Page 158 of The Courting of Bristol Keats
Bristol saw the concern in Julia’s eyes. So far Bristol was the only known bloodmarked in Danu—and if she left, she could destroy all their dreams. But she couldn’t lie. “I’m not sure what it means now. A lot of trust has been destroyed. Bridges burned. I screamed at them all—my father, Tyghan, the council. I’ve done more shouting in the last day than I’ve done in a lifetime. And they all have different defenses, excuses. I don’t know who’s right and who’s wrong anymore. What my father did to Tyghan, what he did to me as a baby, what Tyghan and the council did to my family, all the lies, I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“Sometimes desperate people do desperate things.”
“I expected the truth to be easier.”
“I suppose we all do, but the dark side of truth is usually riddled with regret.” She turned Bristol’s hand and lightly skimmed the base of her thumb as she whispered words, then began bandaging it.
“What about you, Julia? Do you have things you regret?”
She huffed out a breath. “Too many to count.”
“Deeply regret,” Bristol clarified.
Julia nodded, almost reluctantly. “Early on, there were things I did as a lioness that I would never do as a human. And some things I did as a human that I would never do as a lioness. Maybe even things I wouldn’t do as either.”
“Unforgivable things?”
Creases deepened around her eyes. “Unforgivable is a tricky word. Only you can decide what that means. Not kings or councils. Forgiveness is a thing of the heart, and every heart is wounded and mended in its own way.”
Bristol couldn’t imagine her heart ever mending after this. “Sometimes forgiveness never comes.”
Julia sighed. “That too.” She placed Bristol’s bandaged hand back in her lap. “Unlike bones, there is no magic for healing a damaged heart.”
CHAPTER 109
In the morning, Bristol dragged herself to drills, her own quiet room too stifling to endure any longer. The day began in Ceridwen Hall with Olivia, Esmee, and Reuben bombarding them with magics to deflect and perform on demand. The chairs, tables, and lectern were gone, the hall empty except for the upper floors still filled with books. The recruits stood in a circle, the witches and wizard hitting hard with rapid commands. A moment’s hesitation brought a stinging shock that represented a kill. Within the first ten minutes, they were all “dead.”
“Again,” Reuben grumbled, reminding them their amulets weren’t there to complement their eye color. “Use them, dammit!” But many amulets required a simple word to bring their power to life, and even a word required a second to recall—not to mention there were a dozen words for “deflect” alone—depending on the object.
Olivia and Esmee were just as harsh, taunting and jeering in ways they never had before. They took turns, pointing to a random recruit with an order. Some required simple spells, like levitating objects, but then others required more complicated spells for actually throwing those objects as distraction and defense.
Their commands alone were like weapons, echoing through the cavernous hall.
“Invisible!”
“Shape-shift!”
“Summon!”
“Glamour!”
“Levitate!”
“Mist!”
“Fauna!”
“Deflect!”
The one thing they didn’t ask for was fire. At least not from Bristol, and she was grateful, because she still didn’t understand how the ability she had controlled perfectly just a few days ago had become so unstable inside her.
But by the fourth round, with their aggravation growing, the recruits began working in unison without even speaking, their weeks of practice together blooming into its own kind of magic, an instinctive language and trust allowing them to deflect, throw, and summon for one another, stepping in when another hesitated, working with their strengths, even throwing glamour on one another, a more advanced skill, until soon Olivia, Esmee, and Reuben couldn’t keep up with commands or identify who was who, and Esmee finally raised her hands in mock surrender. “Well done! That was cheating a bit, but working as a team is a cheat I approve of. Olivia?”
“If it keeps them alive, that’s all that matters. Reuben?”
He frowned. “Go on to your field drills. And don’t come back dead.”
As they filed out of the room, Hollis whispered, “Doesn’t he have a way with words? Be still my heart.”
