“You need a guardian,” he says softly. Eyes on my throat, watching me swallow. Eyes on my fingers, white tipped with tension. Eyes on my shoulders, cowed in with dread.
I force them straight against the back of the chair and lift my chin in frail defiance. “Perhaps I already have one.”
“Who?Pendefyre?” His scoff is dark. “Pendefyre is no guardian. Not for someone like you.”
“He has kept me alive so far.”
“Oh, he can keep you safe from clearly marked enemies. From hideous monsters and hungry beasts,” he acquiesces. “But can he keep you safe from yourself?”
Everything that makes you who you are will spill out onto the pavestones of your skull…
“That’s what I thought,” he murmurs, reading the fear in my expression as easily as one might the page of a novel.
My mouth snaps shut with a soft click. I did not realize it had fallen open. I cannot seem to formulate a word, to corral my scattered thoughts into anything coherent.
“You need more than some fierce warrior on the battlefield. You need someone to teach you how to wield that power you carry within you. How to channel it without letting it crush you completely. The biggest threat you will ever face, the toughest battle you will ever fight, is against your own limits.” He pauses. “You have only begun to scratch the surface of who you are, little wind weaver. Of what you are. Of what you will become.”
“And whom do you suggest for this illustrious role of guardianship?” I ask shakily, swallowing against the emotions clogging my airway. “Let me guess:you.”
“Mmm. Much as I’d revel in the opportunity to rile Pendefyre”—his smirk is wry—“I refuse to get involved with another doomed attempt at overturning fate. If he insists on trying to remedy the past in some vain attempt to assuage his guilt, that’s his prerogative. Not mine.”
“His guilt? Guilt over what?”
He laughs—actually laughs, head thrown back, the sound ringing across the terrace like the boom of a cannon. When his eyes return to mine, they hold no mirth but rather that same gleaming, predatory light I remember so well from our first encounter.
“Poor little skylark,” he whispers. “Caught in a web so tangled, she’ll never have a chance to test the skies. You know, you’re almost better off not knowing anything. To die in ignorance might be a blessing.”
“Death is never a blessing.”
His lips curl. “You may yet change your mind about that.”
“I have tasted death on my tongue many times already,” I tell him flatly. “I did not care for its bitterness. I doubt welcoming my demise with the wool still pulled over my eyes will do a thing to sweeten such an end.”
He seems to consider this, weighing my words against his own reservations. For a long time, there is only silence—so long, I think he might not speak at all. But then, with a casual shrug that belies the intensity of his gaze, he heaves a sigh and settles back into his seat.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He plucks another strawberry from the bowl and begins chewing. “Let’s begin with what you know.”
“I know I bear a Remnant mark…I know I am…” I shrug helplessly. “Air.”
“And?”
“What else is there?”
“Gods.” He dashes the water in his goblet onto the terrace, then refills it with wine. Leaning back in his chair, he gazes at me through half-lidded eyes. “Do you even know what a Remnant is?”
“A sigil of elemental power.” That’s what Penn had said. “It marks those with dormant maegical abilities.”
“That’s it? That’s all he told you?”
I glance away, glowering.
“Firstly, a Remnant is no common mark for just any fae who can stir a breeze or spin water in a goblet. Plenty of high fae can do parlor tricks. Some of the oldest bloodlines can do more—cast a glamour, activate a portal. But only four souls bear a Remnant mark. One for each of the elements. Water, air, fire, earth.”
My body stills as the words register. Four elements. Four souls. I’d assumed—wrongly—that there were many others in theNorthlands bearing marks like mine. Many who might manipulate the elements. Or, if not many, at least…some.
You are a wind weaver, Penn had said.
Not you arethewind weaver.