Total pages in book: 214
Estimated words: 195876 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 979(@200wpm)___ 784(@250wpm)___ 653(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 195876 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 979(@200wpm)___ 784(@250wpm)___ 653(@300wpm)
"They plot against you," Typhon observes unnecessarily.
"Tell me something I don't know."
"I could eat them both. It would solve many problems."
I shake my head, continuing across the courtyard. "As tempting as that sounds, I don't think consuming students would exactly help us stay under the radar."
"You humans and your tedious moral considerations."
My mind drifts back to Raith, to the kiss, to the walls he keeps rebuilding between us. Whatever secret he's keeping, it's clearly eating him alive.
I touch my lips again, remembering the heat of his mouth on mine, the desperate hunger in his kiss. For a moment, everything was perfect—for one brief, shining instant, there were no secrets between us, no barriers. Just pure connection, raw and real.
And then he pulled away.
Whatever Raith is hiding, whatever danger he thinks he's protecting me from, I'm going to find out. Because now that I know what it feels like to be close to him, I'm not sure I can go back to keeping my distance.
Even if it burns me in the end.
19
Rector Voss paces his office with hands clasped behind his back as he watches me. He has four devices that remind me of the vessels used during the elemental trial. Each, he says, holds a great deal of elemental energy I should be able to draw from.
I pull water and fire at the same time as he instructed, try to sort of "twist" them together, and then I watch with satisfaction as steam hisses up from my fingertip. The power swirls within me, hot and cold battling for dominance until I force them to coexist like sworn enemies forced into a lover’s dance.
Voss smiles in a way instructors here rarely do. It's open approval.
The feeling is addictive, especially when I spent the last three years before coming to Confluence learning that absolutely nothing I ever did could win back the approval of my mother and sister.
The thought brings a fresh torrent of sadness to my mind I know could drown me if I let it. I hesitate a moment, then lift my eyes to Voss in a break between exercises. "Three years ago, I think I called a storm." I'm not sure why I'm admitting it, except that he might be one of the few people who could help me better understand what happened.
He pauses his pacing, then turns to face me, nodding. "Ah, yes. The four affinities often experience signs before they’re marked. Stories say unbound experienced far stronger events. Was this storm the first trace of power you felt before coming to Confluence?”
"No," I admit. I think back on a childhood full of unexplainable, odd moments that I tried my best to keep hidden.
Fires flaring. Sudden gusts of wind. Rumblings beneath the earth. And, of course, the storms…
When I could, I explained it all away, even to myself. Outside Confluence Academy, power and hints of magic were dangerous. Even a whisper of someone with power could mean masked Empire soldiers arriving at your door after dark. People with powers went missing, just like the offerings taken every year.
As far as any of us knew, they were all being taken for execution.
Now I know they were probably just brought here. And I suppose the truth wasn't so different from what we believed. How many of those taken would have actually survived? Nearly two thousand students between offerings, aspirants, and legacies arrived on the first day. By the time students reach fifth year, the class size apparently has shrunk to less than a hundred. The losses are mind-numbing.
"I imagine this storm came with a great deal of emotion. Yes?" Voss's eyes hold mine, keen with interest.
I nod my head. "We were all arguing. There was a festival that day. A stupid, silly thing, but it was a chance to dress up, dance, and just be normal for a change. To forget for a moment that I was going to grow old on fishing boats pulling nets. That morning, my father said we would be back in time for me to go. But the fishing was too good that day to pass up. He said we needed to stay as long as the nets were coming up full. And… I got mad."
Voss presses his lips together in sympathy. "And then the storm came?"
"And then it came… I was the only one who lived. It's why I volunteered to come here. My sister and mother apparently suspected I had powers all along. They blamed me for keeping it a secret. Called me selfish. Said if I just admitted I was a freak, Empire would've taken me away before I could've got them killed. Nothing I ever did fixed it, either. So that third year, I volunteered." My words catch in my throat.
"Brave,” Voss says softly.
"No… I did it because I was a coward. I couldn't bear the idea of facing them one more day. I always saw the same thing in their faces. They thought I was a monster. Then I came here and found out I really am. Unbound. If people knew, they'd look at me just like my mother and sister did. Like a monster." The words pour out of me. They’ve been building ever since I finished the unbound book for the first time.