Burning Glass (Burning Glass #1)(18)

The people seemed to multiply before us as we traveled deeper into the city. They packed the streets until anywhere I looked, in any given direction, there were hundreds of them. Some extended their palms to beg for coins. Others held up their wares for purchase—lacquer art, bone carvings, furs pieced together from small animals. Beyond the people I saw, I felt thousands more, their pulsating desires and despairs.

But could I really feel them—all of them? Or did I only fear what would happen if I did?

Anton looked askance at me. “Are you all right?”

I’d shrunk down in my seat and gripped the edge with white knuckles. My body trembled. “There are too many.”

“Aren’t you accustomed to gathered people? The Romska must have taken you into cities.”

I shook my head, my nerves tingling with panic. “No, they kept me from them. Even the villages. They passed me to other caravans or hid me in the woods until they returned from their day’s work.” My experience proved the same at the convent. Unbidden, a memory seized me—being gagged to silence my screams as the sestras dragged me away in a fit of madness, yet another failed attempt of training my ability by testing me in a crowded marketplace.

“Why?” Anton frowned. Behind him, a mass of bodies wove past one another, their movement a constant, confusing swirl of colors. “What happens when you’re surrounded by so many?”

A burly man approached the troika and rattled off something about a fair price. He held a slab of meat near my face. I whimpered, smashing against Anton before the bloody flesh could touch me, before I felt the death of the elk or deer or whatever it was.

A baby cried. The sound cut through the shouts of the bartering and bustle all around me. I whimpered harder and dug my fingers through my hair, my body burrowing into Anton’s. My movement knocked the reins from his hands, but he caught them up again. Our troika trudged along, slowed by the throngs of people.

“I can’t do this,” I mumbled through chattering teeth. I wasn’t cold—I couldn’t be—not with the warmth of pressed bodies and the thick, cloying air of the streets. But somewhere out there, someone was. Maybe many were.

A young woman, close to my age, leered at Anton from the opposite side of the sleigh. “It’s the prince!” She placed a hand on her chest. When he wouldn’t look at her, her gaze drifted to me, her thin brows lifting with question. Her aura darkened mine with a stain of jealousy. Something crashed in the square, followed by shouts and pounding fists.

Up ahead, past a large fountain, a market stall had careened over and blocked the road. Two men threw punches at each other. More joined them, yelling and taking sides. Their fury scraped beneath my skin and itched for release.

“Stop that,” Anton said to me, voice strained, lips tight.

I realized my fingernails dug into his leg above his knee. I jerked back my shaking hand. “I’m sorry.”

The eyes of the thin-browed girl popped wider. “She must be the new Auraseer.” The girl pointed at me. Her dark jealousy broke apart into a shower of awe. It prickled a buzz of energy across my skin. “The prince has brought the new Auraseer!”

One by one, the heads in the square turned to me. Even the fistfight broke apart.

Their wonder combined with the pinprick energy of the girl, until together it felt like a thousand knives nicking at my skin. Each cut sliced deeper.

Tears slid down my cheeks. Too many expectations. Too many people to disappoint. Too many teeming emotions begging to be defined. I felt like a glass figurine skittering to the edge of a mantel in an earthquake. Any more of this and I would fall, break into a million pieces. “Make them stop,” I pleaded as I hung on to Anton, my words jumbled and scarcely audible. “I can’t . . . I can’t do this.” With the road blocked, who knew how long we might be trapped here?

Tendrils of his anxious concern reached me. I felt them in the warmth of his skin past his shirtsleeve. But the auras of the people swiftly crowded them out. “Don’t look at them.” He flicked the reins in an effort to budge the horses along.

I squeezed my eyes closed, but the multitude swarmed inside me, bees in a hive far too small. “That doesn’t help.” My control was slipping away, just as it had on the night the mob of peasants amassed at the convent’s gate.

“Think of something—anything else.”

I pictured the Ilvinov Ocean. I would stare at it from the bell tower of the convent. I pretended the murmurs in Torchev were the roaring of the currents, the rise and fall of white-capped waves. Auraseer, the water called to me. Just a girl. Too young a girl. The depths churned with feelings, dark and curious, bitter and dangerous. Rising into an enormous swell, the water slapped down, pushing me under. Tossing me. Thrashing me. I couldn’t breathe.

“Sonya, open your eyes.” Anton’s hand slid across my lower back and held me like an anchor. “Look at me now.”

My nose pressed into his cape. My body seized like a madwoman’s. I peered up at him.

“Think of me.” He set his jaw, striving to radiate a show of powerful calmness. It wasn’t authentic. He was worried. I sensed it from our close contact. He didn’t believe I could endure this. I didn’t believe I could.

“You’re not enough,” I said.

“I am enough. Stay with me.” His strong grip nudged me closer, and his fingers spread, fitting between the bones of my rib cage. “Look at me. Focus only on me.”