“What do you mean?”
“You are not like those vainglorious Fae bastards, the Graces. They are forced to drain themselves to access their magic. But you are better than that.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” I turn away. “They…”
Another memory rears its ugly head. I’m soaked and shivering after they’d dunked me in an ice bath laced with cleansing elixirs and Etherium. Pinned my shoulders as I’d fought and flailed against the vise of panic squeezing my lungs. The fevered, impossible count to one hundred before they finally allowed me to surface. Their hushed conversation as I retched the frigid water back up.
“Something’s wrong.”
“How long was she under?”
“Too long.”
“Not natural.”
And one that I don’t want to think about, but that punches through anyway.
“Is it kinder to just put her down?”
“They tried everything to bring out my power.”
Kal is close enough to touch me. “Everything they knew.” He lifts my chin gently. “Which cannot be much.”
That coaxes a weak smile from my lips.
“Your power is in your blood, Alyce. As with any Vila. You have lost some of your connection to it because you live in the borderlands and not in Malterre where you belong. The realm of your ancestors was thick with dark magic. You could have tapped into it as easily as breathing.”
“That’s why the humans wanted Etheria before Leythana’s reign.”
“Yes. In their ignorance, the mortals believed the power in the Fae courts was tangible. Able to be scooped up and contained. Like an elixir in a bottle. It is not so simple. The magic in Etheria is a living thing, as it was in Malterre.” He takes my hand and traces the stark veins at the inside of my wrist with his alabaster fingers. I don’t pull away. “You are trueborn. You have more than one way of accessing and guiding your magic. Magic that, in your long life, will not Fade. It cannot be bled out and expended the way the Graces’ can.”
“More than one way? All I know are my elixirs. Without enhancements, my power won’t act as I wish.”
“Would it not? Have you never noticed your power working outside of an elixir?” Kal reads my expression. One eyebrow quirks. “Perhaps there has been some sign?”
I tell him about the jug of cream I spoiled. The fountain. The frequent complaints of the healing Graces when I was a child that the effects of my blood were unpredictable and disastrous. It took years before my elixirs started working, and even then the results were often unexpected. Noses grew bumps when hair was supposed to brittle. Toes turned stubby when warts were meant to sprout.
Kal is grinning at me before I’ve finished. “That is because your blood was not meant for elixirs, Alyce. You have never required enhancements to shape your magic.”
I think of all the years I spent testing boiled nettles against carrion crow feathers for a proper ugliness elixir. Mixing swamp water with crushed nightshade. “That can’t be true.”
“It is,” Kal says simply, stoking my frustration. “Your power centers on intent. From what you have told me, it sounds as though you wanted your elixirs to work. And it was that desire, once it was given proper direction, that steered your elixirs. Not the enhancements.”
“No.” My tone is sharp enough that Callow bridles. “I never wanted to be the Dark Grace. No one would—”
“But you did want the experiments to stop. The torture.”
The scar on my middle throbs.
“Yes.”
One of Kal’s shadows creeps forward, curling as though it would caress me. “Do you not see? In your own way, you wanted your magic to behave like a Grace’s. And you wanted it so badly that your power obeyed. You used your true gift without even realizing.”
The crash of the ocean presses against my eardrums. I despise the Graces. But how often did I look in my own spotted mirror and wish I was one of them? How many years did I yearn for my magic to be like theirs?
“If I don’t have to employ enhancements, then how else do I wield my power?”
“Magic is everywhere,” Kal explains, his shadows lively and eager. “Even humans carry a spark of it in their fragile, fickle souls. All you need to do is reach out and find it. Twine it with your own, and you can control it.”
Lightning flashes through the gap in the wall and suspicion sends a tingle down my spine. My skepticism must show in my face.