“‘Generally too weak to sustain magic,’ huh?” Alastor steps carefully over a fallen branch and fixes the princess with a suspicious stare. He’s quoting her own words back to her. “Did you find a way to lie to me, or did you genuinely not know you could do that?”
A slight fizz in the air tells me he’s using his sensic magic, compelling Ana to give him the truth. Unlike a lot of people, she’s smart enough that she’s aware of what he’s doing. I see her trying to fight it, but ultimately she cannot resist its pull.
“I was deliberately vague, and I assume your magic allowed it because it was technically true,” she says. “I can’t conjure fire-magic at will. I’ve only managed it once before, and I’m still not sure how.”
Fire-magic.She thinks she’s an incendi, but Iknowshe’s not. I recognized the gold of that light right away.
“When did you use it before?” I ask, then hold up a hand to keep Alastor silent. If the experience was a bad one, I don’t want to trigger another panic attack in her by forcing her to tell us the details.
Her eyes drop to the ground.
“A few weeks ago. Before I came to the capital. Like Alastor said, I…I killed one of my guards. He—” she cuts herself off, lifting her head and giving us a defiant look. “It was an accident. Like I said, I didn’t know I had any magic. I’d never felt even a spark of it before.”
An accident? Or self-defense? Her magic wouldn’t have lashed out for no reason. My rage returns as I remember her words about being a body for use. What exactly did that guard do?
But even as I file away that question, I’ve found a different answer. I’d assumed her parents hid her in that nothing of a village to keep the royal bloodline safe. But now I know why theyreallykept her far from view. Not because she’s a princess, but because she’s something else as well. I lick my lips, wondering exactly how dangerous it is to tell her.
Fuck it.
Everyone else in her life has lied to her. I’m not going to.
“Morgana, that wasn’t fire you conjured,” I say, taking a subtle step to the side, just in case. Alastor sees me move and shifts as well.
She blinks at me. “What? Of course it was. You saw what I did.”
“Exactly. And that’s how I know you’re not an incendi,” I say slowly. “In fact, you don’t have terrial magic at all.”
“Then what was that?” she demands.
“You’re a solari. You just conjured celestial magic.”
Chapter12
Morgana
Solari.My whole body rejects the word. I shake my head so hard the world spins. I throw my hands out to keep from falling but quickly drop them when it looks like he’s going to touch me.
“No, you’re wrong.” He has to be. Of everything else that’s happened to me in the last few days, this would be the worst.
Solari are heretics—they gain their power by stealing celestial magic from the gods. They reveal their blasphemy by wielding the powers of the stars and planets, powers that no mortal should hold. Everyone in Trova knows that.
Leon fixes me with a hard stare.
“Can you think of abetterreason to keep you a secret? How would the king and queen explain it if their baby had powers their church says are sinful?”
“I just told you—no one knew I had any magic at all.”
But even as I say it, I think back to the night I killed Bede. I remember Etusca’s reaction when she first saw the body, and after, when I tried to talk to her about my magic. Was she actually shocked that I had power, or was she worried about something else?
“Celestial magic is very rare, but it’s not prohibited in Filusia like it is here in Trova,” Leon says. His voice is low and even, like someone trying not to startle a wild animal. “I’ve seen it conjured before—and its light is unmistakable. It doesn’t look a thing like terrial fire-magic. You’re harnessing the power of the sun. That’s why it glows gold and appears in rays, rather than flames.”
I try to swallow, but my throat is too dry. I hadn’t seen what the magic looked like when I killed Bede, but today there were definitely beams of light.
But if my poweriscelestial…have I been lied to my whole life?
I turn away, unable to look either of the fae in the eye. I need space to think—to work through what Leon’s saying. Couldhebe lying? But why? There are too many variables, and I can’t manage to stack them together in my head like I usually do. If this is a chess match, then I can’t win if I can’t anticipate my opponent’s moves. Thankfully, I feel a littlebetternow that I’ve released some of my pent-up magic, but I still don’t feelwell.The headache is still there, and it’s a struggle to think past it. The only solid thing I have to cling to is the story everyone told me the last twenty-one years.
“The whole reason they sent me there was because I was born without magic—it made me too vulnerable,” I say, trying to sound more certain than I feel. “I was sent to Gallawing as a baby because that’s where I’d be safest.”
