“Guess it’s like most shields. Not useful at all against an assassin’s dagger.” Sebastian’s voice was almost unconcerned at the fact that I’d just fallen down in pain. I looked up at him as he slid the dagger back into its sheath. He’d known that was possible. More than possible. He’d known that it was likely.
He stared down at me, and I realized that he was analyzing my emotions. I’d felt that power when we’d been intimate, that sense of knowing exactly what the other was feeling.
“It’s necessary to know the limitations of your magic,” he said. “More than anything, you need to know if you have weaknesses. Assassins are a real possibility. Nyx was sent to kill you, and there may be others soon enough. You may be safe here, but eventually, Seraphina will find you. When that happens, if you throw up a shield, they’ll stab it just as I did, and then they’ll drain you completely. I had to know if yours was different.”
I took a deep breath and pushed myself to my feet. It felt so callous. It was logical and important to know, but he’d hurt me, nonetheless. I glanced at Cara and saw her raised eyebrows. This was a test. A test to see if I could do what was needed. A test to see if I was strong enough.
“Fine. Tell me what to do next.” Sebastian grinned.
“Fight me. With your liquid shadows.”
He raised his hand and mist streamed towards me, rippling and curling in upon itself as it seemed to grow outward. It hit me square in the chest and somehow seemed solid. I had to step backward to catch myself from the impact, and then it began to wrap around me, solidifying as it covered my body.
I screamed as it began to tighten around my waist. I could feel it squeezing tighter and tighter, threatening to crack my ribs.
“Use your power,” Cara said. “You have more power than anyone else. Don’t try to be smart. Just overpower them.”
The pain raged through my entire torso, and I screamed again, but as I did, I let the dark power flow out of my skin once more, sliding underneath the mist. The pain immediately relaxed, and I could feel my body reknitting the bones that had begun to crack.
With a loud exhale, I pushed the power outward until the mist began to snap and crumble as it broke away from the main line of mist coming from Sebastian’s hand.
I smiled at him as I saw him straining to keep the mists together, and I reached my hand out just as I’d done before. Liquid smoke flowed through the air at Sebastian’s face. Unlike Cara, he dropped his hand and rolled out of the way, my stream of smoke missing him and continuing past where he’d been.
Before he’d even finished his roll, he pressed his hands to the ground, and the world shook for a brief moment before I felt myself begin to fall as the very ground underneath me gave way.
“Your wings!” Cara exclaimed.
With nothing more than a thought, my wings came to life, moving faster than the eye could see behind me. I stopped falling and began to rise out of the hole in the ground.
“Holy shit, I’m flying!” I screamed in excitement. I looked down as I slowly floated down to the ground and landed. I could fly! I mean, I wasn’t zooming through the clouds, but I was freaking flying. I’d get to zooming soon enough.
I looked up at Sebastian and he was grinning like a kid with a new toy. “You’ll need to move a lot faster in an actual fight, but that was a lot better than I expected.” Now he wasn’t callous. He was a cat playing with a mouse, enjoying the game that he knew he’d win.
Then, I glanced backward into the hole in the ground and reality hit me. It was ten feet deep at least. Enough to break someone’s bones. Sparring with Sebastian was not like sparring in some kind of gym here. He wasn’t afraid to hurt me because he knew that I would heal. That didn’t change how much pain I had to endure, though.
“I would have broken my leg at the very least if I’d fallen,” I said as I steeled my jaw.
“You’d have healed. You’ll never get out of a fight without being hurt. If you let the pain stop you, you’ll die. If you ignore the pain and keep fighting, there’s a chance you’ll survive.”
I took a deep breath and decided to stop playing nice. I’d see what light could do. I raised my hand into the air, and instead of darkness, I let pure whiteness flow through my body.
Sebastian pulled his hood down to cover his face as the first rays of light began to stream from my hand. He bent down and picked up a rock, casually as though we were just standing around talking. Without needing to see, he threw it at me.
My body reacted without thinking, twisting to the side. The rock clipped my shoulder, but more than that, the light stopped streaming from my hands. As I turned back to the fight, Sebastian was standing directly in front of me, his dagger an inch away from my throat.
“Never let anyone get close to you,” he said. “You may be the most powerful fairy in the Dark Court from a distance, but once I get this close, you’re just as dead as anyone else.”
I swallowed hard as I felt a power radiating from the dagger. A power that terrified me. It pulled at me, seeking to draw my strength. Like the bridge, it called to me, begging me to touch it.
I stepped
