I wasn’t shaking anymore, but there was an uneasy tremor deep inside me. I lay on the bed, but I couldn’t sleep, staring at the ceiling as my heart thudded in my chest.
I stood, pacing about the chamber, walking out onto the balcony in the thickening fog, but there wasn’t enough space to walk, and somehow the fog carried the green scent of Galen on it.
How could I be thinking of him now?
“Shy,” I heard, and I turned back toward the palace, but no one was there.
“Shy,” I heard again, and I turned into the heart of the fog.
Warm arms came out of the fog and wrapped around me, and Kata hugged me as the fog around us grew thicker still.
“Kata!” I cried, pressing my face into her neck. So many emotions rushed through me like pebbles tumbling down a slope, and I looped my arms around her shoulders, hugging her tight.
“I have you,” she whispered to me. “I have you. You must have been so frightened, but you’re safe now.”
“Was that you today?” I asked. “With the ice?”
“No,” she said. “That was another member of the Resistance. There are many Elementae who have joined us.”
“So it was true,” I said. “What they were saying about hunting and killing those with power?”
She drew back from our hug. “I told you that, before you were married.”
My chest felt tight. “I know,” I said.
“And you didn’t think it mattered to you,” she said softly. “Until now.”
For all I spoke of caring for my people, of wanting to lead and save, she was probably right. The weight of this stung, but she put her hand in mine.
I nodded. “I have the power you always thought I did.”
“I figured,” she said, her mouth tight. “I’m sorry it’s not what you wanted.”
I looked at our hands. “If we were back in the desert, this would just be one more thing for us to share. One more thing that makes us sisters in the way that birth didn’t. And maybe I was stupid,” I said, “but I married him. And I’m here. And these powers are illegal, and he hates the people who practice them. And I’m married to him, Kata.”
“You’re not stupid,” she said fiercely. “You protected your family. I would have done the same if I had the chance.”
“Can you fix me?” I asked her. “You can heal—surely you can heal this.”
She frowned. “You aren’t broken. You don’t need to be fixed.”
“Calix knows of an elixir that can take powers away from Elementae. If we can find that before him, I could drink it. I could use it—”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Such a thing doesn’t exist. There is no elixir. Whatever errand he’s on, he won’t succeed. These powers are part of you; they are as essential to your body as your blood. They cannot be removed or rejected.”
“How can you know? You were so young when you left the islands—you barely know about your own power.”
She pulled away from me, crossing her arms. “I know enough! I’ve never heard of something that can curb elemental powers. Even the genocide didn’t destroy them.”
“Then close the Earth Aede. You opened it; you must be able to close it.”
An indignant huff came out of her. “The powers retreated to the Aedes because of the genocide, Shalia. Like a child who runs and hides when their life is threatened. Like I had to hide in the desert after my family was murdered. Like I still hide, because if your husband knew there was still a daughter of the high priestess alive, my life would be forfeit. It is not as simple as opening a box and closing it again. And even if I could—it would remove all the Earth powers. You would do that for your own gain?”
“No,” I told her, desperate, my hands beginning to shake. “But there has to be a way. I can’t control it. It just happens, and I can’t stop it. And soon someone will be able to tell that it’s me.” Visions ripped through my mind, of rage on my husband’s face, of blood and sharp things meant to punish me for this power I never wanted.
“Stop,” she said, and I looked up to her. “You can control it. You have to use it—that’s why it’s unpredictable now.”
“How do I learn to control it? How did you?”
“It’s different for me.” She held out her hand, and the mist curled to meet it in a thin, swirling plume. “Most of my kind show their gifts very young. My gift never arrived. Not that I could see. And then the night came that they say the Three-Faced God Walked, and I could feel my power. And then the powers of so many other people, rushing to me, overwhelming me. Using me as a conduit,” she said. “And—well, you remember when I knew the Aedes needed to be opened again.”
My fingers curled around hers. She had been so sick, and I’d never been more scared for her. We brought her to the lake at Jitra, and the water had healed her, but the search consumed her after that. That’s when she started to leave, and my parents refused to let me go with her. She left first for weeks, and then for months, and I had carried on without my best friend.
“I know …” I rubbed my fingers over her skin in our clasped hands, and she gripped me back, binding us tight, letting me confess my shame. “I never asked about the Night the Three-Faced God Walked. Your nightmares … I didn’t want to ask. I didn’t want to know.”
“And I didn’t tell you,” she said, her voice rough. “Because I love you. Because I’ve always loved you, and I don’t want you to know.”
“But I love you too,” I told her, “and I want to know what you’ve suffered.”
She nodded, not looking at me but at the water. “I don’t remember much. I was eleven. I was a child. I was with my brother when the siege came. People panicked. I was locked in a room with my brother while my mother and sisters went to fight, and my father went to protect them. My mother’s gift was legendary. She could rule the oceans.
“I don’t know what happened. How it could have been. Rian was there, trying to help the Vis people in the war. My mother and all her court were there, in their full power, in their full glory. How could one man have fought them and won?” She looked at me like I would have an answer.
“I heard they surrounded the islands. He had so many men he just overwhelmed you,” I told her.
She shook her head. “It was more than that. They found me and my brother, and my brother started swirling the air into a tornado, trying to protect us. They stabbed him to death.”
I took her other hand, desperate to comfort her, desperate to forget what it felt like to watch my brother burn.
She drew in a short, unsteady breath. “And they spent hours hurting me. Trying to make my gifts appear, but they never came. So they bound up anyone who didn’t have powers—with Rian tied right beside me—and they said we would watch the unclean people be sacrificed to the God. As if they weren’t planning on murdering us too—as if there was any way they would have purposefully left anyone alive to remember.”
She was quiet for many long moments. “They were so fast. They built the structure in a day, and it took another day to fill it,” she told me. “It didn’t look like a man, not at first. It just looked like a cage of sapling and wood. And then they filled it, tying my people inside the structure. He made sure I could see my parents. And they stuffed the empty places with grasses and hay. When night came, they lit it on fire. The people—my people, my family—struggled so much, so hard, that the structure moved, filled with hundreds of screams. And then it fell like a man to his knees. And so they called it the Night the Three-Faced God Walked.”
She pushed a tear off her face. “When it fell, it shook the ground, and something within me broke. And water came in, so much water that the island flooded and pulled Rian and me away with it. And we survived, because the water was part of me. The water was me.” She sniffed. “My gift—it comes from anger. And hate. But yours doesn’t,” she said, and she looked around us.
Circling our feet, sand was building in small mounds, like an infinitesimally small desert. “I did that?” I asked.
She nodded, wiping another tear. “You’re incredibly powerful, Shalia. Your power begins with your love for people,” she said. “That’s where your greatest strength lies.”
I frowned. “But I didn’t—before, I could feel threads, like it was a fabric I had to tug on to get it to obey me.”
She nodded. “That’s common. It helps you focus; as you grow stronger, you may still have a sense of the threads existing—they’re the energy of the natural world—but you may not have to manipulate them to use your power.”
“But how do I grow stronger? I have to love people more?”
She shook her head. “No. You have to hold on to it,” she said, her voice rough. She leaned her head on mine, and I wished I could take away the things she had suffered. “Soon it will be easier, but when it’s difficult to control, you have to hold that emotion within you. Remember it and treasure it, and it will open your power.”
“But what can my power even do?” I asked her. “I don’t really understand.”
“Anything that is of the earth will do your bidding. In my experience, I can’t make water manifest where there is no water, like in the desert. But usually there’s water somewhere, and earth’s presence is endless. Her shoulders lifted. “We’re in a palace of rock; there couldn’t be a better place to try something.”
“Can I grow things?” I asked, suddenly wanting to see ilayi blooms in this foreign land.
She tilted her head. “In a way—if the seed is there, you can give it soil and the right conditions to grow, but you can’t grow something out of nothing. And it would be better if you had a fire element to give it heat, and a water element to nourish the soil. The elements are at their most powerful when they work together.”
Disappointment filled my chest.
“But remember,” she said. “Many things come from the earth. Metals, minerals, crystals, to name a few.”
I thought of the gold that Rian had stolen, killing ten men to do it. When did ten—or even one—become the number of lives my brother felt comfortable taking? I wished for the precious metal, curling my hand into a tight fist, willing it to be full of the gold he needed.
With a sigh, I let go, opening my hand.
“Nothing happened,” I told her, showing her my empty palm.
She just looked at me, patient. “Don’t focus on the earth. Focus first on yourself, on that emotion.”
“On love,” I repeated, the words rough.
She nodded.
I thought of Rian on my wedding day, my fear and confusion and joy as I saw him in front of me, the first of my family to give me a gift, to give me his hopes for my future. Even when it was a future he wouldn’t choose for me. He was the first to put a thread around my neck, and the gold in the foreign coins had a soft shine before the full sun rose.
I felt invisible threads now at my fingertips. Just like the ones my family had given me, these connected me to something greater. I felt it as little pieces of things—flecks, really—pulled up from the soil in the cliffs below, from other rocks, from all around me, rolling and jumping into my hand.
When I opened my eyes, I held a tiny chunk of gold.
My heart pounded as I showed it to Kata, and she nodded, smiling at me. “You see?” she said.
“Show me more,” I asked.
Kata guided my practice for a while longer, including bending a silver hair comb, but we soon heard a noise behind us. Without a word, Kata kissed my cheek and walked back into the fog. In seconds, I couldn’t see her.
“Shalia?” Kairos called.
I came toward him until I could see him in the fog, still heavy but clearing. He squinted, looking through the fog with a wry smile.
“So many curious secrets, sister,” he said. I opened my mouth, but he shook his head. “I don’t need to know.”
He offered me his arm, and I took it. “Where are we going?”
“To meet your new guard,” he said, glancing around. “If you can see them.”
He ushered me out of the chamber and up a staircase. In a sort of courtyard around the central tower, more than twenty men were lined up in the hazy glow of the fog.
“These men have all volunteered to create the Saepia, the Queen’s Guard,” I heard Galen say, and I turned to see him walking toward me, his hands behind his back, making his shoulders seem broader still.
Shoulders that had sheltered me not even an hour ago. Saved me. The thought made me mute as he came closer and stopped several feet away.
He looked me over for a stark moment. “You’re not injured,” he said.
I nodded, my mouth dry. “Just shaken,” I managed to say.
“Which brings us to your new guard,” Kairos said.
“Yes,” Galen said, clearing his throat. “As I said, these men have volunteered. They are some of my best soldiers.”
His eyes, lush and vibrant green, met mine. I hadn’t realized his eyes were just as green as Calix’s—maybe more so. They were brighter, somehow, such a strange contrast to his carved-rock face.
Galen didn’t seem to register my curiosity; he turned away from me and gestured two men forward. They didn’t look like the rest; one was thinner, smaller, with a shifty look to him that reminded me of the way that Kairos slid around things, and the other was utterly massive. They wore the same black uniform, but theirs were looser, less fitted. The taller one came to me first. His hair was blond and longer than the rest of his fellows, tied back by a leather string. Two swords hung on his hips, and he had a long, broad weapon strapped to his back that looked as deadly as it did heavy, with a wicked, notched curve like a scimitar, but different.
He knelt to me. “My queen.”
“This is Zeph,” Galen said, gesturing to the large man.
He stayed kneeling, and the second came forward. He was shorter, and he wore a leather breastplate over his uniform that was lined with small knives, and a sword on his back like Zeph.
“This is Theron. These two will be your personal guards. These are men I have trained myself, and I would trust them with my life,” Galen said. “Which is the only way I will trust them with yours.”
I glanced at Galen at such words, but he didn’t look at me. “Please don’t kneel to me,” I told them. “I don’t like it.”
They shared a glance but stood. “We’ll be with you night and day, my queen,” Zeph promised me. “We do not take today’s insult to your person lightly.”
I nodded to him. “Thank you.”
“They will lead the others,” Galen explained to me. “They will be in shifts around you as needed. Some will guard your rooms, whether you’re there or not. Others will support Zeph and Theron as needed on the move. Let me introduce you.”
He introduced each man in turn, and I did my best to remember their names. They didn’t know me, but they all had come, ready to defend me. It was reminiscent of my brothers back home, and I found comfort in the thought.
I felt my power, as if suddenly my heart stretched all the way to my fingertips, and farther still, as if there were a million fine threads that my fingers were stroking against. And in that moment, I was totally aware—of the stone beneath our feet, of the grains of fine sand moving over them, of the steel and silver of the armor and weapons of the men before me.
Breathing to control my power, I looked for my brother. Kairos watched it all in silent consideration. He was changing, my funny brother, and I wasn’t sure I liked it—certainly not if the change was because of me.
The men were dismissed, and I felt the gears shifting into place as Zeph and Theron gave orders, sliding twenty feet apart with me in the middle. Just like that, I felt a protective barrier between me and the world, and I could breathe easier.
“Dinner’s soon,” Galen said, coming to me again.
“Even after today’s events?” I asked.
“The court loves nothing more than to gather and spread gossip,” he said. “I’m sure it will be a great comfort after such a day.”
“Shy,” Kairos called. His sly gaze moved between Galen and me, and I felt heat in my face, like his eyes saw something that wasn’t there. I hurried over to him, and Kairos followed me back to my chambers without comment, Zeph and Theron a few steps behind him. When I went into my bedroom, Kairos stood at the door, watching me thoughtfully.
“Are you all right, Shy?” he asked softly.
I squeezed his hand. “Yes. Thank you, Kai.”
He kissed my cheek. He left with a sigh on his lips, and Zeph stood at the door while Theron gestured down the hallway. “We’ll be right outside your door, my queen.”
“Thank you,” I told them.