Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass #3) by Sarah J. Maas

She considered. “A well,” she said. “The magic feels like a well.”

“Have you felt the bottom of it?”

“Is there a bottom?” She prayed there was.

“All magic has a bottom—a breaking point. For those with weaker gifts, it’s easily depleted and easily refilled. They can access most of their power at once. But for those with stronger gifts, it can take hours to hit the bottom, to summon their powers at full strength.”

“How long does it take you?”

“A full day.” She jolted. “Before battle, we take the time, so that when we walk onto the killing field, we can be at our strongest. You can do other things at the same time, but some part of you is down in there, pulling up more and more, until you reach the bottom.”

“And when you pull it all out, it just—releases in some giant wave?”

“If I want it to. I can release it in smaller bursts, and go on for a while. But it can be hard to hold it back. People sometimes can’t tell friend from foe when they’re handling that much magic.”

When she’d drawn her power on the other side of the portal months ago, she’d felt that lack of control—known she was almost as likely to hurt Chaol as she was to hurt the demon he was facing. “How long does it take you to recover?”

“Days. A week, depending on how I used the power and whether I drained every last drop. Some make the mistake of trying to take more before they’re ready, or holding on for too long, and they either burn out their minds or just burn up altogether. Your shaking isn’t just from the river, you know. It’s your body’s way of telling you not to do that again.”

“Because of the iron in our blood pushing against the magic?”

“That’s how our enemies will sometimes try to fight against us if they don’t have magic—iron everything.” He must have seen her brows rise, because he added, “I was captured once. While on a campaign in the east, in a kingdom that doesn’t exist anymore. They had me shackled head to toe in iron to keep me from choking the air out of their lungs.”

She let out a low whistle. “Were you tortured?”

“Two weeks on their tables before my men rescued me.” He unbuckled his vambrace and pushed back the sleeve of his right arm, revealing a thick, wicked scar curving around his forearm and elbow. “Cut me open bit by bit, then took the bones here and—”

“I can see very well what happened, and know exactly how it’s done,” she said, stomach tightening. Not at the injury, but—Sam. Sam had been strapped to a table, cut open and broken by one of the most sadistic killers she’d ever known.

“Was it you,” Rowan said quietly, but not gently, “or someone else?”

“I was too late. He didn’t survive.” Again silence fell, and she cursed herself for a fool for telling him. But then she said hoarsely, “Thank you for saving me.”

A slight shrug, barely a movement at all. As if her gratitude were harder to endure than her hatred and reticence. “I am bound by an unbreakable blood oath to my Queen, so I had no choice but to ensure you didn’t die.” A bit of that earlier heaviness settled in her veins again. “But,” he went on, “I would not have left anyone to a fate at the hands of the skinwalkers.”

“A warning would have been nice.”

“I said they were on the loose—weeks ago. But even if I’d warned you today, you would not have listened.”

It was true. She shivered again, this time so violently that her body shifted back, a flash of light and pain. If she’d thought she was cold in her Fae body, it was nothing compared to the cold of being human again.

“What was the trigger when you shifted earlier?” he asked, as if this moment were a reprieve from the real world, where the freezing storm and the surging river could muffle their words from the gods. She rubbed at her arms, desperate for any kind of warmth.

“It was nothing.” His silence demanded information for information—a fair trade. She sighed. “Let’s just say it was fear and necessity and impressively deep-rooted survival instincts.”

“You didn’t lose control immediately upon shifting. When you finally used your magic, your clothes didn’t burn; neither did your hair. And the daggers didn’t melt.” As if just now remembering that she still had them, he swiped them from her.

He was right. The magic hadn’t swarmed her the moment she’d shifted, and even in the explosion that had spread out in every direction, she’d had enough control to preserve herself. Not a single hair had burned.

“Why was it different this time?” he pressed.

“Because I didn’t want you to die to save me,” she admitted.

“Would you have shifted to save yourself?”

“Your opinion of me is pretty much identical to my own, so you know the answer.”

He was quiet for long enough that she wondered if he was piecing the bits of her together. “You’re not leaving,” Rowan said at last, arms crossed. “I’m not letting you off double duty in the kitchens, but you’re not leaving.”

“Why?”

He unfastened his cloak. “Because I said so, that’s why.” And she might have told him it was the worst gods-damned reason she had ever heard, and that he was an arrogant prick, had he not tossed her his cloak—dry and warm. Then he dropped his jacket in her lap, too.