Chapter 210: Revelation
MARGAUX
"We don’t know," Ophelia admitted. "Bindings weaken. They unravel. Sometimes another working interferes with them. Sometimes trauma breaks them." She studied me for a long moment. "Sometimes they simply reach the end of what they were designed to do."
Arania settled beside my shoulder, her tiny feet never quite touching me.
"Whatever caused it," she said, "you’re experiencing years of growth all at once."
I looked at her.
"Imagine teaching someone the alphabet," she continued, "then placing them inside the greatest library ever built before they’ve learned to form a sentence. Every book contains knowledge they could eventually understand, but nothing inside their mind has had time to organize itself."
I let out a slow breath.
"That explains... an alarming amount."
"It would," Ophelia agreed.
She leaned forward slightly.
"What have you managed to do since the binding broke?"
I searched my memory.
"Well, aside from seeing ghosts and taking their hands by doing favors, there was this light."
The room fell a little quieter.
"It came from my hands. I wasn’t trying to make it happen. Something attacked us, and I needed it to stop. The light just..." I shook my head. "It answered before I understood what I was doing."
Ophelia’s expression sharpened. Not with fear, but recognition.
"Spirit light."
She lifted one hand.
When she closed her eyes, a warm glow gathered above her palm. It started no larger than a candle flame before swelling into a sphere of soft amber radiance that bathed her fingers in gold. The light held steady without flickering, gentle enough to look harmless and bright enough to push the room’s shadows back toward the corners.
No one reacted at first.
Laurent was the first to look at me in surprise.
"You can do that?" the head healer asked, sounding more impressed than alarmed.
Ophelia smiled faintly.
"Not always."
She let the light drift between her fingers.
"This came after my pact. Before that I relied on simpler workings, just like everyone else. Most whisperers spend years learning the surface before they ever glimpse what’s beneath it."
The glow dissolved into the air without smoke or heat.
I watched the last flecks disappear.
"The light I produced..." I hesitated. "I used it on a spirit."
Ophelia looked at me expectantly.
"On Prim here actually. She was a wraith."
The word landed heavily.
"She was violent. Completely consumed by rage. When the light touched her..." I searched for language that came close to what I’d witnessed. "She changed. Not entirely, but enough that she remembered herself. She stopped trying to kill us."
Ophelia nodded slowly.
"That’s exactly what spirit light does."
She rested her elbows lightly on her knees.
"Spirits are shaped by whatever kept them from moving on. Grief. Hatred. Obsession. Regret. Those emotions build around the soul until they become impossible to separate."
She looked directly at me.
"Spirit light burns through those layers." Her voice softened. "It reaches the person trapped beneath them."
Silence settled over the room.
Then Ophelia continued.
"The danger is where that light comes from."
I already knew I wasn’t going to like the answer.
"It isn’t free."
She tapped two fingers lightly against the center of her chest.
"It draws directly from your spiritual energy which is your life force."
"My life force?" I repeated.
"Yes," She didn’t soften the truth. "A pact gives a whisperer another source to draw from. Without one, every use of spirit light costs you a piece of yourself."
I swallowed.
"So if I keep using it..."
"You could exhaust yourself."
I nodded once.
"I expected that."
Her gaze never left mine.
"If you push far enough..."
She let the silence linger for only a heartbeat.
"...you will die."
The words settled into my stomach like cold iron.
Beside me, Laurent released a slow breath through his nose. His fingers tightened around his untouched glass until the ice chimed faintly against the sides.
He’d been worried before.
Now I could almost feel him reconsidering every moment he’d watched me throw myself into danger.
Across the room, Arania landed lightly on the edge of the coffee table.
She folded her wings with neat, deliberate movements before looking between Ophelia and me.
"You should also be careful with how you fluant that spiritual energy. You need to seal it off before you get the attention of malevolent spirits or worse... demons."
The instant the word left her mouth, Prim erupted into frantic color.
Blue flashed into crimson before dissolving into brilliant green and back again so rapidly the colors blurred together. Her gelatinous form quivered, rising and collapsing in agitated waves.
I leaned forward. "I think she has something to say."
"I suspected she might," Ophelia replied, her attention fixed on Prim’s frantic display.
"Can you understand her?"
"Only if I ask yes-or-no questions."
I shifted toward Prim. "We worked out a system this morning."
I waited until the colors slowed enough for me to focus.
"The spirit I met in the library," I chose each word carefully. "The one who called himself Alpha Amine is the one that attacked you, right?"
She turned blue with no hesitation.
That did put me in some deep thoughts. If Amine was the one that attacked her... Why did the word demon set her off. I had to keep pushing with what I believed she had to be talking about.
"Is it Alpha Amine? Is he a demon?"
She turned blue again. The color flared brighter this time, almost electric.
"Was that what attacked you?"
Another brilliant pulse of blue came over.
The answer came so quickly that it almost felt like she was shouting.
"Oh my goddess," I inhaled sharply.
So did Laurent.
No one spoke for several long seconds. The room, so warm and welcoming moments earlier, suddenly felt much smaller. The sunlight still streamed through the windows. The lemonade still smelled faintly of citrus.
Neither detail did anything to chase away the chill that settled beneath my skin.
Both Ophelia and her Fae shared a look.