Wicked Like a Wildfire (Hibiscus Daughter #1)(102)

“I understand,” I murmured back. “I don’t particularly think I’d like to share, either.”

This time, I startled genuine laughter out of her, full-throated and musical even with the tearful tinge. “We are greedy,” she said. “All of us, starting with her. Always wanting the fullness of things, everything to its extremes.”

But wasn’t that true of most people? I thought. Why else would we wage war and fight for freedom and kill each other over the true name of God? Because we all wanted everything, and for everything we wanted to be right.

“So after you woke up,” Malina said gently. “What happened then?”

Dunja blinked away the last of the tears, wiping delicately at her face. “There was someone in the cave with me, I think she’d come to trim my hair. Denari, Mara’s great-granddaughter. She was rearranging the furs when I woke all the way up. I scared her, and she attacked me and I—” She swallowed. “I threw her hard against the wall, like she weighed nothing. That’s how I knew how strong I’d gotten. Then I made my way to you.”

“Reverse engineering!” Luka announced triumphantly.

Dunja, Malina, and I all turned to frown at him in such a synchronized way that we must have looked like real family for the first time. Even Niko, sitting beside him, gave him a dubious squint, squinching up her nose.

“That’s what we were trying to do,” he said, and I recognized that tamped-down glow, the restrained ember of his excitement when he delved to the bottom of something. “With Mara’s legends. We were trying to literally undo the spell by breaking it down into components, and creating an equal and opposite ritual to what Mara did. But the problem is that you were imitating her. Mimicking. And you were using the wrong set of tools to do it, a different kind of magic.”

Luka sprang to his feet like a coiled spring, and even though I still had no idea what he meant, watching him pace as his mind whirred so quickly made me want to back him into some trees myself.

“It’s freedom,” he said suddenly, looking up at us with blazing eyes. “That’s the opposite. True love is freedom, loving someone enough to do what’s best for them—to let them go, if that’s what they need. Mara’s love is just another kind of slavery, a falseness, a perversion of the word.”

“But what then?” Niko asked. “What do you do with knowing that?”

“It would have to be an effort of will,” I said slowly, my heart beginning to pick up speed. “Maybe that’s how she sealed this deal in the first place, by casting her will so far and wide that it set this cycle in place in perpetuity. And that’s what I’ve been doing, isn’t it, with the infinite bloom? Imposing my will on things? Isn’t that what you said, Dunja? That the infinite bloom is the ultimate gleam, imposed on space and time?”

Dunja’s eyes sharpened on me. “Yes. Exactly so. The infinite bloom is the basal gift, the one that lets Mara cast at her highest order of magnitude. It lets you bind far past yourself, to bind the universe to your will.”

“So why do I have it now, when I never did before? I mean, I could always make things bloom, but I couldn’t do what I did with the—with that wisteria that comes from me. It’s like Mara’s roses, I assume, but why can I do it?”

“You’ve never been so desperate before, most likely, and you’ve spent your life weakened, away from coven and suppressed by your mother. To apply your gleam fully to the infinite bloom, you have to cast from truest yearning. The deepest desire of your soul. The thing you want more than any other thing, perhaps even than to live.”

So that was it, then—it had always been protection. Every time I had summoned the wisteria, it had been because I needed it badly, to shelter Malina. To put myself between her and whatever was coming.

But maybe I could want to save myself, too.

“So, maybe . . . maybe we could all go bigger,” I said slowly. “I think I already did it once, Dunja. I opened a portal to somewhere—somewhere that might have been his kingdom, even. Because I wanted to beat Malina. I wanted to will myself to be the one to go, to save her.”

“That’s it, then,” Luka said. “It must be. Because that’s what fractals are—an expression of infinity. You can see it, Iris. And if you can see it . . .”

“Then maybe I can touch it,” I finished. “But even if I can, what am I supposed to do once I’m there? I knew what I wanted, the last time I did it. I wanted to make sure I was the one who went. But this—I’m not sure I know how to want this, properly.”

“You’ll have us,” Malina replied. “To help you. Mara sold us into slavery; maybe we can do what Luka says, and break those bonds by turning them into freedom. I could sing it. Dunja can dance it.”

“But where do we do this? In the cave?”

“No.” Luka shook his head. “The Ice Cave is hers—that’s still playing by her rules. We need to take it up another level. Set it all up above her. Go even higher.”

Malina groaned. “Oh, I was afraid of that.”

Niko’s head snapped up. “There’s not going to be enough room for me and Luka,” she said flatly. “Is there.”

I shook my head, biting back tears. “No. Not if Dunja will be dancing.”