My stomach grumbled, reminding me I hadn’t eaten, so I pushed away from the desk and took a last glance at the sketches as I stood.
And froze as my breath hitched.
I’d drawn a thin boy with messy blond hair, wide brown eyes, and giant owlish glasses that took up half his face. It was little Trevor Carson. I thumbed through the pages, shaking my head. Over and over, I’d drawn him. One image winning the battle against a giant rock monster. Another with him casting a spell that warded him against dark elementals entering his mind. And yet another with him training with Amethyst, her showing him the ins and outs of being an elemental.
With a sigh, I set the sketch pad back on the desk and left my dorm before I got all emotional thinking about the kid again. I hated the Council for putting him through this, for putting any of the elementals through this. It wasn’t right. They weren’t hurting anyone. What was the harm in allowing them to remain at the academy?
That question tunneled into my thoughts and took hold. What was the harm? Some of them had been here over a year and hadn’t turned against the Council. They hadn’t detonated like ticking bombs out of time. They hadn’t gone dark. Sending them to Carcerem, forcing them to remain locked up? Now that would turn them against the Council. This whole shit show of sentencing innocent elementals to prison for being magically enhanced was practically guaranteeing which side they’d be on when war broke out.
I needed to talk to Stace, but considering how I’d treated her the last time we’d talked, I doubted she’d be all that open about something this monumental. Rob was too new of a member for them to tell him the why behind any of his orders. I didn’t want to talk my mom, as bad as that sounded. She’d been avoiding me, and, to be honest, I wasn’t that upset about it. I’d gone almost six years without her. It was awesome to have her back, to know she hadn’t died after all, but she was…different now.
Sure, she’d always run hot and cold. That, I understood and dealt with. She’d always avoided getting too emotionally invested in anything I did. Again, I dealt with it. That didn’t make her a bad mom. It just didn’t make her my emotional support pillar. That had come from my dad.
Which was why it’d cut me so deeply when he’d written me off as soon as I’d come into my powers. He’d cut me off before then, really, when my mom had disappeared.
Now she was more than hot and cold, or emotionally distant. It was as if being around me was some sort of burden on her. Truth be told, she’d acted like that before she left. I’d just forgotten that side of her, the one that would rather lie about having something to do and hide out in her room than help me with my homework. Or the one that agreed to take me shopping for school clothes and left me at the mall.
I didn’t want to think about all the terrible things my mom had done in the past. They were in the past. She was also the first one to offer me advice when someone at school bullied me, the first to throw out her no-touching rule and hug me after an epically bad day. She’d defend me when other parents called me weird. That was the mom I wanted to remember, not the one who’d sometimes look at me like I was a stranger.
And she was back now. This tension between us would go away once we had the chance to spend some Q time together. I had to believe that.
Back to my other troubling train of thought. Was being a magically enhanced elemental so bad? Granted, that forced power had nearly consumed me, but I got it back under control. Removing the students from Clearwater didn’t remove their need to learn to control their powers. If anything, they should remain at the academy and be taught the 3Cs of call, control, conceal. What if the spells that magically enhanced the elementals never wore off? Did anyone ever think of that? Was Carcerem strong enough to hold in dozens of young elementals who’d grow stronger as time went on? Or was that the real ticking timebomb?
Steeling myself against that lovely epiphany, I changed course from the dining hall to the ruins. Food could wait. My need for answers couldn’t.
I didn’t even bother with Cressida’s statue and instead made a beeline for the ruins. For the conversation I wanted to have, we needed privacy.
“Cressida,” I practically shouted as I marched into the hollow stone structure. “We need to talk.”
“Hello, Katy.”
I tripped over my own two feet when the original supreme elemental greeted me, completely manifested. She typically didn’t show herself without me coaxing her out, and then only after she repeated her catch phrase of open your eyes about ten times.
She was still as beautiful as ever with her long, long chestnut hair, haunting hazel eyes, and graciously flowing robes. Her smile, so warm and welcoming, was like a hug for my eyes, heart, and soul. “Oh, uh… Hi.”
“I knew you’d come to see me. Eventually.” Her smile faltered.
Guilt impaled me. “Look, I’m sorry I haven’t been to see you for a few days. It’s not like we talk every day. What’s with the positive manifestation?”
“I’ve been like this for two settings of the sun.” She walked to the hole in the wall facing the ocean and stared at the horizon. “I don’t understand.”
“I don’t understand either.” I joined her at the opening and carefully peeked at how close we were to
