Yet again, Santiago was combat training me, as he did almost every day. To his credit, it had always taken a lot of patience to teach me anything because not only was I a slow learner, but I also had a short temper so I was always getting angry with myself at every little mistake.

Afton was out on some kind of small mission dealing with a few rogue newborns somewhere across the country, so instead one of the lower guards, Adrian, was being used as my punching bag. Adrian had a very similar height and build to Afton though, so it was like fighting a marginally less nerve-grinding version of him. Oh, and Adrian also had botanokinesis, which basically allowed him to manipulate plants, not that it was very useful in combat when fighting in a relatively plant-free room.

"We will go again for as long as it takes for you to get it right, Eli!" Santiago shouted exasperatedly.

"I'm trying, okay?" I snapped.

"Don't try, do. And begin!"

Currently, I was being taught how to evade a headlock successfully, but I'd be lying if I said it was going well at all. For some reason, I just couldn't quite get the move right and ended up missing every single damn time, which led to us spending hours repeating the same action again, and again, and again.

Adrian had his right arm wrapped tightly around my neck, but not quite tight enough to remove my head or anything. I mean, if he were to accidentally decapitate me, he knew he wouldn't be the only one without a head.

I gripped onto the arm around my neck with both of my hands and stepped back aggravatedly with my right foot, ready to hurl him into the ground.

"Now twist!" Santiago yelled from the sidelines.

I twisted my body around 180° as quickly as I could, but for some reason I couldn't get the shoulder movements quite right which led to me messing up yet again. This left Adrian still gripping onto my neck tightly and my fury getting the better of me.

Before I had the chance to comprehend my actions, I felt a strange burning sensation in my palms from where I was now gripping onto Adrian's hand. My anger was blurring most of my vision, but it didn't stop me from being able to see the searing white light seeping through my fingers. Adrian cried out in agony and suddenly his weight fell away from me.

The bright light dimmed down again and my vision began to return. I held up my hands to examine them confusedly, but my curiosity was quickly cut short.

"My hand! Shit, where's my hand?!" Adrian yelled hysterically.

Jane and Alec, who were stood beside Santiago, simply stood there with their jaws dropped in astonishment. After a few eerily silent moments, Jane ended up being the first one to speak, yet her sentence completely shocked me.

"Eli disintegrated it," she spoke quietly, as if not believing her own words.

"I did what?" I whispered.

Adrian stared at me in horror. "Mistress, I needed that hand! Mistress?! Mistress!"

"What do you want me to do, Adrian?! WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO ABOUT IT?!" I screamed, before placing my head in my hands, completely traumatised, "Oh my god, oh my god, oh my-"

"Eli, snap out of it!" Santiago snapped, "This wasn't your fault, dude, try to calm down."

"Don't tell me to calm down! I just fucking disintegrated someone! You want me to calm down about that?! You expect me to calm down after I found out that my ability is to dissolve people into nothing?!"

"What about my hand-"

"What about your hand, Adrian?! What do you want me to do about it?! I'd gladly give it back to you but, in case you aren't aware, it's been yeeted away into another dimension, that is, if it still exists at all! So if you want your stupid ass hand back, fucking GROW ANOTHER ONE!"

"Eli," Santiago gripped my shoulders and pulled me into a reassuring hug, "this is not your fault, okay? You are not to blame for this. Don't beat yourself up over it, dude, we all know it was just an accident."

"What is happening in here?!"

Alec had arrived back at the training room with my mates, and apparently explained to them what happened. As soon as I noticed them, I threw myself into Marcus' arms since he was the first one I saw. He held me close to him and shushed me gently as I gripped onto him and dry sobbed into his chest, letting out all of my emotions at once.

"It is okay, tesoro, don't cry, sei al sicuro," he murmured quietly.

"Santiago, take dear Adrian here to Theodore but do return straight afterwards," Aro sternly instructed.

Without so much as another word, Santiago and Adrian both dashed out of the room as quickly as possible so as to give us some space. Caius hugged me from behind, pressing gentle kisses to the top of my head and purring to calm my nerves. I was still shaking, shivering from my absolute trauma.

"I didn't mean to," I cried.

"I know, piccola, I know, hush now," he whispered delicately in my ear.

I took an unnecessarily deep breath and stood up straight again, attempting to ignore my slightly quivered breath. Aro traced my cheekbone with his thumb and softly kissed my forehead.

"Please explain to us what happened, cara mia," Aro said.

"I-I was training as usual, I kept getting the same move wrong, I got angry and then this white light came from my hands, and Adrian's hand was gone," I tried to explain as calmly as possible but I was too flustered to speak in sentences that made sense.

"Were you witness to this?" Caius asked the twins calmly so as not to stress me out further.

Jane nodded. "The light Mistress Eliana was referring to was not a light per se. Instead resembled a dust of sorts, like Alec's ability but more forceful," she explained.

"I see. Eliana, il mio amore, are you able to use this gift at will?" Aro questioned.

I gazed down at my hands with a frown. "Um, I don't think so."

"I have an idea, if you will allow me, Master," Alec offered.

Aro took a step back to give me space for whatever it was that Alec had planned, just in case it wasn't safe. He himself also stood back a few feet for his own protection if something were to happen. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Santiago slip back into the room.

"When I first discovered my gift, it was in a very similar state to yours, but maybe a little weaker." he explained. "This is how I learnt to develop and control my gift, but I need you to focus."

I nodded my head while everyone in the room took another step back in anticipation.

"Imagine your gift physically. Imagine the shape, the texture, the colour, the feel. I need you to picture it in your head as vividly as possible. Now imagine it growing and moving, will it to do what you want it to do. You are its Master, you have control."

I closed my eyes and imagined the bright white colour in my head, the burning sensation it brought to my palms, the tingling feeling it sent through every inch of my body.

Opening my eyes again, from my fingertips seeped a brilliant white dust. It glowed breathtakingly like a galaxy filled with millions of stars as it majestically swirled and spiralled in front of me. It was beautiful, it was so beautiful.

"Magnifico," Aro whispered from a few feet away as he edged closer with curiosity.

Panicking at Aro's close proximity and losing my focus once more, the dust fell to the ground as if suddenly affected by gravity. After making contact with the ground for a few seconds, the miniscule particles seemed to dim out and disappear as if they never existed, as if they were never created.

I glanced over at Aro. "Geez, don't do that, don't come so close, I don't want to hurt you."

He nodded in guilt-ridden understanding but still sent me a tight smile. Alec, however, was absolutely gobsmacked while he stared at me widely as if I was some kind of alien or something.

"Wow. I have never seen that much control in a gift before," he spoke, fascinated.

"I have an idea," Caius said, "bring in Idris from the dungeons."

"Idris? Who's Idris?" I asked.

"Tesoro, Idris has been found guilty for a series of inconspicuous deaths across Spain, where he would not only drain his victims but also pull them apart limb-for-limb and leave them for the police to find," Marcus explained. "The victims were very often children, and I would prefer not to go into details about the atrocities he committed…"

"Okay…and what's that asshole got to do with this?"

My question was answered for me when the man was brought into the room, restrained by two of the lower guards. He had steel cuffs around his hands but still continued to thrash around madly and yell something about Satan.

"Oh, and did we mention that he is religious?" Caius casually called over the sound of Idris' disturbing chanting.

"You will not get away from this!" Idris hissed before continuing to mutter goodness knows what over and over again.

I rolled my eyes. "Can someone shut this guy up please?"

Without another word, one of the guards restraining him pulled off his head with an ear-splitting creak and dropped it onto the floor. On the plus side, at least he was now quiet.

"So, why is he here?" I asked, lightly kicking his head with my foot.

"To test the capabilities of your ability," Caius replied now that the room was quiet again.

I watched as his head and body were both placed in the centre of the room. Usually I'd be feeling pretty nauseous about this, but for some reason I found myself unbothered by the vampire corpse in front of me.

"You are its Master, you have control," Alec reminded me from the corner where he was standing beside Jane.

After an unnecessarily sharp breath, I closed my eyes and repeated exactly what I did before, imagining the swirling mass of white dust spiralling through the air from my fingertips. Once my eyelids lifted again, I saw that the spirals were beginning to edge towards Idris yet they were difficult to control.

'You are its Master, you have control.'

I focused all of my attention on manipulating the smooth dust towards the goal. As it gradually itched closer, I found my arms almost shaking as I forced it to move forward.

At the final inch, the dust split off from individual spirals into one thick sheet which coated his entire body. The light was so bright but I refused to take my eyes off of the scene of this figure glowing in front of me. The burning in my palms was increasing but I paid little attention to that as the light suddenly dimmed once more.

The room was silent, completely silent. Not a trace of the man was left, as if he had never been there in the first place.

Aro hesitantly paced over to me from the side and whispered. "Fascinating, truly fascinating."

I turned around to Santiago. "How's Adrian?"

"He's doing fine, Mistress. Theo is looking into what he can do for him, but there may be a solution to his arm problem," Santiago informed me.

Aro pulled me into his arms tightly and kissed my forehead. "Alec?"

"Yes Master?" Alec obediently dashed to our side.

"You and Jane will be given responsibility over Eliana's ability training. You are to teach her to gain full control over her gift which should not take any longer than several months. Is that understood?"

"Yes Master."

"Good, you are all dismissed," he announced.

Just before Santiago had the chance to dart out, I tugged him back by the arm. He looked at me like I was insane as I ushered him over to the corner so we could speak in private. Once everyone was finally gone, I started talking.

"So, how's your relationship with Renata going? What stage are we at now?" I asked and wiggled my eyebrows.

He stared at me for a long second. "…er, how do you know?"

"I caught you two the other day with your tongue down her throat," I teased.

"What?! You were spying on us?!" he hissed.

"No you weirdo. Next time you want privacy, don't make out in corridors people use a lot. I don't know, use that corridor that leads to the kitchen or something, or get a room."

"We were keeping our thing a secret actually," he gritted his teeth.

"Well, either way, Aro was going to find out, and Marcus would know just by checking your bonds. Don't worry, I won't mention it, just consider yourself warned before you try any funny business with me," I warned and strolled back out of the door as if nothing happened, leaving him standing frozen in the corner.

⊱ ────── {.⋅ ✯ ⋅.} ────── ⊰

Author's note: And here's the big ability reveal. When I originally planned this chapter, I didn't expect it to be this dramatic aha. Basically, the reason it hurt Eleazar is because she has the ability to destroy vampires, and the reason he couldn't see anything was just for a little extra build-up and tension.

Anyway, not much to say this time around, thank you so much for reading, be sure to leave some feedback because I love to hear your thoughts, stay safe, and ily lots!