Arcane Rising: The Darkland Druids - Book One, R Nicole [suggested reading TXT] 📗

elite warriors, but we have to protect ourselves somehow.”

“Makes sense.”

I caught my reflection in one of the mirrors and frowned. In more direct light, my hair was taking on a life of its own. Soon, my natural auburn locks would be no more.

“Great,” I muttered, drawing Rory’s attention.

He stood beside me and peered at my reflection. “What?”

“My hair. I know people want to be special, but not different. I may as well have a neon sign over my head that says ‘Fae’ with an arrow pointing downward.”

“Don’t worry about what other people think,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. I like green—it’s the most important colour in nature besides brown.”

“Brown?” I rolled my eyes. “Who likes brown?”

“No one’s keeping score.”

Score. It made me think of the day before, when I was mulling over my human high school experience. “Tell that to the arsehole who graded my exams,” I muttered.

Rory tilted his head to the side, confused.

“Never mind.”

“I will mind because it’s blocking your Colours.”

I screwed up my nose. “Huh?”

“Emotional blockages,” he prodded. “It’s a thing, remember?”

I heaved a sigh and rolled my shoulders. “I was a complete reject growing up. I was picked on, bullied, squashed down… I learned to make myself small and quiet to avoid being a target. No one would notice me if I didn’t excel, and I’d be safe. All it did was make me stupid. I could have gone on to study Earth sciences and be like my dad, but I got nowhere near the score I needed to get into a Bachelor of Science degree. I was so far away, my dreams may as well have been in another galaxy.”

“You’re not stupid, Elspeth. It’s just a score.”

“That stopped me from having a future where I could do something great,” I cried. “Do you realise how useless an Arts degree is when it comes time to get a job? I do! I hate them and I hate—” I clamped my mouth shut and fought back a sudden onslaught of tears.

“Yourself?” Rory asked.

My jaw tensed, but I didn’t grace him with a reply. The truth hurt too much. I was stupid for thinking they were the ones who’d stopped me from having the future I wanted. The only person who’d screwed up was me. I was weak, plain and simple.

“Bottling up your emotions won’t do you any good,” he said. “What happened in that close with Owen was a warning. If you hold onto too much—”

“I’ll explode. Literally.” I scoffed, “At least if felt good.”

“Elspeth.” Rory grasped my wrist and tugged me towards him. “Don’t ever say that. Power like ours isn’t supposed to feel good. It’s a blessing and a curse. Rely on it too much to fix things and you risk losing yourself to a darker calling.” I blinked at him, my cheeks heating. “Do you understand?”

I nodded.

He turned and crossed the room. He picked up some pillows and tossed them into the centre of the space and gestured for me to sit.

I plonked my arse down and crossed my legs, feeling like a minnow in an ocean full of sharks.

Rory sat opposite and studied me for a long moment, making me squirm under his scrutiny. I trusted him, I liked him, I could talk to him, but in the end, he intimidated the crap out of me. I wanted to be good at this, but… Elspeth, you haven’t even tried yet.

“You were bullied growing up?” he finally asked.

“I was small, unsure of myself, and shy,” I told him. “That made me an easy target.”

“So you made yourself invisible.”

I nodded. “I could cope with that.”

“It’s clear that type of thinking followed you into adulthood,” Rory mused. “Now it’s time to undo all of that. When you use your Colours, your intent has to be strong or your prisms won’t hold.”

“How do I do that?”

“By believing me when I say that you’re special, Elspeth. You’re kind, intelligent, and determined.”

“How do you know that? You’ve only known me for a few days. I could be pretending.”

“I can only tell you so much. You have to do the rest.” He smiled and reached into his jacket pocket. “This is for you. You might not need it, but every Druid should have their own.”

He handed me an ornate knife and I couldn’t help but be confused. What was I supposed to do with this?

It was the size of a pen with a raw point of clear quartz set into one end and a small, razor-sharp, silver blade on the other. Delicate runes had been carved into the length, their meaning unknown.

“I saw others like this in the library,” I told him. “What is it?”

“It’s a nwyfre stele,” he replied, pronouncing the unfamiliar word as noo-iv-ruh. “It’s a tool used by young Druids to help seal their prisms. The crystal harnesses energy and the knife is for ritualistic bloodletting.”

I made a face. “Ritualistic bloodletting?”

“It’s not that dramatic,” he said with a laugh. “Adolescent minds don’t have the skill to reinforce the intent behind their Colours, so they use their blood to complete their prisms. You only need a drop.”

“Thank you. I…” I turned the stele over in my hands and studied the shard of quartz. What would a drop of my blood do? I wasn’t exactly a pure Druid.

Rory shifted before me. “What’s wrong?”

“I…” I forced myself to look up at him. “What if my blood muddies things?”

“We won’t know until we try. That’s why we’re training.”

I didn’t reply. Instead, I turned over the stele and ran my thumb over the runes. “What do they mean?”

“It’s a prayer of sorts,” he explained. “Before our people left the homeland, we had another language which is largely forgotten now, but we still use the runes.”

“To anchor Colour in light switches and mysterious tattoos?”

“Yes.” He poked the stele. “It means ‘the blessing of earth, sea, and sky’. Thríbhís Mhór.”

The time to try to access my Colour was fast approaching, but I still had a million questions. Maybe I was putting it off after