Page 12 of Frost Like Night
I can’t finish the question.
Rares squints. “Angra hasn’t found your friends inRintiero. At least, not all of them—if he had your allies, he wouldn’t be bothering trying to track us. He’d just have them killed and let you seek him out in retaliation.”
So much about that makes me anxious. “What? How do you know? And—wait, he’s still tracking us? I thought you blocked him?”
“Blocked him from entering your mind—but his magic is still probing the world, searching for us. Once we get to Paisly, we should be safe from his intrusions entirely—the Order keeps a barrier in place. Now.” Rares clucks his tongue as if chastising himself for letting me linger on my worries and picks a leaf from the ground beside him. “Lesson two.” He lays the leaf across his palm. “Lift this leaf into the air. Your magic allows you to affect anything or anyone in existence. As you did in Putnam, when you not so gracefully threw your guards.”
Conall and Garrigan. They flew through the air because of my desperation for them to get away from me so I wouldn’t, ironically enough, use my magic on them.
“They were Winterians,” I say. “But I shouldn’t be able to affect people or objects unrelated to Winter.”
But Ididaffect something unrelated to Winter—in Summer, when I panicked on the roof in the palace complex and made it snow.
“Normally Royal Conduits only have enough magic in them to do things like make crops grow or bring rain during droughts,” Rares says, “and even then, only in theirdesignated kingdoms. Butbeinga conduit extends the limits, as you have seen through your skin-to-skin contact with other wielders—youaremagic, and so are connected in a larger way. This enables you to affect other lands as well. Not other people who aren’t connected to your kingdom, unless they have magic connections themselves, but objects. It allows you to manipulate what—”
“No,” I snap. “I’m not going tomanipulateanything.”
“I don’t mean manipulate as in an evil act that can feed the Decay. This leaf”—he shakes it—“knows nothing of good or evil. An evil act occurs only when it interferes with another’s ability to make their own choice and thus results in pain, sorrow, fear, or the like. Murder, for instance, when someone would be killed and therefore robbed of their ability to choose to live.”
I gape at him. “So when I threw Conall and Garrigan . . .”
Snow above,no. Did I inadvertently do something that fed the Decay?
“Your guards reeked of loyalty to you,” Rares says. “What you did to them didn’t interfere with their ability to make their own decisions—they would have chosen to do anything you asked of them. Though they did receive a few bumps and bruises, didn’t they? But again, it was something they gladly accepted, however unconsciously.”
That does shockingly little to alleviate my horror.
“Lift the leaf,” Rares prods. “I won’t let you lose control.”
My magic has remained blissfully quiet since my earliercollapse, and I’m in no hurry to awaken it. “I’d be able to stay in control if the barrier in the Tadil Mine hadn’t done something to me. Every time I open up to my magic, it comes pouring out of me, and I—”
Rares stops me with a huff. “The magic barrier would’ve hurt, but it wouldn’t have affected your magic in that way. Magic is all about choice, and somewhere in your mind, even if it was the quietest hint of wanting or panic or worry, you wanted all the things you did.”
I wheeze as though his words punched me in the gut. “This was all . . . me?”
Rares’s hand remains steady. “That’s a different lesson. All you have to do for this one is look at this leaf and want it to lift into the air.”
My mind thuds from these revelations and I twitch, rubbing my arms. Each passing minute burns my skin like the sparks from the fire. We need toleave—we need to get to Paisly so I can get what help the Order can offer, come back, get the keys from Angra, reach the magic chasm, and save everyone.
So I can die.
I grind my jaw as Rares meets my gaze.
When I filled Sir with strength in Gaos, when I blocked Hannah from speaking to me, when I made it snow in Juli, when I threw Conall and Garrigan—none of that was wanting.Thisis wanting—and I want this shriveled bit of vegetation to smack Rares in the face.
A chill vibrates in my chest, and all I have time to do isblink before the leaf flies at Rares and slaps him straight across the forehead.
I smack both hands over my mouth.
Rares grins as the leaf flutters into his lap. “I suppose I deserved that,” he admits. “But now you’ll better understand the rest of our journey.”
“How?”
He hops up to kick dirt over the fire. The flames extinguish with a hiss, leaving us in shadows. I barely make out Rares extending a hand to me.
“Because it will be just like what you did, only on a grander scale.”
I’m so relieved to be leaving that I take his hand.
