Kiva winced at hearing confirmation from the one person who needed her to succeed perhaps more than anyone else.
“I might not have magic anymore,” he said, and she quickly looked away, afraid of what she would see in his expression, even if there continued to be no trace of anger in his voice, “but I still know how it works. So please, close your eyes and trust me.”
Kiva hardly dared to breathe with him so near, especially since he seemed to have momentarily set aside his hatred of her. She had no trouble trusting him — she’d never had trouble trusting him, even when she should have. For her, it was as easy as breathing, so she had no problem following his quiet command.
“When you use your magic, what do you feel?” Jaren asked, his voice soft, and close enough that she shivered again. “Hot? Cold? Happy? Sad? What do you experience?”
Kiva’s stomach flipped in response to his proximity, but she kept her eyes tightly closed as she answered, “It’s like my blood heats up, and I get a tingling feeling in my fingers before it just sort of . . . erupts out of me.”
“Is it uncomfortable?”
“No, never. It feels . . . not happy, but pure. Clean. It feels like —” She took a moment to consider her words. “It feels like life.”
“And what about when you healed Naari and the others in Yirin?” he pressed. “You said afterward that it had come easier to you than ever before, that it just happened. Go back to that moment — what was different about it?”
Kiva cast her mind back. There was nothing she could recall that might have made it less challenging to summon her magic, aside from —
“Tipp had just forgiven me,” Kiva answered quietly, almost embarrassingly. “The way he was looking at me, believing without a doubt that I’d be able to heal Naari . . . I — I —” She paused to gather herself. “I was feeling a lot, knowing that he accepted what I could do, and therefore who I was. His confidence in me, his love . . .” She had to clear the emotion from her voice before she could finish, “My magic came effortlessly. I barely even had to think about it.”
There was a weighty silence that lasted long enough for Kiva to wonder if Jaren had walked away. She was just about to crack open her eyelids and check when he spoke, his voice still quiet, still close.
“Elemental magic is prompted by conscious thought,” he shared. “In the same way your brain sends a message to your hands or feet if you want to move your fingers or wiggle your toes, a similar kind of mindful conditioning is what creates a magical response. Summon a flame. Grow a tree. Make it rain. Create a breeze. All it takes is a mental command, regardless of whether it’s deliberate or reactive.” He paused. “But your magic sounds as if it acts more on an emotional level. Ignoring what happened in Yirin, all the times you’ve healed people in the past, what was your dominant feeling?”
Kiva thought about healing Tipp in Zalindov, her brother at Vallenia’s docks, Jaren at the River Palace. In all three instances, they were mere moments from death. The answer came to her easily: “Desperation.”
A quiet puff of air left Jaren, and she wondered if he too was remembering the night he’d been stabbed. He’d been unconscious when she’d healed him, so he had no idea how terrified she’d been that she wouldn’t be able to save him. But Caldon had witnessed every traumatic second of it, and likely shared the entire encounter afterward.
“That makes sense,” Jaren said, after clearing his throat. “It’s also likely why you’re having so much trouble calling your power when no one’s in trouble — because you’ve become used to channeling your magic only in dire circumstances.”
“So what does that mean?” asked Caldon, and Kiva jumped, having forgotten she’d been training with him before Jaren had arrived.
“It means she needs to retrain her mind,” Jaren said. “If her power is linked to her emotions, then she needs to feed it the right feelings, ones that aren’t driven by fear, but by hope, and joy, and —” He stopped himself.
But Caldon finished for him, having heard what Kiva had said about Tipp. “Love. She needs to focus on love.”
Kiva was glad her eyes were still closed, if only to avoid seeing whatever look passed between the two princes.
“Right,” Jaren said, his voice rougher than before. But then it returned to normal as he addressed Kiva again. “I want you to think of a memory — a good one. Something that made you feel all the things we just talked about. Maybe think about when Tipp forgave you. Or perhaps a moment from your childhood, something that’s strong and clear in your mind and makes you feel lighter just thinking about it.”
“A memory filled with love,” Caldon added, apparently agreeing with his cousin’s new training technique.
Kiva’s mind sped over a thousand possibilities, with Tipp’s face coming to her, then Torell’s, her father’s, even Caldon’s. Each of them was attached to more than one memory that made her feel light, but she had trouble holding them in her thoughts, the images vanishing quickly. Only one memory was able to stay in the forefront of her mind, making her knees weak and her stomach flip all over again.
The night of the masquerade — before everything had gone wrong.
The night when she and Jaren had first kissed.
I know you’re scared, he’d whispered, right before his lips had touched hers. But I promise you don’t have to be. You’re safe with me, Kiva. You’ll always be safe with me.
Kiva hadn’t let herself think about that part of the night in all the time since then, fearing what it might do to her poor, grieving heart. But there was no denying that it fit everything she was being asked to feel. A good memory — filled with love.
“Do you have one?” Jaren asked softly.
“Yes,” Kiva whispered, hoping her cheeks weren’t as red as they felt.
If he had any idea that he was starring in her thoughts, he didn’t let on, and instead said, “Good. Now hold your hands out, like you’re cupping water in your palms.”
Kiva did so, her arms trembling from the emotion now coursing through her.
“Keep replaying that memory,” Jaren said, his voice now coming from behind her. He was close enough that she could feel his heat along her back, his breath against her ear. “Everything you felt at the time, keep it central in your thoughts. And then use it to dive deep within yourself, as if tapping a well full of your magic, carrying it back up to the surface. It’s light, not heavy. Full of hope, full of joy, full of — of love.”
He stumbled over the word, but Kiva barely heard him, all too aware of the tingles overtaking her body, of the warmth that had nothing to do with him standing behind her.
Open your eyes, sweetheart.
The words didn’t come from Jaren now; they were part of her memory from that night — when Jaren had uttered them so impossibly softly, and she’d obeyed, only to see everything he’d felt for her revealed in his expression.
“Open your eyes, Kiva,” the real Jaren whispered, causing her pulse to skip a beat.
But this time when she did so, he wasn’t waiting before her, looking at her with his heart on his sleeve. Instead, she glanced down to find her hands glowing, a steady, bright light sitting between her palms, waiting for direction.