"Erian and Llor-" She had to reach them! She had to-
"You have to do this for them!"
Yes. Yes, she did.
He was right.
She'd called this monster; she had to stop it. Turning, she stumbled down the steps toward the roiling earth. Acting on instinct, she knelt on the last step and thrust her hands into the shifting sand. You will not hurt them. You will STOP.
She felt the earth kraken shudder and recoil-its presence was overwhelming, like falling into a bottomless lake, murky water all around you, clingy mud beneath your bare feet. She felt its hostility crawling over her skin, and then she felt its curiosity.
"Fill it with yourself," Ven said behind her. "Your strength."
"Your thoughts," the headmistress added. "Your emotions. Your fear. Your love."
Go, she told it. Into the command, she shoved all her fear and love for her children, every shred of hope she had for them and their future, every wish for their happiness, every memory of late-night worrying while one of them lay sick beside her, every time she'd patched a scrape, every tear she'd kissed away, every tear she'd caused, saying stop, don't do that, no!
It withdrew. Curling its tentacles with it, it sank into the soil. The ground heaved as it departed, and Naelin kept her mind in the sand and stone beneath until the feel of the kraken vanished like a storm cloud dispersing in the wind.
Shaking, she sank against the stairs, and then she heaved herself up and pushed past the masters and the students-up to where she'd left her children. She burst into the room.
"Mama!" Launching himself across the room, Llor threw his small, quivering body at her. Erian followed. Her face was streaked with tears, and her hair was matted on her cheek. Naelin gathered them both in her arms.
"I'm sorry," she said into their hair. "I'm so sorry."
"You saved them," a voice said behind her-Ven. "You sent it away. You, alone and untrained."
Muffled, she said without looking at him, "I also called it. It was my fault." You told me to, she wanted to say. It was his fault too, pushing her to do what she didn't want to do, what her instincts told her was too dangerous. But she could pin her anger on him only for a moment before it turned back to herself. She was the one who had summoned more than a single, weak spirit. She'd endangered everyone.
"Think what you could accomplish with training!"
She held Erian and Llor tighter, breathed them in, felt their own breath in their warm bodies as they shook against her, silently crying, still scared. "You can't train me. I'm a danger. To them. To everyone."
"Next time, it might come on its own. Or another like it. Don't you want to know how to keep your children safe always? Don't you want to keep all the children safe? As a trained heir, you could do that. As queen, you could do more." The hope in his voice, the belief in her, was heady.
"You're trying to manipulate me."
"Yes. Is it working?"
She stroked her children's hair and felt as if her heart were shattering into a thousand shards. She couldn't risk them living through what she'd lived through, watching their mother draw too-powerful spirits, listening to her die. But was it already too late?
"She can't be trained here," the headmistress said.
Ven's head shot up. "But she-"
"You have to take her to the queen. She's the only one with enough power to handle things if Naelin summons spirits she can't control."
"This isn't the time-"
The headmistress cut him off. "It is precisely the time. There is, in fact, no time to waste. She needs the queen . . . and the queen needs her."
Slowly, Ven nodded.
Yes, we need the queen, Naelin thought. The queen could keep the kraken from ever coming back. She had power over all the spirits. Maybe she could command them to forget me. She could order them to leave me and my children alone, forever.
Pulling back from Erian and Llor, Naelin caressed her daughter's cheek, pushing her hair back behind her ear. She smiled at both of them, a trembly smile but the best she could do. "We're going to the palace. Isn't that exciting? You'll need to be very, very good."
"I don't want to!" Llor wailed.
"The queen will help us." She patted his back as he wrapped his arms around her neck. "She'll keep us all safe. From the spirits. From me." She took a deep breath. "I seem to be . . . more than a hedgewitch." There was no hiding from that fact. Ven was right. She knew full well that spirits like that didn't come to a weak, immature power. Whatever was in her . . . it was big, bigger perhaps than her mother's power had been. Scarier. But if the queen could convince the spirits to ignore the power they'd seen in her . . .