naya examined the tiny sliver of magic; it was jittery and unsteady, powerful but erratic. Keeping the magic in place, she sent her awareness out, spreading in all directions, ballooning to include everything in her vicinity and beyond.

Awareness had been the first thing Mama had taught her. It was impossible to control magic without first honing one’s ability to sense it. Using her awareness was like seeing everything around her through her mind’s eye, but it wasn’t a visual sense, it was a way of feeling what existed around her. Magic existed in and around everything and had a vibration to it, like the way she could feel wind or rain or sunshine, but magic also had different moods, qualities, sounds, and textures. Depending on where it was and what it was embedded or attached to, and only Omegas could sense it like this, through their awareness.

Like most Omegas, Naya had always focused on and used the magic that immediately surrounded her, but the wastelands weren’t near.

She inhaled sharply as her awareness stretched even farther, taking her mind beyond the castle and out into Ashens. She could feel the city—its pulse and mood—in the same way she’d always felt it from her favorite spot in the forest. Pushing higher, she went beyond the city and out into rural Ashens, over the mountains, past the villages, and across the border into Fengar.

To the west, the White Ocean was a cool, slow vibration.

“Keep going,” the old woman murmured. “Narrow your view to the landmass, don’t go over the ocean.”

Naya drew her awareness back from the White Ocean and the countries surrounding Ashens, and instead pushed it farther to the east, across the Fengish Sea and into the southeast of the empire, across Cillford and Saderthorne, until finally, she reached the border of the wastelands.

Naya stilled her awareness, steadying herself. This was incredible. She could sense everything, and the world was alive and thrillingly vibrant, with multiple contrasting vibrations existing across the empire.

Naya took a moment to acclimate to the overwhelming sensation. It was a strange feeling, being simultaneously aware of the entire empire at once. She could sense the busyness of the castle, even Papa pacing down the corridor outside her room, agitated and tense, while her forest was as slow and calm as always. The Fengish Sea was lively and swaying, while the whole country of Cillford hummed in a steady pulse.

Naya kept her breath smooth and calm in order to apply her will. While her awareness allowed her to sense magic, her will gave her the ability to affect it. But first, magic had to submit to her will before she could control it. Simple magic was instantaneously easy for her to control, but dense, more complex magic took time. Having practiced with varied magical energies during her childhood training, sometimes alongside other Omegas, Naya had always known she had a powerful will, but she’d never done anything like this before.

Finally, she pushed her awareness out to the wastelands. The magic there roamed wild and free, swirling through the barren region with tremendous force. In her nightmares it was an inescapable rocky trap she could never be rid of—a torturous malevolent enemy that insisted on harming her innocent little sister and yet now… now its energy felt no different from the wildness of the ocean or mountains. No angrier than a whipping wind or the fiery heat of an enthusiastic sun. Strangely, there was something fascinating about it—powerful, deadly and majestic, not unlike her forest.

The erratic crackling nature of the magic in the wasteland matched the sliver she’d ripped from her own body, but the magnitude of the Wastelands made it feel small; in fact, it felt tiny and insignificant. Without hesitation, Naya grabbed ahold of the sliver and pushed it toward the wastelands.

The white energy blasted away from her, through the wall and swept into the sky, twisting and twirling in the air.

Mama and the twin Talent-Crafters gasped, but their voices felt far away. Naya focused on pushing the wild magic to the wastelands, keeping it high above the empire, where it could cause no harm to citizens.

As soon as it approached the Saderthorn/wastelands border, it lurched away from her, drawn by an innate impulse to join the rest of the magic, but she held onto it, waiting until it was within the region before she released it. Watching the sliver get swallowed up, she relaxed, relief overcoming her.

The vibrations of the empire became more pronounced, drawing her attention in different directions.

“All right, Naya, pull yourself back.” Mama’s voice seemed far away. “Take it slowly.”

Naya pulled her awareness back into herself, slowly retreating from the varied sensations of the empire. As it retreated, the lessening vibrations tingled just outside of her awareness, like an echo that she couldn’t hear, but she kept going until her awareness was once again limited to the room.

She exhaled heavily, her body going limp from the effort, but then the echo surged, seeming to come from all directions.

“Take time to calm your mind,” the unfamiliar voice said. “You need to detach yourself from the sensation. It might take some time, but breathe deep and slow.”

Naya sucked in a breath and exhaled again.

“Too quick,” the voice said. “Slow and steady… deep and slow. Forget everything else. Look inward.”

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