However, I’d give her the choice of where we went from here.
“My concern with this upgraded collar is that it’s going to handicap you completely, leaving you unable to defend yourself.” Something I suspected she was going to need now that she’d proven herself capable of producing WarFire. That was an advanced, difficult skill to master. And she’d displayed it beautifully in the worst possible way.
Aflora stepped backward to my four-poster bed and sat down without an invitation. Not that she really needed one. “If you don’t put it on me, I could lose control and hurt more people.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “But how are you going to learn control if you are shackled so completely?” I pushed off the door to join her on the bed and handed her the upgraded device. She flinched as it shocked her skin, much the same as it’d done mine when Chern had given it to me. “You can feel it, right? How it’s sucking the power right out of your fingertips?”
Her throat worked again, her tongue slipping out to dampen her full lips. “I’ll do what I have to do.”
“I know.” I reached out to tuck a lock of her dark hair behind her ear, then ran my fingers over her current collar. “But sometimes the safe way isn’t the right way.”
Bright blue eyes met my own. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that in order to survive, you need to learn control, and none of us can teach you that while you’re handicapped.” I allowed my hand to drop to cover the device in her palm. A zing of discomfort immediately drove up my arm. Placing it around my neck would suffocate me entirely.
I suspected it would utterly destroy Aflora, likely belittling her to a near-human state.
“How about we hide the collar for now and save it as a backup plan. Then, in the interim, you can work with me and Zeph on how to master your new gifts. It won’t be easy, and we certainly won’t perfect this overnight, but with a little trust and guidance, I think we can make this work.”
“That’s an option?”
“It can be one, yes.” It was a huge risk on my part, especially as it went against the Council’s decision. But my father had trusted me with this assignment, claiming it as one of my trials, which allowed me to do this my way. And that collar just felt wrong on so many levels.
“Your Council didn’t approve this option,” she said after a beat, her intelligent gaze reading my face a little too well. “Why would you risk this for me?”
“I’m the future king, and sometimes kings make unpopular decisions.” That was a lesson my father taught me at a young age. “This would be included in that category.”
I released my hold on the item in her hand, kicked off my shoes, and twisted around on the bed to face her. It placed my back near my mountain of pillows and the headboard. I relaxed against the silky haven, pulling up one knee to wrap an arm around it while my opposite leg dangled off the edge of the mattress.
Much more comfortable.
“Have you never had to make an unpopular decision for your people?” I wondered out loud, studying her and catching the grimace my question evoked. I knew her answer before she admitted it.
“Yes.” She mimicked my pose, only she didn’t have a headboard to relax against, just air or the dark wood post. She chose neither and set the collar aside, her fingers wiggling as if to regain feeling. I understood because I’d felt the same twinge of loss in my hand from touching that power-sucking choker. “When Chancellor Elana attacked last spring, I absorbed a lot of her dark energy into myself to protect my people.”
Well, that was an interesting detail.
“How did you do that?”
She nibbled her lip, then cocked a shoulder upward. “Honestly, I don’t know. It was a natural impulse to take the brunt of her assault and dismantle it.”
I considered her for a long moment. “Describe to me what you mean by dismantle.” Zeph had told me what she said about the cerulean flames earlier, as well as her comments about picking apart spells and putting them back together. Her comment about Elana suggested something else at play here. Something that had nothing to do with Shade biting her.
“It’s like a web.” She twisted her lips to the side, her gaze turning inward as if she were searching for the design inside her mind. “I can see all the strands and pick them apart to morph into whatever I need them to be. Or, like today, I memorize how it was created and replicate it.”
Well, shit. “Have you always been able to do this?”
“Yes. No. Well, sort of.” She blinked, coming back to me. “I rarely had a need for it before, but I’ve always been able to think that way about power. It’s natural, which is why I reacted to Elana the way I did. And also today. I understood the magic in a weird way, crafting it to suit me, but I had no idea it would produce WarFire. I just released some of the flames burning under my skin.”
Her shoulders fell on a sigh, and I fought the urge to reach across the bed and pull her into a hug. I could see how troubled she was by everything that happened today. It marked her as an abomination, a threat to fae kind. Yet she clearly wanted to do the right thing. Unlike some fae in her position who would go after the power to use it to their advantage, to protect themselves at the cost of others.
Aflora wasn’t like that at all.
If I told her to wear that choker, she would, even if it killed her in the process.
And it had nothing to do with her need to survive and everything to do with her desire to lead properly.
“I want to try something.” I pushed away from the headboard to sit cross-legged on the bed.