Heir of Deception

Chapter 40

Della breathed deeply before summoning her magic again. She was currently training with Aelin learning how to smother fires.

For whatever reason she found this exercise to be absolutely exhausting. Ice magic was pretty straightforward, shapes came naturally, daggers, shields and when she was feeling bold a sword. Yet wind was trickier. She was getting progressively better at sensing around herself, like her father had insisted, she could now tell the difference between a couch and a person. However as she learned the hard way her ability to selectively suck the air out of a room had lots of room for growth. Smothering fires was the compromise they all settled on rather than ripping the air out of some poor persons lungs. Although sometimes that poor person was herself and occasionally Aelin.

This progress happened much much slower than she would like. Which felt like a theme of her life here in Orynth.

She felt like she was just trudging slowly through growth and progress never reaching her goals when she wanted to much less when she needed to.

To her great embarrassment she had sobbed, again, this time in front of her father no less. Della just cried so much. She didn't want to cry she didn't want to be stuck in her fear or her self pity. Which then compounded to trying to hide it which turned into not dealing with it. Della felt like there was this disconnect between her head and her heart, she knew how she was supposed to behave but yet she couldn't emotionally get there.

It was infuriating.

However Rowan had given her an excellent father pep talk. Explaining again, that he loved her and supported her and how she wasn't obligated to be perfect. Telling her that she was taking all the right steps and that there was no rushing healing. Her father had shared that Aelin still had nightmares and was afraid of things. That he himself had nightmares from things that happened centuries ago. To her even greater embarrassment he told her that he was happy she felt safe around Fenrys. Which was definitely a not so subtle nod that he knew about her and Fenrys. 

The whole thing really was anticlimactic, he was not upset in the slightest which Della was not prepared for, especially given his overprotective tendencies. However, contrary to Fenrys's expectations her father did not also seem to encourage it. He was very nonchalant and neutral about the whole thing.  Perhaps too neutral but she'd decided to pay it no mind.

Della again swept her wind through the room carefully focusing it around the fire burning  in the center of the room.  It began to slowly die out.

"Good, good" Aelin remarked from beside her. " Remember steady is better than fast."

Della nodded thinking too hard to come up with a response. The fire still slowly dying out. Della fought the urge to increase the intensity of her magic and snuff it out. Typically when she did that she captured all the air in the room and it never felt good.

Finally the fire withered out to nothingness. "That was great Della! Keep going and I think this time next week we can work on you feeding the fire rather than putting it out."

Her and Aelin had developed an odd sort of friendship. The demi-fae was significantly younger than her which created a unique dynamic with her given she was mated to Rowan. Della considered her to be a sort of strange sister figure than a step mother figure. Della really did not dwell on the thought too much or it would weird her out.  They got along well and the female was hilarious and confident and made a point to be kind to Della when she really didn't have to.  It would forever astound her how kind Aelin was despite all that she had suffered. 

The two females parted ways in the family wing of the castle. Della to her own room and Aelin to whatever it was the queen's did.  Afterwards Della would go study with Remelle, who was not as bad as everyone said.