Instead of suppressing my power, I’m trying to push it. To figure out exactly what I’m capable of. But I’m decidedly incapable of bringing my dripping gold back up to me yet and undoing what I’ve gilded.
But I’m determined to learn.
Slade’s been having me do things step by step. For the first couple of days, I practiced simply calling my magic to gold-touch certain things in a controlled way, and then to essentially turn it off like a spigot so I don’t gild anything I don’t want to.
It’s not easy. I struggle with both aspects. But I suppose that’s to be expected after so many years of uncontrollably gilding anything that my bare skin came into contact with. I’m still careful about keeping covered during the day, just in case.
But…a flicker of golden light lives in the back of my head with this unbelievable possibility—that one day, I can be in complete control.
It’s what spurs me on.
That I can one day walk barefoot in the sunlit grass, without the risk of spreading metallic death beneath my heels. That one day, I can bare my arms and legs to the cast of the day, with no fear of what might brush up against me. That I can eat and drink from dawn till dusk and actually taste my food, without the bitter taste of metal sliding down my throat. The possibility that I can go without gloves, that I can touch and feel and hold whatever I want, without worry, no matter the time.
I want to get to that one day so desperately.
After letting out a calm exhale, I once again stretch my fingers over the gilded tip of the short stone before me. As soon as I touch it, I call the gold to seep from my fingertips, and it starts streaming down in slow, steady drips.
“Good.”
Slade’s murmured praise bolsters me.
I reach inside of myself, looking for that effortless control that came out of me in Ranhold. If I was able to grab hold of all the gold in the entire castle, I can control this one gilded rock.
This is my power. I control it. It answers to me and me alone.
The concept of recalling the gold back to me is completely unnatural, and something that I’m fighting to figure out. Yet because of Ranhold, I know I’m capable of a lot more than I realized, either because my magic evolved, hatching from the chains I’d been wrapped in, or because this was always something I could’ve done with training—I’ll never know which. All I know is I’m going to figure this out, because I don’t want to keep living in fear of my power. I want to live in control of it.
Like liquid pouring from a glass bottle, I envision shoving a stopper in, ceasing its flow. The visual helps me ground what I’m trying to do with my magic, and I feel my power respond, the gold trickling to a stop against the rock. My hand shakes from the effort, but I hold on, scrabbling to keep steady with my concentration. Now that I’ve successfully stopped gilding, I need to take it just one step further.
Continuing my trick of visualization, I picture someone opening the bottle and tipping it out, letting gold collect in my palm.
“Good, Auren.”
I distantly hear Slade urging me on, but my concentration is almost replaced with giddiness when I feel the gold come back up, sliding into my hand. I shove down my excitement, continuing to call more back to me, and when I have a good amount pooling in my palm, I start to picture pouring it back into my unstoppered bottle, letting it drip into that narrow opening.
The weirdest sensation comes along with it. The gold that was pressing up against my palm just…sinks back into me. It’s like dropping a piece of fabric in a puddle. Except the puddle is my moving gold and I’m the cloth.
It takes a long time, but slowly, I manage to soak it all up. When I sense the last drop disappear, I open my eyes to find that the rock is now bare of every single speck of gold.
With the biggest smile stretching over my face, I whip around to look at Slade, pointing triumphantly. “Did you see?”
His lips kick up, making the skin beside his eyes crinkle. “Well fucking done.”
With a giddy laugh, I leap up and then bound into his lap, keeping my bare hands braced against the wall behind him, arms resting on his shoulders.
Our faces are just an inch apart, chests pressing against each other, and the surge of confidence inside feels like bubbles inflating me, making me buoyant.
“Do you know what this means?” I ask.
His hands grip my waist, fingers moving in a slow draw of mirrored strokes. “What?”
“This is going to change everything,” I breathe. “If I can master this, then I can touch anything, any hour of the day. I can be casual and unrestricted. I won’t have to live in the dark anymore.”