Page 218 of Emylia

The sting followed a second later—sharp, pulsing, a reminder that I wasn’t invincible.

At least not yet.

Mom crouched beside me, her fingers brushing my wrist as she turned my hand over. Her eyes scanned the gash—calm, composed, already slipping into instructor mode.

“It’s the perfect opportunity to practise healing.”

My heart kicked against my ribs.

I nodded—too proud to hesitate. Too desperate to prove I could.

But Gods, I was terrified.

Destruction came naturally to me. When it came to harnessing magik, annihilation was my domain. But healing? Healing required softness. Control. Gentleness. Belief. Things I wasn’t sure lived in me at all.

Standing beside Akaela, my hand buzzed from siphoning. I hovered it over the rift in my skin, fingers trembling above the gaping wound.

I summoned the power that lived inside me now—thick and humming, eager to obey. It surged through me, rushing toward my palm, igniting in my veins, gathering at my fingertips. An orb of water formed, leeching from my skin until it hovered like glass, shaping into a sphere—delicate, perfect. It followed my hand like a phantom, ghosting over the cut.

I pressed it down gently, watching as the water clung—for a breath, for a second.

It trembled.

Then it broke. Collapsed.

Water spilled down my arm in rivulets. Useless droplets. The wound remained.

Unchanged.

Laughing at me. Mocking me.

I gritted my teeth and tried again.

And again.

And again.

Each attempt grew slower, heavier—my hand shaking from the strain, from my own refusal to quit. The water gathered. Hovered. Spiraled into that perfect sphere—and fell apart the moment it touched my skin. Taunting. Pointless.

Again.

The blood didn’t stop.

But neither did I.

Again.

The ache in my chest wasn’t pain anymore. It was fury. At myself. At my limits. At the fact that this—the one thing that required tenderness—I couldn’t seem to master.

The clearing blurred around the edges. Time unraveled. I didn’t know how long I knelt there—just that the sun was lower now. The clearing quieter. One by one, they’d left—Evie, then my mother. She offered to heal me before she went, but I refused. I

f I couldn’t conquer this, then I didn’t deserve it to be healed.

Let it scar. Let it remind me.

Still I tried.

Still I failed.

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