Page 11 of Exquisite Monster
I’d been floating in the air—hovering like floating in a net. She’dstirred the pot without a tool and lifted me out of the water without touching me. “Your power is moving objects?”
“I can see why you’d think that, but no. It’s not as simple as that. I control… the relationship between things. Influence the space around them, within them, and between them.” She extended a hand, and once again the liquid in the pot spun. “I can will the stew to spin in relation to the pot.” The bowl I’d eaten from rose in the air and floated. “Or the relationship between the bowl and everything else. I could do the same to you if the little one wasn’t sleeping. Where you fell, I have commanded the air to repel everything. Slow it and stop it.”
I blinked. “Forgive me, but that is a strange power.”
Gleym barked a laugh, her voice rough. “That it is. But useful. I once knew a dragon whose power was the ability to make things glitter. Beautiful, but I am grateful my own is more than a passing trick.”
“Can you use your power on yourself?”
“Yes.” She narrowed her eyes like she already knew where my questions would lead.
“So you could return to the top of the world?”
Throwing back the rest of her drink, she glared at me. “And why would I do that? I’ve never liked anyone, girl. Not truly. Neither dragons nor humans. Why would I return to live amongst those who already tried to kill me? They would simply try again.”
“But—”
“And no,” she cut me off. “I cannot simply send you to the surface with my power. I am old and I am powerful, it is true. But even mine cannot reach so far.”
I deflated, cursing the bright hope that had bloomed so quickly in my chest just to be smothered once more. “I see.”
She laughed again. “Don’t look so distraught. I said I couldn’t send you to the surface. Not that I wouldn’t help you get there.”
“You never said you would.”
“True. But you don’t exactly have a choice but to trust me, do you?”
No. I didn’t. And I was weary of not having choices.
Gleym stood and stretched slowly. “You are not ready to return to the surface, Katalena, mate of dragons. If you want to survive the Elders and their schemes, you must be more than you are now.” She strode towards one of the doors and looked back expectantly. “I haven’t yet decided to help you, but we shall see what you’re made of. Come.”
She disappeared, and I liftedVaríinto my arms to follow her. It wasn’t a promise, but it was a chance.
Right now? It was all I needed.
CHAPTER SIX
________
KATALENA
Sweat dripped into my eyes and burned, but I didn’t wipe it away. Because I couldn’t stop stirring the cauldron in front of me. This potion needed constant movement until it was complete. Any stillness at all would ruin it.
That’s what the scroll I’d studied until it was burned in my mind said. Constant and intentional movement. If I did it right, it would reduce into something thicker and darker. A paste that could be placed or wrapped into small parcels. It ignited on impact, or when struck by something. Anything, really.
I’d never made a potion like this, if you could call it a potion. But I wanted to get it right. Gleym watched from across the room, not interfering and not offering any feedback. This was her way of assessing my skills and deciding whether she would help me.
The sheer number of ingredients she had down here was impressive. When I asked her how? She simply smirked.
She and I both knew there wasn’t any way for some of these to get down here by falling through Evrítha. But she could keep her secrets if she helped me.
The first day she had me start brewing everything I knew by heart. That in itself took three days, with my sleeping normally. I was out of practice with some of them, but they were all passable.
Varífound a mortar bowl and curled up in it just like he had in Mesene’s workshop, alternately dozing and watching. Sometimes helping if there was something simple he could do like crush an ingredient with his claws.
After I finished everything I knew, Gleym handed me a scroll and said, “Make it.”
I had. It had been a simple potion, but powerful. One of the small magics humans could control by virtue of the ingredients. You shook the potion to make it glow and again to snuff it out. You could throw it against something too, if you needed speed. In a place like this where there was darkness everywhere? It would be helpful.
