slick and warm. It’s a mercy, because perhaps it conceals the tear that slips from my eye. My Valtia said she’d never leave me, and now I can’t find her. She promised. She promised.
But her promises weren’t unbreakable, as it turns out.
Kauko stands up. “Try the stone, my Valtia,” he says softly. “Use the heat and cold to raise it from the pedestal.” He gives me an encouraging smile, but it’s the only one in the room. All the others wear frowns of doubt, and Aleksi’s is particularly vile, his black brows so low that I can barely see his eyes.
I compose myself and stride over to the stone pedestal that stands between me and the elders. I recall all my lessons with Aleksi about the weather and wind, about what happens when hot and cold air collide. Straining every fiber of my muscles and heart and brain, I focus on changing the temperature of the pedestal, on heating it up while I cool the air above it. But instead of feeling the swell of power inside me, all I have is the echo of my pulse thrumming inside my head.
Aleksi shoots to his feet and points at me. “You denied the magic,” he growls, his thin lips pulled back from his bright-white teeth. “You were so wrapped up in your affection for Sofia that you chased away the power!” He looks around the room. “I can’t sense magic in her at all. She doesn’t want to be the Valtia!”
Kauko grasps Aleksi’s arm. His square jaw is tense as he says, “I was there. She submitted to the magic. I heard her words with my own ears. And you know very well that the Valtia’s magic is harder to detect because the elements balance each other out.”
Aleksi tears his sleeve from Kauko’s grip. “She said the words, but she didn’t mean them. How else can you explain this?” he hisses, gesturing at the tiny pebble that still sits, unmoving, on its pedestal. He clenches his fist and raises it in the air, and the stone glides upward. As it rises, my stomach sinks. With a flick of his wrist, he sends it flying across the room, so violently that when it hits the wall, it shatters above the heads of several priests in the top row. “She couldn’t even make it wobble! She couldn’t alter the water, and I would bet my life that she can’t burn the parchment.”
His dark eyes meet mine, full of challenge. “Prove me wrong, Valtia.” He says the royal term like a curse.
“How dare you,” I whisper, but I can already see that I’ve lost the faith of my priests. My doubt floods in, peeling off my fragile confidence and leaving only raw pink skin, so easily bruised and torn. “I loved my Valtia. I was loyal to her. And her magic is inside me.”
“But you’ve corrupted yourself,” he says. “Gorging yourself on petty gossip from your handmaiden, on childish sentiment—” He bites back more accusations and turns away, as if he cannot stand to look at me. All his quiet resentment of my questions throughout the years seems to have risen now, at the most terrible time, right when I need the guidance and support of my elders.
The priests are murmuring among themselves, their puzzlement and anger rippling through the chamber, buffeting me from all sides. Leevi stands before me, and for a moment he looks as hollow as I feel. “The shock,” he says. “She had such a shock last night.”
“A shock? No thanks to you, Leevi.” Aleksi’s double chin wobbles as he speaks. “If you were so concerned, you should have brought her straight to the Stone Chamber instead of indulging her selfish whims.” He jabs his finger at Leevi. “And Sofia was shocked too, when her Valtia wilted and faded over the course of a fortnight. But the power roiled within her as soon as Kaarin took that final breath. That is how it’s always been. Don’t tell me about shock.”
“The copper, then,” Leevi whispers, tossing the priests a nervous look.
Aleksi shakes his head. “We’d all be affected. And here of all places, that would not be a problem.”
“What about the copper?” I ask, loudly enough for several priests to stop their grumbling and turn to us.
“I said it is not a problem,” Aleksi replies in a low voice, every word drenched in contempt.
Kauko gives me a sidelong glance. “You read the prophecy, Aleksi.”