“I hope you brought snacks!” Luca said. “I’m starving. Hurry up, Elentiya. Rowan said you had to do this as part of your training, and . . .” He prattled on and on.
“What is the gods-damned point of this? Just punishment for acting like an ass?”
“You can control your power in human form—keep it dormant. But the moment you switch, the moment you get agitated or angry or afraid, the moment you remember how much your power scares you, your magic rises up to protect you. It doesn’t understand that you are the source of those feelings, not some external threat. When there is an outside threat, when you forget to fear your power long enough, you have control. Or some control.” He pointed again to the sheet of ice between her and Luca. “So free him.”
If she lost control, if her fire got out of her . . . well, fire and ice certainly went well together, didn’t they? “What happens to Luca if I fail?”
“He’ll be very cold and very wet. And possibly die.” From the smile on his face, she knew he was enough of a sadist to let the boy go under with her.
“Were the chains really necessary? He’ll go right to the bottom.” A stupid, bleating kind of panic was starting to fill her veins.
When she held out her hand for the key to Luca’s chains, Rowan shook his head. “Control is your key. And focus. Cross the lake, then figure out how to free him without drowning the both of you.”
“Don’t give me a lesson like you’re some mystical-nonsense master! This is the stupidest thing I have ever had to—”
“Hurry,” Rowan said with a wolfish grin, and the ice gave a collective groan. As if it was melting. Though some small voice in her head told her he wouldn’t let the boy drown, she couldn’t trust him, not after last night.
She took one step closer to the ice. “You are a bastard.” When Luca was safely home, she would start finding ways to make Rowan’s life a living hell. She punched through her inner veil, the pain barely registering as her features shifted.
“I was waiting to see your Fae form!” Luca said. “We were all taking bets on when—” And on and on.
She scowled at Rowan, his tattoo even more detailed now that she was seeing it with Fae eyes. “It gives me comfort to know that people like you have a special place in hell waiting for them.”
“Tell me something I don’t already know.”
She gave him a particularly vulgar gesture as she stepped onto the ice.
As she took each tentative step—small ones at first—she could see the lake bottom sloping away into darkness, swallowing the spread of lost weapons. Luca had finally shut up.
It was only when she stepped past the visible edge of the rocky shelf and hovered over the dark depths that her breath hitched. She slid her foot, and the ice groaned.
Groaned, and cracked, spiderwebbing under her foot. She froze, gaping like a fool as the cracks spread wider and wider, and then—she kept moving. There was another crack beneath her boots. Did the ice move? “Stop it,” she hissed at Rowan, but didn’t dare look behind her.
Her magic shuddered awake, and she went still as death. No.
But there it was, filling up the spaces in her.
The ice emitted a deep groan that could only mean something cold and wet was coming her way really damn soon, and she took another step, if only because the way back seemed like it would shatter. She was sweating now—the magic, the fire was warming her from the inside out.
“Elentiya?” Luca asked, and she held out a hand toward him—a silent gesture to shut his stupid mouth as she closed her eyes and breathed, imagining the cold air around them filling her lungs, freezing over the well of power. Magic—it was magic. In Adarlan it was a death trap.
She clenched her hands into fists. Here it was not a death trap. In this land, she could have it, could wear whatever form she wished.
The ice stopped groaning, but it had clouded and thinned around her. She started sliding her feet, keeping as balanced and fluid as she could, humming a melody—a bit of a symphony that used to calm her. She let the beat anchor her, dull the edge of her panic.
The magic simmered to embers, pulsing with each breath. I am safe, she told it. Relatively safe. If Rowan was right, and it was just a reaction to protect her from some enemy . . .
Fire was the reason she’d been banned from the Library of Orynth when she was eight, after accidentally incinerating an entire bookcase of ancient manuscripts when she grew irritated with the Master Scholar lecturing her about decorum. It had been a beautiful, horrible relief to wake up one day not too many months after that and know magic was gone. That she could hold a book—hold what she adored most—and not worry about turning it to ash if she became upset or tired or excited.
Celaena Sardothien, gloriously mortal Celaena, never had to worry about accidentally scorching a playmate, or having a nightmare that might incinerate her bedroom. Or burning all of Orynth to the ground. Celaena had been everything Aelin wasn’t. She had embraced that life, even if Celaena’s accomplishments were death and torture and pain.
“Elentiya?” She’d been staring at the ice. Her magic flickered again.
Burning a city to the ground. That was the fear she overheard Melisande’s emissary hiss at her parents and uncle. She’d been told he had come to see about an alliance, but she later understood he’d really come to gather information on her. Melisande had a young queen on its throne, and she wanted to assess the threat she might face from the heir of Terrasen one day. Wanted to know if Aelin Galathynius would become a weapon of war.
The ice fogged over, and a crack splintered through the air. The magic was pulsing its way out of her, snapping its jaws at every breath she took.
“You are in control now,” Rowan said from the shore. “You are its master.”
She was halfway there. She took one more step toward Luca, and the ice cracked further. His chains rustled—impatience, or fear?
She had never been in control. Even as Celaena, control had been an illusion. Other masters had held her reins.
“You are the keeper of your own fate,” Rowan said softly from the shore, as if he knew exactly what was flowing through her head.
She hummed some more, the music wending its way from her memory. And somehow . . . somehow the flame grew quiet. Celaena took a step forward, then another. The power smoldering in her veins would never go away; she was far more likely to hurt someone if she didn’t master it.
She scowled over her shoulder at Rowan, who was now striding along the shore, examining some of the fallen blades. There was a hint of triumph in his usually hollow eyes, but he turned away and approached a small crevice in the cave wall, feeling for something inside. She kept walking, the watery abyss deepening. She had mastered her mortal body as an assassin. Mastering her immortal power was just another task.
Luca’s eyes were wide as she came at last within touching distance. “You have nothing to hide, you know. We all knew you could shift, anyway,” he said. “And if it makes you feel any better, Sten’s animal form is a pig. He won’t even shift for shame.”
She would have laughed—actually felt her insides tighten to bark out the sound that had been buried for months, but then she remembered the chains around his wrists. The magic had quieted down, but now . . . melt through them, or melt the ice where they were anchored and let him drag the chains back? If she went for the ice, she could easily send them right to the bottom of this ancient lake. And if she went for the chains . . . Well, she could lose control and send them to the bottom, but she could also wind up burning him. At best, branding him where the manacles were. At worst, melting his bones. Better to risk the ice.
“Erm,” Luca said. “I’ll forgive every awful thing you said earlier if we can go eat something right now. It smells awful in here.” His senses had to be sharper than hers—the cave had only a faint hint of rust, mold, and rotting things.
“Just hold still and stop talking,” she said, more sharply than she’d intended. But he shut up as she eased to the spot where Rowan had frozen the chains. As carefully as she could, she knelt, spreading her weight out evenly.