“I don’t understand,” she said. “Before . . .” All she’d had to do was place a hand on the forest floor and it had exploded with life and color.
Oro was standing a few feet away, leaning against a half-rotted tree. “Raw power is like a beast. Without mastery, it lashes out unpredictably. Not always when you want it to.” The memory of the rebels touching her skin flitted through her mind. “That’s why learning control is so important.”
“And difficult?” she asked, finally pulling her hands from the dirt.
“And difficult,” he agreed. “Using it in a directed way requires intense focus.”
Focus.
Her mind was filled to the brim, a thousand thoughts running rampant. She couldn’t focus on a single thought if her life depended on it.
“It might,” Oro said, and only then did she realize she had said part of that aloud. He bent down and grabbed a rock. He placed it in front of her. “Instead of just trying to force your power out, focus all of your mind and energy on this,” he said. “Move it.”
He got up and left.
She whipped around. “Where—where are you going? I thought you were going to train me.”
“I am,” he said.
She watched him walk back to the Place of Mirrors.
Her first impulse was to yell at his back that he had promised not to leave her, but no. She could do this.
Isla dug her fingers into the dirt again. She took a deep breath. Dropped her shoulders. She tried to focus on the sensations around her. The dryness of the ground. The heat of the sun warming the crown of her head. The slight wind making the loose hairs around her face go wild.
It took only a few moments for focusing to feel almost physically painful. Then it slipped, and thoughts poured into her mind like high tide. Worries. Anxieties.
Him.
No. She shut him out, closed her eyes tightly. Dug her fingers deeper into the ground. “I will get this,” she said. “I will forget, and I will focus.”
Would she, though?
Her powers needed a strong vessel. She was a half person. Walking through life carrying the weight of her past around with her.
She tried to force it all away. She sat and curled her fingers even deeper, until dirt ran far up her fingernails.
Nothing happened.
For days, she sat in silence, then went to bed frustrated. Some hours, she could hold her attention in small spurts. Others, distractions would dive in like vultures. Sometimes, the voice in her head was cruel. It was like there was a blade in her mind, feeling around for where it could hurt her the most.
The rock never moved an inch.
When Oro came to meet her that night, she was exhausted and frustrated. “I cannot just spend days staring at a rock,” she said.
“Learning to wield takes time.”
“How long did it take you?”
Oro raised a brow at her. “To master? Years for each power.”
Years. She didn’t have years. Her vision of Grim’s destruction could happen at any moment. She wondered if she should have told the other representatives and rulers about it. Would they trust her at all? Would they believe she was working with Grim, like the woman after the drek attack?
He must have seen her face drop because he said, “It won’t always be hard. One day, something will give. Some of a ruler’s mastery of power is like a key clicking into a lock.”
Breath caught in her throat. So far, she had felt no such key. It was another rejection. First the vault. Now this.
“Isla,” he said, coming to stand in front of her. “What’s wrong?”
“You don’t get it,” she said quickly. “Control was probably easy for you. You never knew what it was like to be alone in your incompetence, to not be in total and complete control of—”
“I killed someone,” he said, and his voice was so serious, she tensed. “By accident, with my abilities. When I was a child.”
“What?”
“Power usually develops later in life, but I set my crib aflame when I was just a few months old. My mother found me sitting in the center of the flames, just staring at her. They were forced to train me as soon as possible, as they feared I would destroy the castle with a tantrum. I was far stronger than I was supposed to be, as a second child.”
“Stronger than Egan,” she said, speaking his brother’s name. The former king, who had sacrificed himself, along with all other rulers, for the chance of a future.
Oro nodded. “I was sent to the isles every few years, to master each ability. Control was the first lesson I ever learned as a child. Control your emotions, or you could bring the palace down. Control your heart, because allowing anyone access to that power would be ruinous. Control your tongue, because you are not the firstborn, and your opinions don’t matter.”
Isla’s heart broke for the little boy Oro had once been. She took his hand.
“I did all of it,” he said, staring at the ground. “There was another ability, though, that hadn’t manifested in centuries.” His eyes met hers. “Since I didn’t know about it, I couldn’t control it. I had been playing with my friends, having too much fun, and, before I knew what was happening, I turned an attendant to solid gold.” His voice had become lifeless. The mistake still seemed to haunt him, centuries later.
Isla couldn’t imagine the pain. If she killed an innocent person by accident, because of her lack of control, she would never be able to forgive herself.
“I felt such guilt and shame, even as my parents celebrated my power. The only thing that got me through my training were the people I met. I had—I have—really good friends.”
He did? Isla felt ashamed that she had never even asked him much about his life before the curses.
“For years, I didn’t wield,” he said. “I was ashamed of my abilities. The guilt ate at me. I hated myself for a long time.”
Tears stung her eyes. He couldn’t know how similar she felt now, for different reasons.
“It was only after I was able to forgive myself for the mistake I made as a child that I could start living again.” His thumb grazed the back of her hand. “You will get this, Isla,” he said. “It might not be today, or tomorrow, but I will be here with you until you do. You are not alone.”
You are not alone.
It was early the next morning when she snuck out of the Place of Mirrors, shoes crunching on the leftover glass on the floor.
She took the rock to the edge of the isle. Legs hanging, she watched the sun climb from the horizon like a phoenix, dying every day, only to rise again.
She closed her eyes.
For once, instead of trying to keep everything down, Isla dared her mind to do its worst, and it did. Her pain came flooding through the walls she had put up, and it hurt, it hurt so much, but it was almost a relief to have her emotions spilling out of her, instead of keeping them all pressed down.
She thought about her parents. Born enemies. A Wildling and a Nightshade. Life and death. They really must have loved each other, she thought, to not only get together . . . but also have a child.
Would they be ashamed of her? Would they think her weak?
She allowed herself to grieve the little girl who had grown up locked away like a secret. The one who had bled countless times to be the best possible warrior. Terra had taken the approach of breaking her first, so that the world would not. All she had ever wanted was to be accepted. To be good enough. To be loved—