A Battle of Blood and Stone (Chronicles of the Stone Veil 4)

I whirled around on Deandra, feeling something hum along my skin, and she blinked at me with wide eyes. “Whoa.”

“Whoa what?” I demanded.

“Your eyes,” she murmured, walking up to me and tipping her head left and then right as if she were studying a bug in fascination. “They’re glowing.”

The minute she said that, the warmth faded, the hum disappeared, and I’m sure my eyes stopped glowing as Deandra looked positively disappointed in me.

It went downhill from there.

“Come on, human,” Deandra commands, looking down upon me as I lay flat on my back on the gym floor.

Yeah… going to sneak into her room tonight and kill her.

We’d been working on strengthening my defensive powers since those come a little more naturally. This consisted of Deandra lobbing balls of stinging magic at me while I tried to deflect them.

She did it over and over again, usually with insults and a constant barrage of badgering. More often than not, I could repel what she threw at me.

But every once in a while, she distracts me.

Like now as she forms a fiery blue ball in the palm of her hand, glances down at it fondly, and then at me with a malicious sneer. “Once you die, Carrick will be back in my bed.”

That hits me deep because it could be true. No telling how long it would take for me to come back, and do I really expect him to remain celibate?

Actually… I think I do expect him to remain celibate. That’s a huge conversation we’re going to have to have.

I’m distracted with thoughts of Carrick’s sex life after I die and her blue ball of energy smacks me in the stomach, causing me to stumble back before falling on my ass.

I just lay all the way down on the floor to stare at the ceiling, slightly humiliated to have let her get to me.

“Get up,” she demands. “Your concentration is shoddy.”

“You’re being a bitch,” I snap as I roll over and push myself up. “It’s disconcerting.”

Deandra moves so fast I don’t see anything but a blur, then she’s right in my face—glaring at me fiercely. “Do you think Kymaris is going to be polite to you? Do you think any of her Dark Fae will? They’re going to tear you to pieces unless you can learn to drown out the things that make you weak and have faith in your strengths.”

That’s actually not a bad pep talk, and it touches me in some weird way. But I can’t give her too much credence so I say, “Aww… sounds as if you care about me, D.”

Grimacing, she turns away, walking about ten paces from me. She turns back around, another blue ball of fire in her hand. Her eyes are lasered onto me. “No insults this time. You should have no fear because you know I can’t really hurt you. Just plain old Finley Porter, lowly human with some measly powers.”

“Not measly,” I counter. “They’re angelic.”

“Prove it,” she challenges me.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to do,” I snap.

“No, you haven’t been trying,” she snarls back. “You let emotion rule your abilities. You’re hit or miss, and that will get you killed.”

“Well,” I drawl with condescension. “If you have any good suggestions, I’m all ears. But so far, all you’ve been good at is humiliating yourself into thinking that you could ever catch Carrick’s eye.”

I expect her to throw the blue fireball. I expect her eyes to fill with rage. I expect to get blasted with some painful Light Fae magic.

Instead, my insult about Carrick doesn’t cause a reaction at all, and it suddenly hits me… she’s not interested in him. She’s just been using their brief past as a means to break through my tightly held control over my abilities.

And it worked to some extent, but I can’t take Deandra everywhere with me to screech nasty things so I can access my power.

“Your powers haven’t been defined, right?” Deandra asks, letting the blue fireball disappear. “Carrick told me that Sarvel put something into you, but you have no clue what it is other than it seems to be rooted in light. Is that safe to say?”

“Yes,” I reply slowly, not sure where she’s going with this.

“And it seems to me, your inability to access it consistently has something to do with your level of confidence. Which is understandable, given you’re a lowly human and don’t know anything about magic.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“In the almost hour we’ve been working, your best magic comes out when your emotions are focused—say, for example, on my insults.”

“Yes, we’ve already sort of figured that out,” I exclaim sarcastically. “It’s the reason Carrick brought you here.”

“But I think it’s more than that,” Deandra says, crossing her arms over her chest. “I think you’re afraid to use your powers.”

I frown as I shake my head. “No, that’s not it. I want to use them. I need to use them.”