He tipped his head toward me, but kept walking. “Your human inheritance prevents you from gathering light?”
“My human inheritance prevents me from everything,” I muttered.
“What do you mean?”
“I have the pointed ears of the fae. And the ability to see magic. Everything else about me is human.” He would figure out that sad truth eventually, so it hurt nothing for me to just tell him.
“But your brother had magic fire?” He sounded confused.
I nodded. “Yes. He has the round ears of a human and all the power of a fae. It seems to be a very uneven distribution of power.”
He nodded slowly. “So you can’tdoany magic?”
I shook my head. “Not unless you countseeingmagic.” I rolled my eyes. “Though that seems to get me in more trouble than anything else.”
Aedan opened a door at the bottom of a spiraled tunnel. “How is that?”
I sighed. “I followed a trail of magic from Alastor into Hemlit and got in an argument with a drekkan. I followed a trail of fae magic into the basement after you said not to. I thought… I thought my ability to see my mother’s magic would help me find her, but instead it just brought me awful news.”
I paused to take a breath, and he said, “I am sorry.”
I stopped walking. “What?”
He took another step to stand in front of me. “I won’t keepbringing it up, unless you’d like me to, but I haven’t said this yet, and I want you to hear it from my lips. I am sorry for what I did to your mother. I am sorry for the deception, the mistake, and her death. I am sorry for what it meant for her and for you and for your brother. I will spend the rest of my life wishing I had been more patient and kind. I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I want you to know that I regret it more than anything else in my life.”
It was a short speech, but hearing the words from his mouth did make me feel better about my decision to push away the anger I felt at him. “Thank you. I… appreciate that.”
He nodded, and we continued down the stone corridors.
The final tunnel before the rose bush filled with the bright pink magic that I’d remembered from before. I slowed down to look at it closer. An abundance of magic here flooded my senses and made it hard to focus.
“Do you see something?” Aedan asked.
“Lots of magic,” I answered. “It’s hard to tell much about it because it’s so concentrated in the tunnel here. I’d like to get into the cave to try to see what’s going on.”
He led the way through the narrowing corridor until the root-bound walls were close enough for me to reach out and touch. Magic pulsed through the roots like blood in veins. It emanated away from the plant and filled the corridor.
I touched Aedan’s back, and he turned toward me. “Do you not see or feel any magic in this tunnel?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “I can feel it, but not well enough to manipulate it or diagnose anything about it. I cannot see anything besides stone walls with roots twining their way through the rock.”
I nodded and tipped mychin forward.
We stepped into the cavern. It was just as incredible as before, but this time—knowing I was here with permission—made the experience entirely different. “I wish you could see what I see,” I whispered.
He turned to me. “Will you describe it for me?”
“Of course.” I pointed at the weeping willow-shaped rose bush on an organic pedestal in the center of the room. “The rose bush looks like a small tree covered with hundreds of flowers, but I can’t even tell what color they are because there is so much bright pink fae magic glowing from the plant. It rises from the plant’s essence like smoke rises from you when you’re angry.”
He faced the plant, as if trying to see what I described. “Does it change?”
I stepped closer to the tree. “The magic flows from the main rose bush like water flows from the top of a waterfall, down a set of cascades. The movement is slow, though, like… like a sunbeam.” I grinned as I landed on the right analogy. “The bright pink magic flows like sunlight pouring across a mountain valley.”
I spun to look at the roots. “It pulses through the entire plant like blood pulses through you or I, but as it pulses, it is so strong that it seeps through the plant walls and fills the space around it. That’s why it’s so concentrated in this room and the tunnel.”
I stretched my hands out into the thick clouds of pink magic. “I don’t know why a tendril of it reached all the way upstairs into the courtyard last week—right now, it seems to dissipate at the end of the nearest tunnel…”
My words faded as a new tiny sprout burst up from the ground and grew toward my extended fingers. In less than a minute,the small shoot reached my knees. I bent down and lowered my hand to the two leaves at the top. They wrapped around two of my fingers, hugging them.
