He lets his statement hang in the air, and I’m shocked when the words cause something in me to stir, as if that truth has always been inside me and I’m just now realizing it.
“Let’s start with something easy,” he says.
My heart slams against my rib cage, so loud and fast I wonder if Wolfe can hear it over the sound of the waves.
“Do you feel the breeze coming off the water?” he asks.
“Yes.” Fear has stolen my voice, making the word sound rough and quiet.
“It’s easier to work with things that already exist around us. Much easier than creating something from nothing. Now, close your eyes,” he says.
I watch him, wary and nervous, scared and uncertain. I don’t think I can do it.
“You’re safe,” he assures me. “You’re not doing anything unnatural. As much as you want to resist it, this magic—what we’re doing tonight—lives in you. Close your eyes.”
I want to argue with that, but he’s trying to help me, so I take a deep breath and close my eyes. I can still feel his stare on me in the emptiness of my stomach and the hammering of my heart, the goose bumps on my skin and the heat of my neck.
“We’re going to let the wind carry us above the water.”
Levitation. My eyes fly open, and I shake my head. “Absolutely not,” I say. “I can’t do that.”
“Why?”
“Because… because it’s so obviously…” My words trail off.
“It’s so obviously high magic?”
I nod.
“Yeah, well, that’s what we’re here to do. Just think—if you’re successful, you’ll never have to use it again.” Something changes in his expression when he says it, as if he thinks it’s the saddest thing he’s ever heard. Then he takes a step closer to me, and another, and another, until he’s so close I can smell the spicy scent of his soap, see the moonlight glisten off each strand of hair. “What should scare you most about tonight isn’t that you’re about to use high magic, Mortana. What should scare you most is that you’re going to want to use it again.”
I stare at him, my palms beginning to sweat. “You’re wrong.”
“Not about this,” he says. He watches me for another moment, then speaks again. “Moving on. You’re inherently connected to every living thing on this Earth. That is our role, and as soon as you learn to recognize that connection, you can start practicing high magic.”
I nod along to his words. When I’m working in the perfumery, I don’t have to spend time wondering which flowers or herbs will work best with the kind of magic I’m infusing into them. I just know. My hands reach for the things I need and leave the things I don’t. It isn’t something I think about. It’s something I do.
“Close your eyes and concentrate on the wind. It will pull at something inside you, and all you have to do is let it.”
I nod again and do as he says. I focus on the way the air cuts through my hair and across my skin, the way I could almost feel it inside myself if I were still enough. I instinctively spread my arms out and turn my palms toward the sky. I tilt my head back and breathe deeply.
Magic rises in my belly as if it wants to touch the breath in my lungs.
“Just like that.” Wolfe’s words fuel me, and as I breathe more of the wind, more magic rises to touch it.
After several seconds, it’s no longer clear to me where the air ends and my magic begins. We are connected, just like when I’m working in the perfumery. Except instead of dried herbs and flowers, it’s wind.
“Let yourself fall backward and tell the wind to carry you,” Wolfe says.
It sounds so absurd, so easy, so harmless when he puts it that way. I’m scared, but if I fall, I know the water will catch me, so I do what he says.
I focus on the connection and fall back. “Please catch me,” I whisper into the night, and as I do, the world responds.
I gasp as my body rises out of the water and into the air. Magic comes alive in every part of me, as if it’s dancing through my veins, as if it’s been waiting its whole life for this.
My eyes fill with tears, but I keep them shut, terrified of losing the connection.
“I can’t believe it,” I whisper, unable to keep the emotion from my voice.
“Pretty incredible, right?”
I open my eyes, and Wolfe is right beside me, floating in the air, his back to the water. He’s looking at me in a way I can’t describe, the hard lines of his face softer now, the sharp edges sanded down.