A Meet of Tribes (A Shade of Vampire #45)(40)

I placed three candles I’d brought with me on the grass—thick wax cylinders in clear mason jars. I needed the practice, and I’d realized that communing with the elements always brought me relief and comfort. I was in short supply of both since my visions.

The image of Eritopia reduced to ashes and dry stone, of Draven dying and Azazel laughing maniacally as he prepared to march into our world to pillage and burn everything down—it had all landed heavily in the pit of my stomach. My shoulders slumped, and my soul felt drained, as if hope slipped out of it, and I had no way of stopping the leak.

A few hours passed as the sun set beyond the jungle in lazy shades of red and purple. Darkness crept up on the world, but I was too busy playing with fire to notice anything. I had trouble concentrating, and I couldn’t amplify the flames as much as I wanted to.

The thought of watching the people I loved as they died lingered in the back of my head, breaking my focus while I struggled to keep three flames burning high. I swayed them with different hand movements, but the fire didn’t listen all the time, and I wound up frustrated when it flickered and died on its own.

I sighed and rubbed my face with my palms. The smell of wax was embedded in my skin.

The sound of footsteps in the grass made me turn my head. The Daughter approached me slowly, her violet eyes curiously set on me. I smiled and patted the ground next to me.

“You can sit with me, if you like,” I said gently.

I figured I could do with a little company, and her timid behavior reminded me of myself. In a way, she came across as a kindred spirit to me; she had enormous potential but didn’t know how to tap into it. I had nowhere near her goddess powers, but I recognized the struggle and frustration that she dealt with.

The Daughter nodded and joined me on the grass, crossing her legs and tucking strands of reddish pink hair behind her ears. She looked at the candles, then at me.

“Playing with fire?” she asked.

“Trying, yes.” I sighed.

“How do you do that?”

“Do what? Manipulate fire?”

She nodded. That was a good question, come to think of it. How did I control fire? How could I explain my entire being to this creature who had yet to fully comprehend who she was?

“Well, it’s based on a connection. Something inside of me, a part of my being, is connected to the natural elements. My soul resonates with nature, and I guess we have established a conversation of sorts. The biggest challenge is to get the elements to talk back to me. I’ve been talking to them for years.” I laughed lightly.

“So, you speak to nature, and it responds?”

She managed to summarize my fae abilities eloquently with one sentence.

“You could say that. I commune with the elements, I open myself up to the possibilities, and, if I concentrate enough, I can manipulate them and have them do my bidding. I am a fire fae, which makes fire my strong point, my life force in a way.”

The Daughter nodded again, slowly, and looked out into the distance.

A moment passed before she spoke again. I watched her quietly, trying to figure out what was going through her head.

“And you’re an Oracle, as well?”

“Yeah. I didn’t know about that until recently.” I shrugged, not sure how to explain something that I didn’t understand very well myself.

“Phoenix is an Oracle too. And Aida,” she said. “He told me an Oracle touched your mothers’ bellies and that you were born and became Oracles, too.”

“In a nutshell, yes. We didn’t choose to be anything. It just happened.”

“I understand that. I didn’t choose to be me. You don’t know who you really are. I don’t know who I really am. But we both know who we are supposed to be, right?” Her question baffled me.

As quiet and clueless as she came across, the Daughter was able to present my condition—and hers—differently than how I had pictured it. She had a point. I knew what being an Oracle was about, because I had been told about it. It was the same for the fae side of me.

I wondered if it was time for me to stop listening to accounts of what I should be and focus more on being. The Daughter looked at me with a half-smile, and it felt like she could see right into my mind. A light flickered in her violet eyes as if she knew what I was thinking about.

“Think less. Feel more. Just be,” she replied.

I hummed my approval and looked at my arms. My skin had become bronzed from the time I’d spent outside. I wondered if the runes I had seen earlier would return in a more permanent form every time I had a vision. The thought made me shudder.

“I know what the runes on your body said.” The Daughter’s statement pulled me out of my musings, and I turned my head and the upper half of my body to face her.

“You do?”

“Not all of it,” she replied. “Some of the runes seem familiar, but I can’t put my finger on them yet. Like the words are stuck in the back of my head, and I can’t reach out to them. But I understood one phrase.”

My pulse raced. I took a few deep breaths, mentally preparing myself for what she might say. Given the dark omens in my visions of the future, I didn’t want to get my hopes up of the possibility that the runes could send a more positive message. My stomach churned.

The Daughter noticed my silence and cocked her head.

“When darkness swallows everything, it is up to the light to bring salvation upon us,” she said.