Chapter 68
Lessa was wearing a pretty bracelet of polished silver, which consisted of many rings linked together in a precise manner. When Helen inquired after the new piece of jewelry, the proper-mannered girl had admitted that her father had forced her to wear it.
"What do you mean?" asked Anice, who was looking at the bracelet with shining eyes. "It’s so pretty. Why would he have to force you? If you don’t want it, give it to me."
"It’s the same with you," she sighed, holding up her wrist so that the metal caught the sunlight in an attractive manner. "Truthfully, Mother caught me practicing magic a few days ago. When I woke up today my papa gave this to me and forbade me from taking it off."
"What do you mean, same with me?"
"You know, to keep my energies stable."
"Hold on. You can do magic? Since when?"
"Well, the only time I actually tried to use a spell, I almost drowned myself. That’s why Papa made me wear this."
That bracelet’s just like mine.
Hearing the girl’s words, Alistar’s curiosity was roused to the extent that he completely overlooked the discomfort that usually came with conversing with the girls, especially Lessa, who was intimidatingly sweet and also looked very similar to Kaila. Slipping away from Jaden and Woods’s rematch, he walked over to his cousin and quickly joined in on the conversation.
"You tried to use magic?" he asked, eyes wide with anticipation. "What sort of spell did you try to use? How did it go? Did you feel sick after?"
"I..." began the girl, who looked taken aback by his sudden straightforwardness. "I tried to fill a cup with water from the air—there’s water in the air, you know—but I was near the pond in our yard and too much gathered around my hand, and then around my face. It just kept moving toward my head for some reason, I don’t know why. If my papa hadn’t run out and stopped it, then it could have been bad."