The words lash through me, devastatingly honest. I cannot refute them. They are true, every one.
“You are disappearing before my very eyes. You paint the skies with your sadness. You walk through this world, wings clipped. A ghost, terrified to make any impression. Afraid to offend or draw attention.” His sigh is laced with displeasure. “Gods, you cannot fault me for trying to prevent you from returning to that dismal fate.”
“You…” My face slackens with shock as his words trigger a new realization. “Have you been…watchingme?”
“I have eyes everywhere. Even the Fire Court.” He sounds completely unrepentant. “Especially the Fire Court.”
“But that’s—” I shake my head. “I don’t understand.Why?”
“I have made it my business to know about you since I first heard of your existence. Long before you arrived in the Northlands.”
I flinch.
Before?
What does he mean,before?
“No. No, that’s not…”
“Oh, yes. From Thawe Bridge to the Cimmerians. From Vintare to Coldcross to Caeldera.”
“The mountain. The wildfire. Youwerethere,” I breathe, staring at him. “You helped me ford that river. The day we met.”
He does not answer. His jaw is tight. His eyes are swimming with maegic and something else. Something deeper. Something downright terrifying.
“Why?” I ask, practically panting.
“Why what?”
“Why were you there?”
He does not answer this, either. Not verbally, anyway. But as his fingertip traces the thudding pulse point at my neck, I feel his maegic whisper through me, a silken blow that makes me quake.
“If you would rather dwell in your own darkness over things you cannot change, that’s your choice,” he says, eyes locked on mine. “But if you let it, it will eat you alive. You will lose yourself in your grief. Your regret. Your losses.”
His mind brushes sinuously against my mental blockades. His maegic threads deeper into mine.
“You blame yourself for Fyremas, though it was not your fault,”he says inside my head, seamlessly shifting to a psychic connection.“Worse, you fear that Pendefyre blames you, too. If he does, he is an even bigger fool than I previously believed him to be.”
“Get. Out. Of. My. Mind!” I grit aloud.
“Make me.”
I’m trying—not very successfully. “Back off, Soren. I mean it.”
His mocking laugh reverberates inside my skull.“Well, if you mean it…”
“I am finished with this…this…whatever this is. Or…was.” I swallow hard. My heart is pounding too fast inside my chest, and my body—my maegic—is intensely awake, as though it might explode out of my skin at any moment. “I’m going back to Caeldera. Now. This very moment. Take me to the portal.”
“Is that really what you want?”
Yes.
No.
I am no longer sure.
My chin jerks. “You expect me to stay here and allow you to invade my head without permission anytime you see fit?”