Page 88 of A Touch of Stars and Stones
Ravi’s eyes are wide as he looks around us, but I blink through the water to Ten. My hand starts to grow cold as the water cools us, now soaking through our clothes.
“Ravi?” I say, but I’m not sure I know what I’m asking.
“I’ve only ever been able to pull water when I’m outside.”
The chill travels further up my arm before I drop my hand, severing the connection. The wind dies on the spot, the air stills, and the rain stops falling.
And everyone starts to chatter around us.
I rub my hands over my face and smooth my hair back, taking a gasping breath. One, then two.
And look around at the rest of the room.
The rain seemed to get everyone, although the puddle on the floor under our feet tells me Ravi and I were the eye of the storm.
“Shame we didn’t see that one coming,” Rowan calls from the doorway, his hair dry like he took shelter from the little rainstorm. “Ten.”
Finally.
He strides forward to meet me, his brown hair damp from the rainstorm, and I offer a nervous smile. My eyes shift to his and stay there, watching for any sign of what might happen next.
The vision of me on the ground the first time we touched slams into my mind, and all my muscles lock into place.Please, not that. Not here, I silently beg. That was before. That was when I didn’t know, I tell myself.
My fingers twitch to reach up and hold the necklace at my throat as if it can ward off that previous experience and the chaotic and mind-splitting pain and confusion that came with it. But as my hand moves, Ten reaches for it, grasping it in his.
This isn’t the same as it was with the others. Our palms aren’t up and mirrored. He’s gripped my fingers in his, drawing my arm between us.
And all I feel is heat.
The same heat I’ve always felt with him. I focus on it, imagining the flame licking under my skin. It pulses, a beat, a thrum of energy magnifying and emanating from the point where our hands touch.
My eyes stay locked with his, the overriding comfort I’ve always felt there, like a pillar of strength. And I breathe in. And out, focusing on that well in the centre of my chest.
But still nothing. Only that heat. That burning. Blazing through our joined hands.
Disappointment swims to the surface, and I feel the lag in my body.
With everyone else, it’s just… happened. I’ve felt their power, or they’ve used mine, like Ravi, to amplify their powers.
I so desperately wanted to see whatwecould do.
I was so sure that something would spark, given what’s happened up until now.
My breath catches in my throat as another thrum of energy ripples out from our hands, and I squeeze it harder. Tighter.
Ten raises his other hand, ever so slowly, like we’re the only two people in the room. With a gentleness I’ve not felt before, his hand brushes against my cheek to cup it.
In that second, I don’t care that we were in a room full of other people, and I don’t care who those people are because all I can see is Ten. Those deep brown eyes that shine at me. At me, only… there’s a fragment of darkness, a shadow casting through them. His jaw is tight. Sweat glistened on his brow.
“Ever—” he grits out. Just before he drops onto one knee in front of me, bowing his head, his fingers still entwined with mine.
My name on his tongue is all it takes for the heat to twist and turn to ice and stone, and my mind closes in, shadows consuming it.
twenty-three
. . .
Aten
