Page 3 of Her Cruel Redemption

‘Go ahead, then. Explain to me why you think it's right to keep me ignorant about something that lives in my own body.’

He released a pent-up breath. Like my request was really that trying. ‘Will you at least hear to what I have to say?’

I supposed that was a request to shut my mouth and keep my bitterness to myself. ‘I’m listening.’

‘How much do you know about how humanity came to these lands?’

Well, little other than what Grand Weaver Dovegni had told me. My mind flickered back to the conversation we’d had after he’d kidnapped me off the streets. I remembered the way he’d stroked the black box, remembered the deal he’d offered me, remembered how conflicted and nauseated I’d felt at the idea of him capturing—

I slammed down on the end of the thought, choked it until it stopped twitching. Buried it in the graveyard of other such thoughts.

‘Only a little,’ I said.

‘We—the Yoxvese, I mean—lived beyond the Living Valley then. So did many others who are no longer around today. When humans first reached the shores of this land, my ancestors embraced them. For a time, we were friends.’

Hard to imagine when we called them fall spawn and hunted them for their blood now, but Dovegni had told me the land had once been populated by fall spawn when he was explaining what that black box he’d held would do, explaining how with a jolt of electricity he could sever their magic from their control. A chill breeze swept in, ruffling the water, bending the grasses on the bank and blowing a puff of dandelion into the air to swirl up and away.

‘Then came a harsh winter, followed by a dry summer. The early human settlers didn’t understand the land they’d come to well enough and they couldn’t grow their food. They were starving. The Elders of those times decided to help their friends by gifting some of their number with magic.’

‘The way Baba Yaga gifted hers to me?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The magic now buried in you is one of the last vestiges of that time, a gift passed down through generations long after we realized that magic should never have been given to humanity in the first place.’

‘I already know what you’re going to tell me next,’ I cut in before he could continue. ‘That it reacts poorly with human blood and it’s dangerous and unpredictable.’ It was what I’d already been told every other time I’d asked to be taught, but it all sounded like fear and envy as far as I was concerned. I didn’t see any of the Yoxvese wielding abilities as devastating as mine. They could coax plants into blooming and read each other’s emotions and perform other similarly harmless tricks. But wieldinglightningwas a far cry from all that. And Elias was one of the last of them who would trust me with any sort of power, so of course he was going to tow this line of argument.

‘Not only that. It can drive you mad.’

When I tore my gaze away from the lake to look at him, it was to find him staring at me intently, his expression tense.

‘It’s why we had to stop gifting it,’ he continued. ‘In most of those early humans, the magic ate away at their sanity, turning them violent and dangerous. But the human settlers thought we were just hoarding magic to ourselves and they began hunting any race who bonded it, finding other ways to access it without gifting.’

Like shocking them and binding them and trapping them in dungeons for blood harvest. Those were all things I had witnessed myself. A cord winding, cutting, binding. Red welts on swarthy skin as I tied a ripped piece of my skirt around his arm—

I strangled the end of this thought as well. Buried it next to the others.

‘Baba Yaga wasn’t mad,’ I said, adjusting my focus. Though, I didn’t really know if that was true or not. She’d often seemed at least half mad. But it suited my argument to say it.

‘No. But she did know how dangerous magic could be. That’s why she was living in the mountains, dedicating herself to keeping humans out, as have those who held her gift before her.’

‘And that’s what you expect me to do now, is it? You want me to move into that little hut and become a scarecrow who chases away the binders and the snatchers?’

‘No. I—we—want you to give up the gift.’

I was stupid enough to be dumbstruck. ‘What?’

‘Baba Yaga should never have gifted it to you in the first place. You’re too unstable. If anyone was ever going to be driven mad from magic, it’s you.’

Well, at least I could appreciate the plain speaking. But I was already shaking my head, my temper rising, making my headache throb even harder. ‘No. The answer is no.’

‘It’s for—’

‘I don’t care about your reasons,’ I snapped, climbing to my feet now. I wasn't going to stay and listen to this. The magic had beengivento me. I hadn’t stolen it. It wasmine.‘I don’t care if you want to package them as a warning or as concern for my sanity or whatever you can think of to manipulate me. If youdaretry to take it from me—’

‘We would never force it from you. It’s forbidden,’ he said firmly. ‘You’d have to choose to give it up.’

That calmed me a little. Enough to take a breath. ‘If that’s all you’ve come to talk to me about…’ I pressed a palm to my forehead, closing my eyes for a moment against the throbbing pain there. It pulsed behind my eyelids, a bloated, sluggish thing inside my skull. ‘I think we’re done here.’

‘I could tell you about Draven, too.’

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