Page 82 of Smuggler's Beauty

She sat, grabbing the egg timer off the table and passing it from hand to hand as she worked out her feelings.

If someone came at her with a blaster, and she had one in her hand, would she defend herself? Evelyn could admit to herself that while she may not have at one point in her life, she was suddenly inundated with so much to live for, she would pull the trigger without any remorse.

So why was this any different?

Because wielding a blaster doesn’t necessarily make you a monster.

The thought echoed in her mind. It resonated louder and louder until all she could hear was the last word on a constant loop inside her mind.

Monster. Monster. Monster.

She dropped the egg timer. It made an indignant beep as it hit the floor, jolting her from her mind spiral. Evelyn bent to pick it up and shook her head. Her conversation — dissertation, more like — earlier in the kitchen came back to her in fits and spurts.

This was not a Tanalian philosophy.

If Evelyn really believed that everyone had a place in the universe that only they could fill, then she absolutely could not allow herself to think of herself as monstrous.

She was gearing up to kill the monster, in one way or another.

Maybe it takes a monster to kill a monster.

She sighed. Decades of negative self-talk wouldn’t be abolished in an afternoon. She’d work on self-acceptance as she worked on mastering the other talent.

Evelyn placed the egg timer back on the table and closed her eyes again. She was back in her visualization space, in her mauve velvet chair. The seedling sat on the table before her.

She got up and searched the shelves for the right jar, one that felt special enough to hold the life force of the plant. A simple pickle jar wouldn’t do. Not for the first time she tried this.

After a few minutes of searching, she found a jar, bottle-green with beautiful dips and curves in the blown glass and a crystal stopper for a lid.Perfect.She brought the jar back to the table and unstopped it.

Evelyn focused on the plant. The small vibrating strands that emanated from electronics were much more orderly than the pulsating energy of the seedling. The energy of life was more chaotic. Evelyn probed the life force, and slowly, it responded to her, leaving in wisps rather than the tight orb that had emerged from the electronics.

The plant energy was clearly less eager to be nudged along than the energy in her earlier experiments. Evelyn didn’t blame it.

She led the wisps to the vessel, guiding the energy along gingerly. She coaxed, but they were reluctant. The plant’s energy did notwantto be contained. It wanted to stay put.

Evelyn increased the mental pressure she was putting on the plant, and the tendrils of energy finally relinquished control to her, leaving the plant in a rush. A sheer sense of revulsion in herself welled up as she led as much of the plant energy into the jar as she could without killing it entirely. Its thrum was a drumbeat in her ears. She could take it all. She could take everything.

She stopped short, the message that had been drilled into her from adolescence screaming in her mind. The little seedling, once so verdant and glossy leafed, sat sadly in its pot. The soil was dry, the vines sagged listlessly. The leaves were crispy. Her hands trembled as she looked at the results of her experiment.

She thought of that happening to a person, and the soup she’d had earlier churned unpleasantly in her stomach. That she could be capable of doing this to another human being was a horrifying prospect. She realized she wasn’t breathing. Her chest felt tight; her pulse raced. She took a gasping breath, trying to steady herself.

As far as object lessons went, this one was doing the job.

Maybe Corrie should have taught me this one years ago. Respect is far better than fear.

That thought had to be Aiden’s influence on her. Evelyn’s knee-jerk reaction was always to blame herself. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She wiped her face with the sleeve of her cardigan and sorted her thoughts as she tried to reframe the information in front of her.

Point one: She possessed a very scary psychic ability.

Point two: She wasn’t an unhinged psychopath intent on draining the populace like juice boxes on a hot summer day. She respected that this wasn’t an ability to whip out at a party.

Point three: She may very wellneedto be scary to take back her planet from Emil.

Men like him didn’t respond well to reason. But they did respond to force.

She could show it, if she had to.

So, scary could be a good thing.