thing that had finally caused a spark was her frustration at how useless she was. How she smiled, and curtsied, and watched as her life was crushed away. How even her parents had betrayed her, how everyone was so busy celebrating her that they never once considered her as a person of her own.
She bundled all those thoughts together, and she pushed. Light, she thought. Light.
But nothing happened. Not a breath of air moved.
She squeezed her eyes closed. She could summon fire, she had seen the proof, but there wasn’t so much as a flicker now. Could she only use it in Alyssinia, where the memory of magic was fresher? Or was it meant to be out of her control?
Finnegan ran his hand from her shoulder to her elbow. “Did you know you had magic, before you fell asleep?”
“No,” Aurora said. “I didn’t.”
“If using it was easy, you would have noticed before. It took a lot to bring it out the first time. Of course it’s hard to control.”
“But I never tried to use magic before.” There was no evidence that she had even had magic before. She had been frustrated then, hadn’t she? She’d been angry. But she had never made anything burn.
The magic could be a remnant of the curse, traces of powers used to try and awaken her. It might not even be hers.
But Celestine had told Aurora that she had been created with a spell, a bargain between Aurora’s mother and the witch. Was that the reason she had magic? Was it a twist that Celestine added to the deal?
“Maybe it can’t be controlled. Maybe that’s part of the curse. Celestine would never let me have magic I could actually use at will, would she?”
“Maybe,” Finnegan said. “But I don’t think so.” She could feel his breath against her ear. “Don’t think about it so hard. Try finding the fire. Grabbing on to it. Trust that it’s there.”
“It’s there,” she said. The charred village was proof of that. “It’s like . . . it comes when I’m angry, when I’m not actually thinking about it. When I’m scared, when I’m threatened, it’s there, almost without a thought. But otherwise . . .” Otherwise, she couldn’t find a trace of it. How could she control something that only appeared when she stopped trying to control it?
“Well,” Finnegan said slowly, “if you think about it, you’re being threatened all the time right now. Considering what King John’s up to.”
“So I should be constantly afraid, and then I’ll get stronger?” That did not sound like strength. “No,” she said. “No. I should feel angry.” Those were the times she had used magic. When she hated the king, hated Rodric, hated herself. When she had wanted to see things burn. “It’s fire,” she said. “Fire isn’t afraid.”
She turned back to the candle, and turned her thoughts inward. At first, she thought of her anger at herself, for how useless she had been, how she had caused so much damage in her quest to be good. Then she forced those thoughts away. Her magic needed to be her strength, and she couldn’t be strong while tearing herself apart.
Instead, she dug into that lingering feeling of betrayal . . . King John threatening her at the wedding, the key clicking as Iris locked her into her room, Celestine smiling her hungry smile, Tristan staring at her from the rooftop as blood ran in the square. And then she pushed further, into those unfair thoughts she could never acknowledge—fury at Rodric, for waking her. At the people in Alyssinia, for thinking she was their savior. At her own mother, for making a deal with a witch when she knew it must go wrong. None of them had ever given her a chance. None of them had treated her like a real person. She didn’t want to be their savior, didn’t want to be their queen, but they did not care what she wanted, not for a moment.
The pressure built in her chest, pounding in her ears. She did not think light, but she grabbed the feeling and pushed it toward the candle.
It burst into flame.
Finnegan lunged forward to extinguish it. “Maybe a bit smaller next time,” he said. “Candles do have wicks, you know.”
“You want me to unleash all of my anger and only start a small fire?”
“Not unleash it,” he said. “Embrace it. Then find the spark you need.”
She stared at the deformed remains of the candle. “It’s like . . .