Page 11 of Her Cruel Redemption

‘To shield her mind?’ Gwin turned her body to face us fully, crossing her legs. ‘Is that something I could learn too? Or do you need magic to do it?’

I caught the way her tone shifted from hopeful to disheartened by the end of the second question and studied her more carefully. Was she as fed up with the Yoxvese tendency to pry into her emotions as I was? But with a clap of clarity, I remembered the moment she had stepped off the tower, had plunged through the air on an order tojump. Perhaps she had her own fears to defend against.

‘You don’t need magic. Just discipline,’ Mae said. She walked Gwin through the steps she’d already taken me through, and I closed my eyes to try again, refraining from getting too close to the mirrored dome this time. I could believe it was real without needing to touch it. ‘From this point, you focus on layering the dome. Visualise surrounding it with anything you can think of to keep people out. A layer of ice, maybe, then one of thorns, then of fire.’

Fire.If a mirror had disturbed me, then I wasn’t going near visualising fire. I angrily slapped up a wall of glinting steel instead, while within the dome the lake of my mind roiled.

‘Are you ready? I’m going to test your shields,’ Mae said. When we’d both agreed, I felt the familiar, unsettling brush of magic on the bare skin of my arm. Immediately, the dome in my mind shattered, revealing the chaotic surface of the lake and all the emotion stirring there, all anger and panic and fear. My eyes shot open as Mae recoiled. She shook her shoulders, like she was trying to shake off whatever she’d felt when she’d read me.

‘It didn’t work, did it?’ I asked unnecessarily. Her reaction told me all I needed to know.

‘It wasn’t likely to the first time,’ she said. ‘It’ll come with—’

‘—practice,’ I finished for her, glaring at my hands as she tested Gwinellyn’s shield and declared that it had held for a few moments and that this was excellent progress, which made me even more despondent. If a mental shield holding for a few moments was progress, how much progress would it take to sustain a shield against a mental assault from a determined enemy? A determined enemy whose human blood had rendered his magic far more powerful in the realm of mental manipulation than Mae’s was. Could I really hope to defend against that with a visualisation?

‘You can try deflection as an extra strategy, which will work in a pinch and doesn’t take long to master,’ Mae said, seeming to sense what I was stewing on. ‘You repeat a phrase or a mantra over and over again in your head to confuse anyone trying to gain access.’

‘And that’ll stop someone from being able to break into my thoughts or compel me?’ I asked sceptically.

‘Well… I’m not sure,’ she admitted. ‘That’s magic beyond what I’ve had any experience with. We can read each other’s emotions here, but we never break into each other’s thoughts. As for compulsion… I honestly didn’t even know it was possible.’

‘Well, it is. Just ask Gwinellyn,’ I replied, flinging my hand in Gwin’s direction. ‘Tell her imagining a dome will stop her from jumping to her death.’

A silence settled over us. Gwin shifted uncomfortably. Mae seemed to be deep in thought.

Finally, I sighed. ‘Thank you for trying to help me,’ I said. Because I didn’t want her to stop trying. And I hadn’t given up hope that she would at some point realise the best way to help me would be to show me how to use magic. ‘I’ll practice.’

Mae rose to her feet, stretching her arms above her head. ‘Let’s get something to eat. You must be starving after burning up all that energy,’ she said, casting a glance at the nearest molten-glass crater. ‘And Gwin hardly ever eats anything for breakfast.’

‘Actually, can you give us a few minutes?’ Gwinellyn asked, smiling up at Mae in a way that made me immediately suspicious.

Mae glanced between the two of us, before shrugging. ‘I have to go down to the caverns anyway. I’ll see you both later.’

I eyed Gwin as Mae left us alone, but she didn’t speak for a while, staring out over the lake, dark hair falling loose from the low knot she’d tied it in to sway in the breeze. Valoric was prowling closer now that there were no longer bolts of lightning flaying about the place, his sinuous, scaled body shimmering as he moved through shafts of morning sunlight, yellow gaze shifting between us, like he was watching for any sign of conflict.

‘One of the wyvern patrols made contact with another couple of Lepidra,’ Gwinellyn said finally, referring to some apparently intelligent species that inhabited this infernal mountain range besides the Yoxvese. ‘They’d heard of fighting in the foothills of the easternmost reaches of the mountains, of more and more people hiding there.’

Ah. She wanted to talk about the war. Wonderful. ‘So, nothing new,’ I muttered.

‘If so many people are risking entering the Yawn, things must be getting bad.’

I fiddled with a loose thread on the drab loop of fabric I wore that passed for a skirt in these parts. ‘We can’t do anything about it.’

‘Wecoulddo something.’ She turned to me, regarding me with a solemn rigidity to her face, her dark brows drawn tight, pink mouth turned down.

My fingers stilled. ‘Like what?’ I asked cautiously.

‘I want to go to Oceatold.’

I snorted in surprise. I thought she’d been about to tell me to leave the valley and find my own shelter somewhere else. ‘I’m sure there are more convenient ways to get yourself killed.’

‘King Esario and my father were friends,’ she said, as though I hadn’t spoken. ‘He would help me.’

‘He is currently at war with your country.’

‘But he thinks I’m dead and my crown has been stolen.’

‘You crownhasbeen stolen.’

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