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His clothes dry thanks to shifting, Rowan stood a few feet away,cliffs upriver She’d incinerated the skinwalkers They hadn’t even had time to scream
She hunched over her knees, ar on either side of the river--­a radius that she didn’t have the nerve to mea­sure It was a weapon, her power A different sort of weapon than blades or arrows or her hands A curse
It took several attempts, but at last she spoke "Can you put it out?"
"You could, if you tried" When she didn’t respond, he said, "I’m almost done" In ahad he been working to suffocate the ­else attracted to your fires"
She ht have bothered to respond to the jab, but she was too tired and cold The rain filled the world, and for a while, silence reigned
"Why isso vital?" she asked at last
"Because it terrifies you," he said "Mastering it is the first step toward learning to control your power Without that control, with a blast like that, you could easily have burnt yourself out"
"What do you mean?"
Another stormy look "When you access your pohat does it feel like?"
She considered "A well," she said "The ic feels like a well"
"Have you felt the bottom of it?"
"Is there a bottoic has a bottoifts, it’s easily depleted and easily refilled They can access ifts, it can take hours to hit the bottoth"
"How long does it take you?"
"A full day" She jolted "Before battle, we take the ti field, we can be at our strongest You can do other things at the sa up more and more, until you reach the bottom"
"And when you pull it all out, it just--­releases in soiant wave?"
"If I want it to I can release it in so on for a while But it can be hard to hold it back People so that ic"
When she’d drawn her power on the other side of the portal o, she’d felt that lack of control--­known she was almost as likely to hurt Chaol as she was to hurt the de does it take you to recover?"
"Days A week, depending on how I used the power and whether I drained every last drop So to take , and they either burn out theirisn’t just fro you not to do that again"
"Because of the iron in our blood pushing against the ic?"
"That’s how our eneainst us if they don’t have " He must have seen her brows rise, because he added, "I was captured once While on a cadom that ­doesn’t exist anymore They hadthe air out of their lungs"
She let out a lohistle "Were you tortured?"
"Teeks on their tables before my men rescued me" He unbuckled his va a thick, wicked scar curving around his forearm and elbow "Cut me open bit by bit, then took the bones ­here and--"
"I can see very hat happened, and know exactly how it’s done," she said, sto Not at the injury, but--­Sam Sam had been strapped to a table, cut open and broken by one of the most sadistic killers she’d ever known
"Was it you," Rowan said quietly, but not gently, "or someone ­else?"
"I was too late He didn’t survive" Again silence fell, and she cursed herself for a fool for telling hi , barely a ratitude were harder to endure than her hatred and reticence "I am bound by an unbreakable blood oath to my Queen, so I had no choice but to ensure you didn’t die" A bit of that earlier heaviness settled in her veins again "But," he went on, "I would not have left anyone to a fate at the hands of the skinwalkers"
"A warning would have been nice"
"I said they ­were on the loose--­weeks ago But even if I’d warned you today, you would not have listened"
It was true She shivered again, this tiht and pain If she’d thought she was cold in her Fae body, it was nothing coain
"What was the trigger when you shifted earlier?" he asked, as if thisstorods She rubbed at her arms, desperate for any kind of war" His silence demanded inforhed "Let’s just say it was fear and necessity and impressively deep-­rooted survival instincts"
"You didn’t lose control iic, your clothes didn’t burn; neither did your hair And the daggers didn’tthat she still had theic hadn’t swarmed her the moment she’d shifted, and even in the explosion that had spread out in every direction, she’d had enough control to preserve herself Not a single hair had burned
"Why was it different this time?" he pressed