Series: Charmaine Pauls
Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 70056 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70056 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
I waste no time in scooping her up into my arms and carrying her back to the blanket.
Once I’ve laid her down, I take her foot into my hand. “We’d better put a poultice on your heel to pull out the sting.”
Looking around, I find a few succulents within reach and break the fat blades in half. Then I cup the narrow bridge of Elsie’s foot in my palm and rub copious amounts of the sap from the blades over the inflamed skin. It’s an old remedy our cook taught me after I got stung by insects as a child.
Within seconds, the swelling goes down.
“How does it feel now, my sweet?”
“Unbelievable.” She gapes at me. “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”
“Don’t ever take off your shoes outside again. Some larvae that live in the soil are venomous.”
“You melted that caterpillar just like those lizards.” She pulls her foot from my hand, leaning on her elbows while watching me with an unsettled expression. “How does your power work? How can you dissolve something by simply looking at it? Do you have laser eyes or something?”
Caterpillar, laser… I don’t know her terminology, but I’m no longer in the mood for a language lesson.
I keep my tone bland, not wanting to frighten her more. “I broke the bonds holding its living particles together.”
“You… broke the bonds?” She swallows, staring at me. “Like, between its cells?”
I think I know what she means. “Between asha, the little self-sufficient units that make up all living beings, and then between the particles that make up asha, the ones that make up everything.”
“The molecules?” she whispers, looking awed. “You can break bonds between molecules?”
“If ‘molecules’ are what all matter, animate or inanimate, is made of, then yes.”
She sucks in a breath. “Is that how you dissolve stone to create the entrance to your quarters? By breaking the bonds between stone particles?”
“Yes.”
“And then you remake the bonds?”
“Exactly.”
It’s so strange that I have to explain to her something every Alit toddler knows.
She swallows again. “And you do it all with your mind.”
“How else?”
She lets out an incredulous laugh. “Um… with heat, radiation, electrical energy, mechanical forces, chemical reactions? Utilizing actual laws of physics?” At my blank stare, she says, “Never mind. So how do the others’ powers work? Like Vitai’s? How did he heal me?”
“It’s the same principle,” I say. “We all manipulate matter to some extent. He’s good at recreating the bonds within and between asha.”
“Whereas you’re good at dissolving them,” she says, and the way she’s looking at me—the way everyone has looked at me all my life—leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.
I can actually heal a bit too, though I’m nowhere near as good as Vitai, which is why I prefer to rely on potions and such. Not that it would matter to her. My own mate is afraid of me. Of my power. Like they all are.
And she doesn’t even know the extent of it.
Instead of sounding soothing as I intend, my declaration comes out angry. “I’d never harm you, Elsie.”
“Only other living beings?”
“It harmed you,” I bite out.
“It was just a sting. I’ll admit that stung a hell of a lot more than a wasp, but it wasn’t necessary to melt the worm into a puddle. It wasn’t his fault. It was mine for stepping on it.”
“It hurt you,” I say a tad louder, a tad more angrily, because it’s my duty to protect her.
A wry laugh tumbles from her mouth. “That was nothing compared to what I’m used to. Believe me, I’ve been through much worse. You just destroyed a poor, innocent worm for the misfortune of having crossed my path.”
My mind is hooked on the first part, on her declaration of having been in pain before, “much worse” pain.
“Worse such as?” I ask with deceptive indifference.
Maybe if I pretend not to care, she won’t be scared to tell me, and then I can hunt down the people who hurt her and give them a slow, torturous death.
“It’s…” She frowns. “It was nothing.”
My senses go on high alert. She’s hiding something from me, something serious. I feel it. I know it.
“Tell me,” I coax in an amiable tone, suppressing the violence that churns in my stomach before she catches a hint of my vicious intentions in my voice.
A speculative look comes over her features. “If I tell you, will you tell me why someone tried to kill me last night?”
I was going to tell her anyway—after I fed her—because it’s vital that she understands the dangers of our life. However, it’s not beneath me to let her think otherwise if it serves my purpose.
“Deal.” Let her think she’s won this round. “But you’d better tell me everything.”
Her laugh is uncomfortable. “Everything may take a while.”
My gut tightens with a nasty foreboding. “I’ve got time.”
“Let’s just say there’s no life-threatening condition I haven’t had. I was dying from the day I was born.”