The sensation is incredible. Never before have I experienced such a surge of power—not the morning I fought the arachnidanor the afternoon of the Frostlander battle when the dizzying rush of the water cannon swept away my morality. Not even the night of Fyremas, when my lightning turned the tide of battle against the ice giants.
My own self-satisfaction is underscored tenfold by an immense flood of feeling down the bond.
Soren.
He is proud of me.
More than merely proud, he is…
Awed.
By me.
I turn to him as the lightning cools from my skin, feeling like I might explode into a million pieces. My hair floats all around my face, platinum wisps awhirl. I am pure electricity, a hum of static in the shape of a woman. I do not know how to tamp it down, nor how to release it. My emotions fray, all inhibitions zapped to aether.
I expect him to be ten paces away, but he’s right there, a whisper from me, so close our chests graze. Our eyes lock instantly. His are pure sapphire. I’m sure mine are a wild storm. I have no idea what my expression looks like in this moment, but his…His radiates so much intensity, I can hardly take it in. Seeing it amplifies the currents of electricity running rampant through my bloodstream, pitches up the sibilation inside me to new heights.
Skies, I could drown in that look and die happy.
The deluge coming out of him makes it difficult to breathe as we stare at each other. One, two, three endless seconds. The whip hits the sand at my feet. I do not bend to pick it up. I cannot look away from him, not for anything. Not even for a priceless relic. And he knows it. For my own emotions are laid utterly bare, exposed by the bond as we continue to channel.
There is no hiding from him. Not now. He can feeleverything inside my heart, each desperate pound, each aching beat that seems to sing his name over and over, a constant refrain I can no longer deny. One that, if I am honest, has been playing there for a while now, at first the faintest stirring, now a tune I would know in darkness, in distance, in death.
Soren, Soren, Soren.
The tingles of electricity that still race up and down my limbs are gathering at the tips of my fingers, urging me to reach out. To reach for him. To close that infinitesimal gap that separates us before another moment passes. To remove that impossible distance dividing his body from mine and finally—
We both feel it at once.
A ripple through the bond, strong enough to shatter the moment.
Heat.
Fire.
Burning leaves on an autumn wind.
I reel back as though I’ve been struck.
“Fuck,” Soren growls, pure frustration.
Fuck, indeed.
Our maegics disconnect as I slam my mental guards back up. I take several hasty paces away, unable to look at him. Unable to look inside myself, for fear of what I will see there. Instead, I stare down at the sand, attempting to slow my racing heart. Attempting to come to terms with the new duality inside me, where two warring tethers are wrapped around my rib cage, slowly pulling me apart.
One, a soothing tendril of deepest ocean.
The other, a burning furl of smoke and flame.
I have not felt the second for three long weeks, but there is no denying what its abrupt strengthening means, even before my eyes shift out to the bay where a ship with russet-brown sailsembroidered with a familiar sigil—the flaming mountain—cuts smoothly toward the sea gate. My bond to the Remnant of Fire simmers with an awareness I have not experienced since I left Blister Bight.
I press a hand to my heart, wishing I might suppress its ache.
Pendefyre is in Hylios.
Chapter
twenty-two