Page 66 of This Dark Descent
Damien set the journal on the table and crouched before her as she sat up, close enough that his forearm brushed her knee. “You have an incredible power, Arielle Kadar, and I am not afraid of it.”
Listen to him, coaxed the voice.
He took her hand in his, guiding her to her feet as he rose. They stood eye to eye, a handsbreadth apart. “I am not afraid of you.”
Something inside her shifted, like the click of a lock. His hand waswarm and large around her own. Secure. This was what she wanted, after all. To learn to control her power, tohavepower.
Be fearless, my love.
Her fingers curled about his. “Tell me what you found.”
An hour later, Damien had presented her with such a thorough, well-organized explanation of his discoveries, that it seemed impossible he’d only had the book for a few days. She marveled at the way his mind worked, like a vault of information always at his fingertips.
“Let me get this straight,” she said from her perch in the armchair, a fresh cup of tea in hand. Damien stood at the edge of the rug, arms folded loosely. He’d removed his guns and his jacket, and even unbuttoned his waistcoat, rolling up his shirtsleeves to reveal the neat bandage on his left forearm. Reid had stitched the wound cleanly but warned it would probably scar. She’d felt the strange urge to chastise him for getting hurt.
“You think I can use enchantments on myself?” she asked. “Say, make myself stronger or faster or luckier?”
He nodded. “Sendism claims it tarnishes a person’s soul to be enchanted, but the only real reason it’s illegal is because consuming verillion is dangerous to most people. But enchanters are immune to verillion’s poisonous effects.”
He started pacing the length of the rug. She’d noticed he did that when he was caught up in an idea. It reminded her of a lion stalking about a cage. “If you can consume it, you can contain it and, according to the book, use it.”
The idea of holding raw magic inside herself both thrilled and terrified her. She’d never smoked verillion, but she’d always felt a pleasant humming sensation around the plant.
“Enchantments require more than just magic.” She drained her teacup and set it on the end table. “I would need the conducting stone.”
Damien strode over to one of the towering bookcases and returned with a glittering emerald that he tossed to her. The gem was cold against her palm and easily the size of an acorn. In his other hand he held upa glowing gold verillion stalk. He drew a switchblade from his pocket, flipped it open, and cut off a small piece, throwing it to her too.
She looked down at the emerald, worth more than anything she’d ever held in her life, then to the verillion stalk.
“You certainly don’t waste time,” she muttered.
He smiled, and the ease of it coaxed free one of her own, even as her stomach twisted with worry. This was reckless. Dangerous. They had no idea what the magic would do. Whatshewould do, and yet still he looked at her as if she held the world in her hands.
“Go to the other side of the room,” she instructed. He frowned, but she gave him a pointed look and he relented, retreating to beside Reid’s doorway.
Ari stood, the emerald slippery in her sweating palm. Approaching this power felt like turning to face a beast that’d been chasing her for years. She’d avoided it for so long, afraid of what she might do.
And what did that get you?asked the voice.Nothing but pain of another kind.
She felt the press of phantom hands against her throat. Her bruises had long faded, but she hadn’t forgotten the sheer terror that enveloped her the day those men attacked. It wasn’t the first time she’d been helpless. In the face of Enderlain’s elite, in the face of her bloody past and bleak future, she’d felt defeated more than once.
What would her life be like if she learned to control her power instead? If rather than locking it away, she claimed it?
You could have anything, said the voice.
She ate the verillion. The plant had a celery-like texture and a spiced tang to it, like the chamin her mother made. It filled her mouth with a strange warmth. The sensation spread as she swallowed, extending through her body in a gentle hum. She knew this feeling. It was a wisp of the power that surged through her when she gave life to a new golem.
Magic.
“I can feel it,” she told Damien. He stepped toward her, but she held up a hand, keeping him at bay. “I’m going to try charming myself for strength.”
Strength was one of the simplest physical enchantments, requiring minimal intent. To enchant something, she had only to thread the verillion magic through the stone and bind it to her target. The magic’s journey through the stone acted like a chemical reaction, producing the charm.
Except normally, all three elements—stone, magic, and target—were all one being by the time she set to work. Was it even possible to push magic from herself to the stone and back again?
Only one way to find out.
She commanded the magic into the stone and gasped aloud when it obeyed.
