My lips are parted to deliver another snarky retort when, suddenly, the eel releases a high-voltage electrical charge. The whole globule of water lights up like the sun, pulsing with power. Free arm knifing around my midsection, Soren hauls me backward a few steps as the air turns static all around us.
“Skies!” I don’t know whether to laugh or screech as he sets me back on my feet. “I certainly feltthat.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“Did it feel like your lightning? Or different?”
“Different but somehow similar. Like a lower chord of the same song…Softer, smoother.”
“Because it’s using the water as a conductor. When you last used your lightning, it came out of you as it does a storm cloud, in violent arcs that spread across the sky. Pure, untempered power.” He steers the eel away, depositing it back into the shallows where it disappears with a flip of its tail and another white-hot pulse. “With a comparable conductor, you might be able to suppress the surge and send it straight down the whip in a concentrated charge. Just as we did on theSelkie, the first time you used your air currents.”
“Finesse,” I say wryly.
“Precisely.”
His maegic whispers through me, his mind settling over mine in a blanket the moment I drop my guards to admit him.
“I will be your conductor, skylark. Put me to use.”
I fight another shiver.“You make it sound simple.”
“It is simple. Your power is a natural extension of your will. Yours to manifest, yours to shape however you see fit.”
“And if I hurt you in the process?”
Even mentally, his smirk is audible.“I can take it.”
Gods, he could be cocky.
I grip the handle tightly as I close my eyes and search deep inside my maegical reserves. The swirling hurricane within is somewhat subdued by Soren’s presence in my head, its maelstroms soothed into a quiet I only ever experience when we channel. I let it wash through me, a balm to my soul, as I call forth the storm to the forefront of my mind.
And I see it.
Feel it.
There, deep in the darkness.
A flicker.
A flash.
My power.
My lightning.
“Step back.”
He does not question my order, complying instantly. I am momentarily afraid the distance will sever our mental connection, but our bond has strengthened significantly from those early days. We are just as tethered at ten paces as we are when pressed tight together.
I open my eyes as all the fine, feathery hair on my body lifts to stand on end. The charge gathers beneath my skin, volts skating down my limbs, pulses pricking at my nerves. I swing my arm at my side, shaking off some of the tension that tightens my muscles. Preparing myself as much as I can for what is to come. My body tingles from the roots of my hair to the tips of my toes as the buzz grows to a voltage I struggle to contain.
Now or never.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I swing my arm up high over my head, then snap it back down. The whip lashes out with a violent crack and, as it does, I watch a bolt of lightning ripple down my arm, then race outward along its taut gold length. The result is a singular arc of brilliant light that shoots like an arrow straight over the cove into open sky. It dissipates in a blink, the light almost faster than the eye’s ability to track it. The initial crack of the whip has faded long before the boom of thunder resounds back to us, vibrating from the clouds down onto the sea, strong enough to make the sands tremble beneath my boots.
Gods, that feels good.