“Never mind,” he said. “I can get through this. I need to. Anyway, I broke his bracelet. I thought I was doing him a favor, but he knew—he knew. They had warned him what would happen if he disobeyed. I begged him to do a transformation for me, and he—he smiled, and—”
The pain was too much; it was going to tear him apart inside. Achan grasped the nearest pillow, and it shuddered, crumbling into feather dust and fibers. “Damn, Soleil, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“No, it’s fine.” She clutched his hand tighter, and he held onto hers, but carefully. Control, always control.
He hauled in another breath. Why did this still hurt so much, after sixteen years? “Anyway, he did a few transformations for me. Morphed into a couple famous actors, just to make me laugh—turned some trees into these cool wood-nymph shapes. He knew he was done for, and he didn’t care. He just had fun with it.”
Achan’s voice cracked horribly, but he kept going. He couldn’t stop now. Had to push through to the end.
“They came within minutes. Must have had a collection team nearby, just in case he broke free. Blake heard them coming and shoved me into the bushes—they never knew I was there. I watched them kill him. No warning, no words, no statement of guilt, no chance to plead for himself. They walked out of the woods and put a bullet through his head.”
He felt the sob rising, choking him, forcing its way out no matter how hard he struggled against it. It shuddered through his lungs, and he croaked a broken swear, turning away from Soleil. Her hands gripped his shoulders and her scent enveloped him—lavender and lemon balm, herbs and sunshine. He let the tears escape then—a few searing drops. Just for a minute, and then he’d suck it up and deal.
The words—the ones he had screamed in his head over and over for years—they were crawling out of him, clawing and scraping his throat as they came. “It was—my fault.”
“No,” Soleil said urgently, holding him tighter. “It wastheirfault—the men who shot him, and the ones who ordered it. They went too far. They were way too zealous about protecting magic, protecting our secrets.”
It burned him that Soleil still gave them an excuse—protecting our secrets. It was better than complete denial, but it still wasn’t enough. She couldn’t keep herself safe until she understood, until she feared them—and then moved beyond that fear to true freedom.
He pulled both of Soleil’s hands into his. “This is what they do, Sol. If you’re too powerful, if you won’t follow the leader and walk the line, they curb you, and then they kill you. Honestly I’m surprised you’re still alive. If they’d found out about your ability when you were young—if you had told people what you could do, I’m pretty sure they’d have arranged an ‘accident’ for you. A child with your power, too young to control—” He gritted his teeth, imagining a sweet blue-eyed child version of Soleil, facing a swarm of tall, grim-faced witches. “You’re lucky you made it through the Institute.”
“I never felt threatened by anyone at the Institute,” Soleil said, but she glanced away as she spoke, and he knew she was lying.
“You were safe because of your friend Tarek.” Achan couldn’t keep his mouth free of a sneer. That bastard. “He’s Institute royalty, you know. Son of two Highwitches, gifted with magic. A rare second-generation witch.”
“So you have heard of him.” Soleil’s eyes narrowed. “You didn’t seem to recognize the name when I mentioned him.”
“I know someone who knows him.” Achan bit off the sentence. The truth about Tarek wasn’t relevant to this conversation. “Anyway, you’re lucky he discovered you and liked you. Besides, you’ve proven yourself so sweet and amenable—so purely, perfectlygood. You gave them no reason to fear you.”
“Yet they still do.” Her faint smile nearly broke Achan’s heart. “Everyone fears me, and always will. Even you.”
“Listen.” He pressed her hands tighter. “Anyone with power will be feared. When you possess the power to do good, you also possess the power to do evil, to cause irreversible pain. Sometimes pain is necessary to produce ultimate good. War precedes peace. Riots precede reform. Agony precedes birth. I might fear what your power can do, but I admire it even more than I fear it. And underneath it, I seeyou. You are not your power, any more than I am mine. Our magic affects us, sure, but we rule it.”
The anxiety in her eyes faded, and her mouth quirked up at the corners. “We rule, huh?”
“Yeah we do.” Achan grinned back, relieved. Amazing, how the return of her joy brought back his own.
“I’m so sorry, Achan,” she said, squeezing his hands. “For what they did to your cousin, and to you.”
For a second he thought he might crack open again, but he managed to hold together the broken edges of himself. “It was years ago,” he gritted out. “Now that you know, can we—can we not talk about it?”
“Of course.” She extricated her hands from his and rose from the sofa. “Let’s go mess with the ruling family of this town, shall we?”
33
Achan and Soleil sat crosslegged on the carpet in her workroom, their knees nearly touching. Soleil cupped Mayor Brownell’s hyacle in her palm, and Achan pinched Elena Brownell’s tooth between his fingers.
“We should each be touching both tethers,” Achan said. “So we can have a full view of what’s going on.”
“Using our own tether plus another one? How will that even work?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “This is new to me, too. All we can do is try, right?”
“What if it’s dangerous?”
“You’ll be fine. I’ll make sure of it.”
“You can’t promise that.”