Malice (Malice Duology #1)(27)

I think of all the years I spent testing boiled nettles against carrion crow feathers for a proper ugliness elixir. Mixing swamp water with crushed nightshade. “That can’t be true.”

“It is,” Kal says simply, stoking my frustration. “Your power centers on intent. From what you have told me, it sounds as though you wanted your elixirs to work. And it was that desire, once it was given proper direction, that steered your elixirs. Not the enhancements.”

    “No.” My tone is sharp enough that Callow bridles. “I never wanted to be the Dark Grace. No one would—”

“But you did want the experiments to stop. The torture.”

The scar on my middle throbs.

“Yes.”

One of Kal’s shadows creeps forward, curling as though it would caress me. “Do you not see? In your own way, you wanted your magic to behave like a Grace’s. And you wanted it so badly that your power obeyed. You used your true gift without even realizing.”

The crash of the ocean presses against my eardrums. I despise the Graces. But how often did I look in my own spotted mirror and wish I was one of them? How many years did I yearn for my magic to be like theirs?

“If I don’t have to employ enhancements, then how else do I wield my power?”

“Magic is everywhere,” Kal explains, his shadows lively and eager. “Even humans carry a spark of it in their fragile, fickle souls. All you need to do is reach out and find it. Twine it with your own, and you can control it.”

Lightning flashes through the gap in the wall and suspicion sends a tingle down my spine. My skepticism must show in my face.

“Try for yourself.” The storm heaves overhead, the bellies of the clouds deep and rolling. “Your mother likened her power to a tether that lived inside her. An invisible limb, if you will. And she said the magic in other things had their own shape as well. Often, she described them as beating hearts. Some stronger than others. All you need do is find that heart.” He points overhead. “There happens to be a perfectly good source of magic at your fingertips.”

    “The storm?” He can’t possibly be serious. “No one can control the weather.”

“Maybe not. But you can control magic. You can already sense the energy pulsing in the air. It will be a small thing to send your power out and find the heart of the storm.”

It doesn’t seem like a small thing to me. A raindrop splatters on my forehead, as if to taunt me.

“Close your eyes,” Kal says. “Trust me.”

Doubt gnaws at me, but a whisper-thin hope sings through it. The Graces shackled me with their gilded chains since the moment I was delivered to the Grace Council. If I can do what Kal says, nothing could stand in my way.

“Feel the charge in the air,” he continues, pacing in the shadows. “Find the magic.”

I squirm, catching only drizzle and the briny wind. “I don’t know what that feels like.”

“You mentioned turning the water in a fountain to mud. What were you feeling then?”

“Anger,” I answer immediately. “Pain.”

“Yes. Your magic has much to do with emotion. Feel something, Alyce. Deep inside. Here.” His hand presses against my abdomen. I gasp. “It will answer you.”

Letting Kal brace me, I try to follow his direction. Every slight and insult and humiliation I’ve ever suffered comes hurtling back to me. The mask crushed beneath Rose’s shoe. The pointy-toothed smiles. The jeers. Rage builds, hot and strong behind my breastbone. There’s something else there, too. Something I’ve never noticed before. A thrumming of darkness, thick and taut like a tightly braided rope. It seems to coil and uncoil at my attention, like Callow pacing on her perch. I concentrate harder and it stretches and lengthens—exactly as my mother described. Another thought and the cord of my magic snakes out of my body and through the air, wriggling past the cracks in the ceiling and out into the clouds. The scents of woodsmoke and loam and leather flood my nose, stronger than I’ve ever smelled them. I can even taste something like charred wood on the back of my throat.

    This can’t be real. I would have known if I could do something as miraculous as this. And yet that rope of dark magic obeys as I tell it to veer this way and that. To find what I seek. In fact, my power seems to know what I want better than I do. It navigates the leaden clouds, darting and diving like a fish in the sea until—

There.

My power brushes against another, the impact cold enough to shock. Where mine is a long tether connected to my soul, this one is a knotted ball of energy. An angry thing that hums and vibrates in time with the thunder rolling through the tower.

It’s the storm.

The realization hits me like a slap in the face and my power retreats at my own surprise. But I summon my courage and push it back out. Bid my new dark limb to fist around the storm’s heart. I feel the faint pulse of the storm. The crackle of lightning and the patter of rain. Hazy, bumbling things that could be the storm’s thoughts drift in and out of my consciousness.

    Come. I push the command through my own tether and into the storm as hard as I possibly can. My entire body is warm and buzzing. I feel well and truly alive for the first time since I can remember.

The heart of the storm resists.

Come!