“You were failing,” he growls, his nostrils flaring.
“What do you want with me?” I cling to my annoyance. I’m much more comfortable with this animosity between us than I am with those . . . other feelings he inspires. “Are you here to help or just to put me down?”
He folds his arms. “Fine. Show me what you can do. And none of that handful of darkness nonsense. Impress me.” When I turn up my palms to signal that I don’t know how to do anything impressive, he huffs. “The room is half shadow. There’s plenty to work with here. Stop overthinking it and just show me.”
Stepping away from the light, I focus and try to disappear, managing only to make my fingers fade in and out of existence. But I feel it—I always feel it when he’s close—the power just simmering in my blood, begging to burst free. “Tell me how.”
“You’re fighting it. Just let it come.”
I stare at my hand and try . . . not to try. When the darkness flickers again, I growl in frustration. “I think I might actually be getting worse.”
“I have an idea,” he says, looking out the window. “Follow me.”
Without turning back, he heads outside—not toward the front of the house where Pretha and I enter every day, but toward a back door I’ve never seen used.
I follow him out and across a furnished patio, down a dimly lit alley, and around a few buildings. When he finally stops, we’re in a massive cemetery. The evening is clear and the rows of burial plots are beautiful, if a little morbid. “Why here?” I ask.
Finn pulls his attention away from a circling flock of ravens and arches a brow at me. “You tell me.”
Because I feel most comfortable outside. Because the impending darkness of night always makes me feel inexplicably more confident. “The night feeds my magic, doesn’t it?”
He shrugs. “You could say that. What were you feeling the times you successfully tapped into your power before?”
“Anger? Desperation? I don’t know.” I bite my lip and look up at him through my lashes. I hate feeling like a fool. “Can you use anger to make magic?”
He shrugs. “Sure. It’s a weaker emotion, but it’s a functional catalyst for less significant magic. But anger won’t be enough to access the full depths of your powers.”
I roll my eyes. “I suppose you’re going to tell me for that I need love?”
His silver eyes light up, and I’m shocked to see him crack a smile. It might be the first time I’ve seen that smile when he wasn’t mocking me. He’s . . . stunning. I don’t want to notice, but those sharp cheekbones and mesmerizing eyes, the full lips that part just so when he’s watching me. Well, I can’t imagine that anyone with healthy eyesight would fail to notice Finn’s beauty.
“You might say that wielding full magical power feels a little like love,” he says. “But it’s more like . . .” Closing his eyes, he wiggles his fingers and takes a deep breath. “It feels more like hope.”
“Then I’m doomed.”
He opens his eyes and rocks back on his heels, studying me. “How so?”
I shake my head. “I don’t hope. It’s a waste of time. Dangerous, even.”
He tilts his head to the side. “You’re wrong about that. What’s truly dangerous is not having hope.”
I blow out a breath. “What if there’s nothing to hope for?”
His lips twitch, and that mocking smile is back. “Are you lying to yourself or just to me?”
“I’m not lying.”
He chuckles. The ass is laughing at me. “You live in that palace, searching for the Unseelie relics and holding your own with that two-faced court. You come here and train your heart out. Why do you do it all?”
“To save my sister.”
He turns both palms up as if to say There you go.
“It’s not the same. I’m acting logically, not desperately.”
“Who says hope has to be desperate?” He steps forward and takes my hand, and that undeniable connection between us snaps into place as the evening sky darkens and fills with stars.
I gasp. The darkness soothes my ragged edges and cools my anxiety even as I realize it’s not the whole night sky, but only a bubble around us. “You made it dark,” I say. “It’s beautiful.”
“It’s inside you,” he says softly, almost sadly. “This isn’t my power you’re seeing here. It’s yours. I’m merely a conduit, a tool to open the door, since you keep getting in your own damn way.”
I reach my free hand up, and it blends with the darkness. As I fade into the night, as I become the darkness, I know I control it.
“Do you feel it?” Finn asks, pulling my attention back to him. His eyes scan my face again, as if he’s looking for a secret. And I do feel it. Every brush of those silver eyes feels like an intimate touch. When he speaks again, his voice is lower, huskier. “Do you feel the potential humming in your blood?”