Page 57 of Her Dreadful Will
“You’re probably wondering how this helps you,” he said. “Well, I believe that chaos magic is like nature magic—it’s universally compatible. Which means anyone can learn to use it. And it’s so easy to recover your energy, because chaos feeds on chaos. It practically recharges itself.”
“It—what? How does that even work?”
“Think about it! Normal recovery methods involve nature magic skills, right? To recover in the usual way, you have to seek the unveiled sun or moon and bathe in them, channel them. But why chase the light, when the darkness is always there, ready to welcome you and recharge you? You can always find shadows and disorder, rot and ruin, to draw from.”
Soleil winced. “Your sales pitch needs work.”
“Damn.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m not doing this right. I thought of this moment so many times and I can’t remember any of the ways I planned to explain it. Chaos can be beautiful too—so beautiful, Soleil, you don’t even know.” He bit his lower lip, and Soleil found herself distracted by the soft swell of his mouth, by the rosy flush of blood under the skin caught between his white teeth. How adorable was it that he was actuallyflusteredexplaining this to her?
“Okay.” He jumped up again, spreading his arms, his face aglow. “Look around you, at all of this. The waterfall, the rocks. Natureischaos. Come on, come here.” He jumped down into a nook between two stones the size of armchairs.
Soleil scooted forward to the edge of her rock, watching as he crouched and scooped a double palmful of soil and small growing things.
“Open your hands,” he said.
She cupped them together with an indulgent sigh, and he poured the crumbly dark loam and leafy sprouts into the hollow of her palms. Slivers of dead leaves poked up from the mass like brown razor blades. A black ant scuttled frantically out of the mix and over her thumb. Soleil blew it off. It spun into air, into nothing, landing she knew not where.
“There,” he said. “You see? You were the cause of incomprehensible chaos for that tiny creature. And why? For no other reason than its trespass over your skin. Nature is exquisite and lawless, alluring and cruel. The very world we inhabit was born out of chaos. It is a force to be worshiped, not feared.”
His hands slid under her cupped ones, a pale cradle woven of slim fingers. Her knuckles prickled with the sense of him, and her veins hummed with the faint aura of his magic.
She made the mistake of looking up into his green eyes. Sunlight swirled in them, turning the curves of his irises to shining gold.
“You see it, don’t you?” His lips parted, eager. “You understand.”
A single word coalesced on her tongue, the word he wanted to hear.
Yes.
And yet—
She swallowed the word and shifted along the rock, away from him, tipping the organic matter to the ground. He was only showing her half the picture, the part he wanted her to see.
“But isn’t nature founded on order, too?” she countered. “Atoms, with their precise number of electrons. Molecules, composed of specific atoms? Chemicals always have the same reactions when combined in the same amounts. The laws of mathematics are unbreakable.”
Instead of looking chagrined, he laughed and moved closer to where she sat, his face level with her own. Triumph and cunning glinted in his eyes. “Without rules, there would be no way to break the rules.” His voice dropped into a new key, sibilant and soft. “Order is the true mate of chaos. A necessary opposite.”
A thrill rippled through Soleil’s stomach, and her chest constricted—impossible to get any breath past that seizing sensation.
She got to her feet and walked a few steps away from him, watching the tumultuous waterfall. Beyond it, leaves shivered with the vagaries of the breeze, and above them scraps of white cloud floated haphazardly across the sky.
Chaotic, and beautiful, like him.
She drew in a slow breath. “Chaos magic is forbidden. The Institute won’t teach it, because it’s too primal and arcane. It’s so unmanageable that it’s practically useless.”
“They speak similar lies about moonlight circles. And you saw the truth of those for yourself.”
“But the very nature of chaos is disorder and destruction.”
“Of course it can be destructive. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Magic is neither good nor evil, but neutral. A witch’s application of magic is what matters. Isn’t that what you’re trying to prove here? That your mind-flex magic isn’t intrinsically selfish, or dark?”
“There is no such thing as dark magic.” She spoke the words slowly, trying to apply them to his chaos power. The Institute had ingrained preconceptions in her, and she found herself struggling to rewire her thoughts. Why had she trusted them so wholly with her mind? She’d been so thirsty for magical knowledge that she’d swallowed everything they ever told her, without question or investigation. If Achan was right—and he’d been right about moonlight circles—the Institute had hidden things from its students. They’d told her half-truths, shaped her mind with their philosophies when she was vulnerable. How were they any better than the greedy, deceptive, self-indulgent humans she dealt with every day?
“No such thing as dark magic,” she repeated. “But there’s so much darkness in the world, Achan. So much evil.” A tide of violent emotion welled inside her, fury against the Institute, pressure from the wills and wants of a hundred townspeople. Her town wasn’t the melodic orchestra she’d dreamed of. It was a cacophony of shrieking, demanding voices.
She seized the twin chains around her neck and yanked the pair of hyacles out of her shirt, dangling them from her fist. One was Mya’s nearly useless hyacle. The other was the hyacle of the anxiety-ridden gas station attendant around the corner from Soleil’s house—the one who had to count constantly, quietly, under his breath. Someone she hadn’t really been able to help.
“This town is a cesspool of anguish and desire,” she said. “Lost hopes, lost love, grief and anger and jealousy. The worst part of it is thewanting. You wouldn’t believe how many people want things so badly and have such big dreams, but they never put in the work to make the dreams come true. They make a thousand tiny choices to be still, to be comfortable, to die slowly in the comforting little cocoons they’ve built around themselves. They won’t take action. Without prompting from me, they won’t leave the abusive partner, kick the destructive habit, try for the promotion, take the classes to get to the next level, or get up off their fucking couches to doanything! They’re so damnstupid!” She wrenched at the chains, ripping them from her neck, and hurled both hyacles into the waterfall. One of them smashed into scintillating shards on the black rock, and the other bounced down the falls and vanished into a clot of foam.
