The implications sink in slowly, heavy as a rock in my gut. He’s hurt and angry. The glaring. Was someone he cared about killed that night?
“We don’t know what Sebastian is planning,” Wylder adds, cutting off my thoughts. “But we do know what happened the last time, and we’re pretty sure he’ll use you to try again.”
It’s nothing Sebastian hasn’t alluded to, but obviously from a different perspective. And maybe it’s no different from the first time when it involved my mother.
Sebastian believes there’s danger from the rifts, and the coven doesn’t support him or his theories and wants to shut him down.
“I’ll be careful,” I say, unsure what else to offer.
I won’t be a puppet to Sebastian, but that goes double for Laurel and the witches of the Emberwood coven. It makes it even more critical that I get a hold of my magic so I can stand on my own and make my own decisions.
I need to learn, get stronger, and protect myself.
Brushing myself off, I stretch my neck out and get ready to focus. “Okay, one personal shield bubble coming up.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Destiny Sphere hums around me, its crystalline walls refracting light into a thousand dancing prisms. I stand at the center, feet planted on the polished marble, my stance widened to absorb my weight in case I get dizzy like last time, my hands hanging loosely at my sides.
Dr. Thorne assures me I should be good. Although, I don’t think he’s totally confident because he slotted me in at the end of the session this week, letting everyone go before me, so they could leave.
No need to scare the townsfolk, I suppose.
“Ready, Miss Hallowind?”
I nod, my throat too tight for words.
The first time he removed a layer of my magical onion, I woke up hours later with Wylder hovering and my body feeling like it had been turned inside out. This time, I know what’s coming. I’ve been preparing for a week—training, meditating, grounding myself, learning how to let my affinity flow through me instead of fighting it.
“Here we go.” I hear the tension in the man’s voice and try to haul air into my lead lungs.
The magical seal blocking my powers cracks. A surge of energy floods through me.
It’s not a trickle. Not a stream. It’s a full-on tidal wave.
My knees shake, but I lock them, forcing myself to remain upright. The magic rushes through my veins like liquid starlight, hot and brilliant and vast. It fills every cell, every nerve ending. Where before it felt foreign and like I was being invaded by a never-ending rush of nettles, now it settles into me with a rightness that makes my chest ache.
This is mine. This has always been mine.
I breathe through it, using one of Wylder’s tricks to visualize roots extending from my feet to anchor me to the earth below. The energy spirals through my core, burning a path through my body until it dissipates, and I feel the coolness of the marble floor beneath my feet.
The Destiny Sphere absorbs the excess, its crystalline structure lighting up like a constellation of sigils all around me.
When the surge finally eases, I’m still standing.
“Well done, Miss Hallowind.” Dr. Thorne rounds the edge of his viewing wall to face me, his silver eyes assessing. “How do you feel?”
I flex my fingers. Magic sits beneath my skin like a second heartbeat, strong and steady. “Good. Really good.”
“No dizziness? Nausea?”
“Nope. Nothing.”
He makes a note on his ever-present tablet. “Wonderful. Your integration speed is impressive. Given that so much power has been bottled up for so long, your system is handling the reintegration much faster than I expected. We’ll monitor for any delayed reactions, but this is very promising.”
Pride swells in my chest. A week ago, I couldn’t manage a personal shield and was Blackout Betty when he removed a layer of the block holding back my powers. Now I’m standing upright,have another layer gone, and there’s power thrumming through me like I was born to it.
Which, I suppose, I was.
