Page 18 of The Daughter of the Scarred Elf

He had her repeat it ten times. Each resulted in something similar: each time she only hit half the targets in the chest.

“Keep in mind where the targets are,” Joran said. “Turn around and hit them without looking.”

She faltered at those words. “You want me to … hit them while I can’t see them? Frombehind?”

“Correct.”

Kolfinna gave the statues a good, hard look and spun on her heels. Sijur was staring directly at her, and she felt a bit awkward to be facing him—albeit a few dozen feet away. It was easier to focus when she didn’t have those beady, black eyes watching her every move and the sly grin that spread across his face whenever she used her magic.

She didn’t dislike Sijur, but there was something about him that made her uncomfortable. She couldn’t exactly explain it either. It was the same when she had asked him to dance at theMåneskinball. Something about him had always felt wrong.

Discarding those thoughts, she focused on the task at hand. She formed six stones on the floor by her feet and tried to remember the positioning of the statues behind her. Her mana pulsed at her fingertips and she lifted both hands toward thestones. Without wasting another second, she sent the stones behind her. One of the stones cracked loudly, while the others popped off in the distance, likely hitting the ceiling or the wall at the end of the room.

She tentatively glanced over her shoulder. One of the rocks had broken off the head of the statue, while the other five were imbedded in the wall and floor. Warmth slowly clawed up her neck and cheeks. That was embarrassing.

Joran dusted off his clothes with a frown. “Your aim is still not perfect.”

“Do you thinkyoucould do better?” Kolfinna didn’t mean to snap, but the words came out like a challenge.

His vivid green eyes—which reminded her of dewy grass in the morning sun, of emerald leaves rustling in warm summer air, of dense moss growing on the sides of trees and rocks—shuttered and he looked over at Sijur. “I can.”

Sijur grinned like a wolf, a gleam of mischief and amusement glowing in his dark gaze. “Joran, why don’t you show Kolfinna your abilities? I think it would be very eye-opening.”

Joran bobbed his head while Kolfinna clenched her teeth tightly. Was this where he showed her that he was so much better than her? He didn’t exude much confidence and he certainly didn’t carry himself like he was better than her.

He raised up six perfectly round stones from the ground and with a single flick of his wrist, they zoomed at the targets. The impact of stone grinding against stone sent a cloud of dust to settle in the air, and the loud crack of the stones echoed in the room. All six of his stones were deeply implanted in the statues’ chests. Spidery fissures had formed around the indent in the statues, spreading down to the arms and legs like a broken mirror.

Kolfinna’slips pursed together. So he was better than her. “I’m guessing you can do the same when you’re not looking at them?”

Joran shifted on his feet, a sheepish grin on his face.

She didn’t want to hear the answer to that. She sighed and waved at the statues. “Well, now what? Is there anything else I should do?”

“Um.” His smile faded and he pointed to the space between them. “Can you create a stone ball and make it float?”

Make the stone …float?”

Had she heard right? Float? Like keep it suspended in the air? Most of her attacks with her stones required her mana to force the stones at a rapid speed toward whatever she pointed them at, but keeping them afloat? She could do somethingsimilarto that—like when she would create her rock armor over her body and keep it in place by various threads of mana—but she couldn’t make anything stay afloat. It didn’t even make sense with her magic.

Joran must’ve seen the confused expression on her face because he wordlessly raised his hand, and two dozen rocks and pebbles rose from the floor, going higher and higher. They spun in the air and when he turned his finger, each faceted stone was pointed at her. They all remained there for five, ten, twenty seconds.

Kolfinna couldn’t rip her gaze away. “How?”

“You use your mana to suspend them. Like … when you control the stones, you use your mana to wrap them up, correct? With the same concept, bring them up but don’t release your mana from it. At least not until you’re ready to hit your target.”

She had never seen anything like it before—but that wasn’t saying much since most of the fae she had known throughout her life weren’t that good at magic like she was, or they were too afraid to practice it. Most of what she knew about stone magicwas something she had learned through trial and error, since Katla hadn’t been proficient at it and couldn’t teach her anything related to it.

But here was frightened, little Joran, able to manipulate the stones and figure out something like this.

“How did you learn that?” Kolfinna worked her mana into a nearby stone and pulled it up with a string of her mana, and instead of releasing her hold on it and launching it somewhere like she was used to, she held it in place. Beads of sweat formed on her forehead and her mana wavered under the strain of the small rock. After a few seconds, her mana slipped from the rock and it slammed to the floor. She released a shuddering breath.

Joran settled the stones gently on the floor—all twenty of them. She could only watch in awe.

“I learned through reading about it,” he said and a small, shy smile curved his lips.

“You havebookshere?”

“Yes, we have books.” Sijur chuckled at her stunned expression.

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