Stolen by Melissa de La Cruz Page A

like he was going to puke, which was just another way Wes could rationalize the positive side of having no watts for breakfast today.
    â€œSee,” Wes said, nudging Shakes. “Told you we’d make it.”
    â€œWhat he said,” Shakes muttered back.
    Wes smiled.
    But getting inside was one thing, and getting Eliza out was something else entirely.

Chapter 11
    H ER PARALYSIS MADE EVERYT HING harder—and Faix more exasperated.
    So Nat stood at the edge of the cliff, trying to shape the ether, to sculpt something from nothing, to use her power to control the void. She closed her eyes and tried to find the voice of her drakon. Its voice in her head had guided her all her life, and she needed to hear it now.
Where are you?
In her mind’s eye she saw the forests of the Blue, she explored the clouds and trees, the mountains and the gorges, and from there she traveled to the ruined Pacific, to Garbage Country, New Vegas, Ashes, and everywhere in between. She searched and she listened, hearing the buzz of a honeybee, the rush of river below, but she could not hear her drakon. Its voice had gone silent, resting somewhere underneath the earth, somewhere she would not be able to feel its pain.
    Imagine a bridge,
Faix had told her.
Build a wooden plank. The nothingness is as real as the stone you stand on. In Vallonis we see what cannot be seen.
    I need you,
she called to her drakon.
Can you hear me?
    Hear me, hear me,
came an echo. Nat startled. That wasn’t her voice but someone else’s she heard.
    Nat opened her eyes with a start. She had heard the voice earlier when she had crossed the gate of Afal.
    â€œDo not be distracted,” Faix scolded. “There is no voice. I hear nothing.”
Stop stalling,
he sent.
    Nat frowned. “I can’t do this. I don’t see anything.”
    Faix sighed. “I had hoped that since you were able to ride your drakon you would know a little more than you do.”
    â€œHow about you try to ride my drakon and then we’ll talk?”
    Enough,
he sent. The look he gave her was particularly piercing. Then he tried again. “The children of Vallonis begin when we are young. From the time we are three or four years of age, when we first sense our power, our lessons begin. We learn through games and play, we discover our power as naturally as a young child who learns to imitate the voices of her parents.”
    â€œIs there a point here?”
    â€œWhen we are older, we learn focus and concentration. Control doesn’t come from emotion, my father once told me. We have noticed that the uninitiated—people your world call marked—have discovered that strong emotions can access their powers, but it is not the correct way to do so. Emotions are a crude and unpredictable way to access one’s power. Emotion can be overwhelming, and ultimately destructive,” said Faix.
    Nat nodded. She knew from experience that Faix was right. She recalled the slave ships, how she had torn the mast and toppled the slave crates. She had lost control; she’d nearly sunk the boat and killed all of them. But here was the thing—she had enjoyed it. There was a thrill to giving into the rage and fury inside her.
    â€œOnce you lose your sense of self, you allow the corruption to take over. It happens to everyone.”
    She looked sharply at Faix, who sounded as if he was speaking from experience.
    Yes, I am,
he sent. But he did not elaborate. She only sensed a brief flash of grief, and then it was gone.
    You cannot let the darkness overcome the light.
    Faix continued, “In art, there is always emotion, but we cannot sculpt from emotion alone. If we did, our work would be chaotic; it would lack focus.”
    â€œI’m not an artist,” she said. And for good reason. Chaos was all she knew. When she was a prisoner at MacArthur Med, the doctors and her superior officers had told her to use her emotions, to let her hatred build. They’d