Page 85 of Fate and Flame
“I am free, am I not?”
“You are. But why stay here?”
“The food is plentiful.” She looked at the island and showing all of her teeth. “And I owe you a life debt.”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“I come from an archaic time. It is not your choice, but my own.”
“Suit yourself. I have to go deal with these assholes now.”
“Let me eat them.” She licked her lips and smiled eagerly. “I would take the kill from your own hands.”
I rolled my eyes. “Not yet, but you might want to get back.”
“I’d rather enjoy the show.” Her face beamed with ornery excitement.
I stepped out of the water and onto the shore, pulling the earring from my ear and clinching it into my fist. My hands were steady. The emotional pressure? Not so much.
“The gate is here,” Kai said.
It took all the fae accompanying us to slide the door and enter the gated island. The minute we stepped inside, the sea fae, some wearing only their evada pearl, ran for us. Their anger intensified. I held out my hand, but Fen threw up an invisible barrier with his magic because mine could only destroy and that wasn’t the actual point of this visit.
“You killed our queen,” one of the sea fae yelled, slamming a staff into the ground repeatedly until others joined him in unison. The sound of grinding sand was so distracting I couldn’t get a word in.
Fen stepped forward, waved his hand, and every one of the sticks burst into flames.
The crowd began to scream as they tossed them down. Still their taunting and yelling continued, as if I were the true evil in this world. As if I concocted this plan to take over. To destroy everything one person at a time. The voices scrambled my mind as I tried to control my thoughts, my own vision of myself. The murderer. Louder and louder they grew until Fen’s voice was lost amongst the fray. Until I realized they were screaming but it wasn’t what was drowning me. It was me. The pressure in my mind was so great, I ripped a hole into the wall holding my magic back, shoved my emotions into my magic and let everything rip from me. Because this is what I needed. To release the pressure.
I knew it was a choice. It had a cost, just as Aibell had said, and each time I used that eradicating magic, I lost a part of my soul. A part of Fen’s soul. That was what being the Guardian cost him. And I couldn’t just take it from him. It would always be our choice. Because once I had used it, there was no repairing it. But he understood why I had to do this. Why we had to show our strength.
This time, instead of just letting it go and dealing with the aftermath later, I directed it. I moved the magic this way and that. I let go of my fear of being a murderer, of being just the mate. The pressure of being Alewyn’s Promise. I let it all go. Everything that overwhelmed me and scared me and tormented my dreams. All of it.
“Ara,” Fen said.
I’m fine.
“You may hate me,” I screamed over the crowd. “You may even want to kill me, but you willnevertouch me.” I turned to the giant wall of sea I’d created—the precipice of their own destruction, if I willed it. A towering ocean wave loomed over the top of the island, blocking the sun. I could already feel the magic closing in on me. I pressed onward. “I will not kill you unless you give me a reason. Because I’m not like her. Because I’m not like any of them. Because I am not like you.”
No one moved as they stared at the barrier, jaws open, as silent as the deepest part of the sea.
“I can’t let you free into the world. I don’t want to kill you on the battlefield. I don’t want to see the ocean full of fae blood. After this inevitable war, the sea will have to rebuild, just as we will on land. I’ll crush you all before I let you kill innocents. None of you are better than the fae you had in chains. Remember this day. Remember the mercy you’ve been given. The lives I’ve spared. Because she may have given you favor. She may have allowed you to showcase hatred, but I will not. This world will not. I’ve been sent, made, to fix Alewyn, and you will not change that with your hateful words.”
I turned, lifted my hands to direct the ocean, and brought it calmly back to soft waves crashing against the shoreline. I hadn’t used enough magic to debilitate myself like I had with Morwena’s death, but that was also a very real boundary. My magic could destroy me just as easily as it destroyed the world. Fen, my Guardian, was the only reason why I would never let that happen.
“She commands the sea,” I heard someone say.
“She is a god,” another gasped.
“She is nothing,” another answered.
My head snapped to the voice in the crowd. A wave of my hand and he was on his knees, breath ripped from his fragile lungs. The magic again threatened me. “I am everything!”
Another fae tried to rush to him, but Fen used his wind magic to hold him in place. But I didn’t kill that fae pounding his chest for air. Instead, I showed him mercy. Because the hydra was right, and remorse was the difference between me and them.
I pulled the magic back and the fae fell face first into the ground. I turned and walked out of the camp without another damn word to any of them. I saw the hydra swimming through the water in the distance as she moved to the surface, bowed graciously low and vanished.
It was time to go back to the southern kingdom. Time to plan for war.
