Nym's Arc

Chapter 25 of 41

Nym read the prophetic book by lamplight. The words named a child of light and dark, born of a made mother and a Fae father. Then one line stopped her cold. It named a power sleeping inside her, a white light that could unmake and remake. She had felt that light before. It had opened a door and healed her mother. But she had never controlled it. The book claimed she must master it to become the savior the kingdoms needed. "I don't understand this," she said. "How can I be what this says if I can't even command my own magic?" Drasila closed the book with both hands. Her rune-marked fingers pressed the cover shut. "Because that power isn't a tool," she said. "It is the thing they made me to carry. It passed to you. I hoped it never would." The white streak in her dark hair caught the lamplight. She looked at Nym the way a mother looks at a wound she cannot heal. Crassus leaned on his tall staff. He had spent three hundred years writing Drasila's life without knowing her end. Now he studied the daughter he never expected. "The book does not lie, child," he said. "But it names the power. It does not teach it. That, you must find yourself. Try. Here. Now, while your mother stands beside you." Nym set the book down. She held out her open hand and closed her eyes. She thought of the door bursting with light. She reached for that same feeling, not with fear this time, but with will. Nothing came. Her fingers stayed dark. She reached harder. A spark of white flickered above her palm, then died. "Feel for what it wants," Drasila said quietly. "Not what you want. It answers grief. It answers love. Stop forcing it." Nym stopped pushing. She thought of Margo, who raised her. She thought of her mother locked behind stone for three hundred years. She thought of the fear that she was made wrong. The white light rose from her hand, steady and cold. It filled the room. The lamp flames bent toward it. Crassus shielded his eyes. Then Nym breathed out, and the light shrank down to a small bright coin above her palm. It stayed. She turned her hand, and it turned with her. She held it. "I have it," Nym whispered. "I can hold it now." But the light faded, Nym knew she would need lots of practice, but she did not know anyone who could teach her any sort of light magic. She left the tower library for her room and slept.