Rina remained nine days in the tower, waiting for the scandal to lessen, and Mai visited her each of them. He brought gifts. Sweetmeats from the Bani Islands; wines from the Crescent Lands; books of Old Denea, the Devastation, the rise of the Magisterium and the intricacies of the Carnelian Way; a duell board with pieces carved from obsidian and white crystal; and most special of all, more lessons.

The lessons were hard—harder even than weaving the rose pavilion. This time, he didn't offer his blood, pointing out she'd missed the forsaking and needed to expend her energy and passions, along with any germination of the taint. So he had her spilling rainbow waves of bougainvillea over the terrace; moving the pieces on the duell board without her hands; braiding a tiara from intertwined silver and gold and carving a pair of obsidian dragons with gem eyes, spelled to communicate words and images between two locations.

She thrived. With each task completed, she felt a sense of purpose and achievement, but most important of all, her mind was too tired to worry about Sara not far away in the dungeon, or Pietro and Iskra back home in Amadore.

On the ninth night, she stood on the balcony in the light of Máni, Hecata, and a hundred thousand stars. The bougainvillea rustled in the breeze as she made precise brushstrokes on the canvas, her paintbrush dashing between the pallet and the easel as quick as a hare darting between a winter meadow and its burrow. Bring something from your dreams to life, he'd said. So she did. The face from her dreams formed beneath her strokes. Olive skinned and long-nosed, with full red lips, a cleft chin, black sharp-angled brows and thick lashes—and those eyes. Yellow as the sun. As Máni. As the Carnelian Way snapping like lightning through that other spectrum and into this one.

A hiss from behind startled her. She flinched, the brush curving a ruby slash from a corner of the lips she'd been painting, up to a pointed ear. Arkis grinned back at her from the easel with a manic half-smile. A shudder skipped through the fine hairs on her nape.

Cold hands gripped her by the shoulders. "How do you know him?" Mai breathed into her ear.

A chill slinked down Rina's spine at his words. "Your Magnificence."

"Mai—just Mai."

"From my dreams, Mai—like you told me too," she said, a hint of defence in her tone.

She sensed Mai's smile, heat radiating from his body to hers. "Ah, so he visits you there, too?"

Turning, Rina looked up into his bright-blue gaze. "Too?"

His mouth twisted into something wry. "A family trait, my dear."

She had come to terms with her connection to Mai, but she found it hard to consider him family. A many-many-times-over great uncle hardly seemed like family. Five hundred seventy-one turns since the Devastation.  Many generations separated them. Isaac and Iskra had been second cousins, and her aunt and uncle not far off with seven degrees of consanguinity, and she didn't think of them as blood-related. Yet, there had been enough blood for a link between her and Mai. For her to see him in her dreams. Unless.

"You came to me, intentionally?"

"I called you, my dear." Something curled inside her. He was an emperor, and so he called, he ordered, but he didn't just come. And yet, here he was, stood before her, just as he had stood before her the eight days before. Come to her.

She lifted her eyebrows.

"Hmm. It seems my sister's stubborn streak lives on." Mai moved past her and turned one palm up. A small blaze flared there, bright, with flickers of green glinting through the writhing flames. He held it up before the portrait.

"You captured him well, the handsome devil."

Rina tilted her head and looked at her ancestor. He was. That dream memory came to her, hazy as the mist over the sea. His body shaking and shivering over her, until she—no, Elia—held that spark between them and ignited it.

"Was it enough, Elia?" he'd asked, when she'd done with him, his spent form draped across her.

"Yes, Arkis. I believe it was," she—Elia—had said.

It had been. They'd created a child. A yellow-eyed girl secreted away when news of King Hellador's armada had reached the mages of Hypat. Sent to the temple of Elia, her namesake's shrine and the sanctuary of hidden mage lore, in the deep desert with the other refugees—according to the books Mai had provided her, that was.

"I wonder what he wants you to know," Mai mused, stroking his chin.

"Wants me to know? He's dead."

He chuckled. "Mages as powerful as Arkis and Elia are never truly dead." His forefinger came to her neck and traced down the jugular vein. "They run through bloodlines, through the ages. Waiting." He stopped at her collarbone.

"For what?"

He shrugged. "A second chance at world domination, probably," he said dryly. A smile broke across his face, his teeth white, his canines sharp.

Rina laughed at the thought of her, a grower, dominating the world. She let him put an arm around her shoulder and walk her over to the far corner of the balcony to a large pot before an empty trellis.

He unwound his arm and kneeled before the pot, indicating for her to face him on the other side. The tiles were cool through her skirts, pleasant after the heat of the day. She took him in. He wore his crown. The golden roses—wild roses, like his mother had loved—cradling small Carnelian Crystals. The egg-sized crystal at the centre glowed under the moons. He reached into his robe, black in the night, and pulled something out, holding it between thumb and forefinger.

Rina leaned forward. A seed. She furrowed her brows and met his eyes in silent question.

"This seed fell to the ground and lay long days drying in the sun," he said, matter-of-factly. "It's all but dead. Only the faintest shadow of a spark remains within it."

With a crooked smile, he pushed the seed deep into the soil. He took Rina's hand and used it to press the damp earth over the hole, then kept his hand over hers.

"I want you to bring it to life."

"How? The life is gone."

"Not quite. Almost—essentially yes—but not yet," he said, voice full of awe. "Look, see if you can find it."

Her heart jumped, and a lightness filled her chest. Mai, asking her to bring life from the brink of death. Her! He believed in her. She forced her eyes to unfocus, and despite the beat of her heart, fell into that other light-filled spectrum. He came with her, blazing with the power moving through his blood and veins. Her mouth moistened at the sight of it.

Noticing her reaction, he shook his head and said down the line between them, This is on you.

She removed her hand from the dirt and grasped the edge of the pot, and peered down. Looking. Seeing. Searching. But all she saw was the earth.

"There's nothing."

"Look harder. It's there."

Gritting her teeth, she tried again, released a tendril of her Carnelian Way from the crystal beneath her skin into the loam. Then she felt it. A flutter. Gentle as the dying beats of a butterfly's wings. Her breath hitched, and she looked at Mai again. He pressed his lips together and inclined his head.

She recalled a lesson from Pietro as a child, when he'd taught her to light the fire, how he warned her against too much fuel too soon. "You'll smother the flame. And if you don't, you might just burn the house down."

Rina returned her hand to the soil and sent another current of her Carnelian Way to the seed, from her crystal, down her arm, using her muscle and marrow and bones to dampen the power and letting it tickle that tiny fluttering life force. Friction bloomed between the seed and her power. Drop by drop, she fed the spark.

A crack sounded, so loud in the silence, for a moment she thought something had fallen and shattered until she realised the seed had split open, and a green bud had escaped.

Her heart leapt, and she found Mai's eyes. He signalled for her to continue. Don't stop, bringer of life. A corner of her mind remembered Fin had said those words in the field when they first met. She shoved the memory away, along with new the knowledge of what this referred to, and did what Mai said. She coaxed the shoot. Her Carnelian Way telling it all about the moons and the stars above them, and the warm sweet air of the mountain city.

The bud listened, pushing its way through the earth. The surface glistened. Rina moved her hand away, watching the dirt dance before the green sprout punctured the surface, head pivoting as it drank in the night.

She eased the brake on her power, sending more light into that bud as it stretched into the night, twisting and twirling, shoots breaking off. It found the trellis and wrapped its green tendrils around the wood, then climbed, leaving trails of white star-shaped flowers and the scent of jasmine as it grew and grew, crawling up and up and up the tower. She stood, her eyes following as it reached for the stars—stars that began to wobble and twirl as the world spun around her.

Mai caught her. He brushed away whisps of her curls and stared down at her, his face blurred at the edges. She could no longer see the energy pulsing through him—they'd left the other plain. The crystal in his crown had dimmed, but his eyes burned.

"You did it," he whispered. "You rekindled life where the should have been none. You are a life bringer."

Lead ran through her veins, and her bones were iron. She tried to push away from him, to tell him he was wrong. She'd read about this gift the past week. The power of life, or consumption, depending on the author. Depending on who the historians wrote for. Regardless, the ability to create life meant the capacity to destroy it.

She was just Rina, who loved Mai and her family and her people. She wasn't the descendent of power-hungry murderers. And she did not have their darkness slithering through her soul. Her veins.

A trickle of warmth moved into her body. Only then did she realise she'd been trembling, no longer able to feel her toes.

She began to cry and crumpled in his arms. "I don't want anything to do with them."

His grip tightened, and he kissed her temple. "You're nothing like them, Rina. Believe me. No-one knows better than me."

She sniffed and raised her face to his. "What if I was?"

The expression on Mai's face turned icy. "Then I wouldn't have let you—" He never finished the sentence. "Trust me. I will never allow another Devastation to happen. Not while the Carnelian Way flows through my veins."

That warmth continued to spread through her. She clutched at him. "Promise."

"I told you, I want to reverse the Devastation. To find a way to turn back time and build a world that should have been. Who better to help me do that than the descendent of the people who wronged this nation?"

"Forgive her then."

He quirked his head, staring down at her. Above him, a bat moved through the night, its silhouette making the stars wink.

She knew he understood who she spoke of, but still, she said, "Sara. She's a good person. If you trust me, trust her."

Mai bent down and kissed her forehead.

"I'll think about it. For you, I'll at least do that."

★☾●☽★

A/N:

Hi everyone, thank you again for reading. What did you think of this chapter?  Of Mai and his intentions? And what about Rina. Do you think she's enjoying learning about her power of consumption?

If anything didn't make sense to you, please consider letting me know. I am getting toward the end of my fast-draft and it would be very helpful for any changes I manage to squeeze in before the Watty's.

On that note, a heads up: you may soon find chapters are less edited as I my run out of time to do this as thoroughly. Hoping that doesn't take away from the experience!

Much love, Jas oxox