Page 149 of Embers in the Snow

This ismypower, but I don’t know how to stop it. Panic rises in me, along with urgency, along with euphoria, mingling with the afterglow of the most intense pleasure I’ve ever known.

The living wood closes in around us, wrapping us in a strange cocoon.

It doesn’t hurt us, though. Its touch is gentle; almost a caress.

And then it stops moving. It solidifies.

I look up at Corvan in surprise, meeting his smoldering half-lidded gaze.

A lazy smile drifts across his lips. “What did you do to us, Finley?”

At least the rogue wooden tendril-monster—which has developed a mind of its own—isn’t stopping us from being face to face. I can see him so clearly, right down to every last inhumanly perfect detail. His eyelashes are long and dark and soft against his austere features. His gaze is molten. I could drown in him.

And although my powers are out of control, I don’t even feel afraid right now.

“I don’t quite know,” I murmur, tempted to rest my head against his broad chest and close my eyes. “I don’t know anything anymore.”

“You know how to ruin me,” he says quietly, a hint of amusement in his tone. “And entrap me. That’s no small feat.”

“Corvan…” My cheeks heat up as I feel a flicker of irritation. “We are trapped in a wooden, er,morphologyof my own making. I fear that if I don’t try and get a hold of this thing, it’s going to get us in trouble sooner or later.”

Corvan’s lazy smile turns a little wicked. “My dear, we’re already in trouble. I’m intoxicated by you, and you seem to manifest power every time you take a bite of me. So just stop biting me… or learn to control it.”

“C-control it?”

“It seems like you have too much magic at times. That you don’t know how to contain it nor release it. You don’t even know what it feels like. So these things occur at certain moments—when your threshold for control is lowered. You melt the arm of a chair. Get stuck in the ground. It seems ingesting my magic sets it off. So you could just stop doing that for the foreseeable future.”

“The second time it happened—when I was tethered to the earth—I didn’t taste your magic.”

“No, but the effect lessened after I drank from you—when I tookyourmagic. And the only thing that happened to me was that I felt invigorated beyond belief.”

“So I make you strong, and you restrain me?” I stare at him in disbelief. “We’re a likely pair, aren’t we?”

“I wouldn’t have torestrainyou, as you put it, if you could control your power.” Corvan reaches up and caresses my cheek, barely able to move through the tangle of deformed wood. “But that will come with time. You’ve onlyjustcome into this, Finley. It’s incomprehensible and frightening, I know. You’ll probably lose control time and time again before you can master it, to the point where you’ll feel like you’re going insane. But don’t worry, because I’m here, and I’m not going to let you slip. And I suspect that when you’re done, you’ll be immensely powerful.”

“I don’t want to be powerful,” I grumble. “All I ever wanted was to…”

“Was towhat?”his touch becomes achingly gentle. At least the rogue wooden tendrils haven’t restrained his hands.

Corvan’s simple question floors me. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, trying to think beyond the cold walls of Ruen castle and the faint hopes of my previous existence.

“What I want…” I inhale his delicious scent; I savor the feeling of his warm body welded against mine. Spent, he’s still inside me.

I want you to stay with me, always.

I open my eyes again. “I want my life to be my own. I want you to be mine and mine only. I want those I cherish to be protected. I want to know my mother’s truth; whether she’s truly alive. I want those who hurt her to be punished. And if sheisalive, I want her to… to…”

A trickle of wetness slips down my cheek.

Am I…crying?

I didn’t expect to…

Corvan doesn’t say anything. He just waits, giving me time to gather my thoughts.

And in the space between us, I find my yearning.

“If it came to pass that my mother were alive, and I was somehow able to meet her, I would understand if she were to harbor resentment in her heart, and yet… I wouldn’t want for her to despise me.”

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