Tears of Frost by Bree Barton

Author:Bree Barton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-09-29T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 26

Break You

IN THE BEGINNING, EVERYTHING was fine.

“I’m going to give you hiccoughs,” Mia said.

Ville turned to Nell, pretending to be aghast. “Good Græÿa, you wicked demoness! You’ve taught your pupil the darkest of all dark magic.”

Nelladine rolled her eyes. “Pay no attention to him, Raven, hiccoughs are an excellent choice for a first lesson.”

“I don’t approve of this.” Zai leaned against a reinsdyr pelt in the corner, arms folded across his broad chest. “Not that anyone asked.”

“Live a little!” Ville rubbed his hands together and winked at Mia. “Do your worst.”

She put one hand on the top of his abdomen and the other gingerly on his throat.

Nell coughed, then looked pointedly at Mia.

“Oh, I thought he already . . .” She looked into Ville’s eyes. “May I touch you?”

He grinned. “By all means.”

“Wind,” Nelladine instructed. “That’s the element you want to counter, Raven. To bring it out of balance, you’re conjuring Wood. Imagine chopping the breath into smaller segments, like breaking a stick into pieces, or hacking firewood with an ax. You want to fragment the Wind as it flows from his belly to his mouth. Does that make sense?”

“Yes, thank you,” said Mia. She didn’t want to correct her new teacher, but Nell had the anatomy wrong: hiccoughs were involuntary contractions of the diaphragm, the dome of tendon and muscle attaching the thorax and abdomen, not the belly itself. When the diaphragm contracted, so, too, did the larynx. The air didn’t flow into the mouth; rather, it rushed into the lungs. That’s what caused the hic sound.

Mia felt a flush of pride. Even if she hadn’t mastered the Elemental Hex, she knew a thing or two about human anatomy. She could whip up a batch of hiccoughs in no time.

She pressed a palm to Ville’s lower ribs, visualizing the diaphragm drawing air into the lungs. Then she imagined the trees of Ilwysion where she grew up. She saw herself as a girl, peeling long strips of bark from the brown oaks and white birches, snapping them into smaller and smaller pieces, then planting them in the ground like seeds.

Even as a child, she had longed to escape Glas Ddir. She’d pretended the bark would grow into trees that would be made into ships that would carry her far, far away. An illogical fantasy, yes, but a powerful one.

Ville’s chest seized. They all looked at him, expectant.

“You’re a witchic!” he crowed, pumping his fist into the air. “Angel of the Ashhices strikes again!”

As the others laughed, Mia shimmered in silent triumph. When Nelladine leaned in to say, “Beautifully done, Raven, you’re a natural,” her chest swelled with pride. She’d missed being praised by a teacher.

Was that really all it took? A childhood memory or two? Her heart thrummed with hope. So what if she couldn’t feel anything in her body? Her mind was perfectly capable of evoking the memory of sensations, even if she could no longer feel them.

She closed her eyes and kept her hands on Ville’s chest, dredging more from the memory.

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