“—and besides, everyone will think you forced me to help.”
Standing up tall, I lay the dropper on the table and stretch out my back, my muscles sore from being hunched over. “What are you talking about?”
Starla heaves out a sigh as I grab the glass slide and bring it over to my magnifier, setting it in place. “If we’re caught with the royal blood and they threaten to kill us.”
Clicking the first glass disc into its slot, I look up at my grim partner. “First, no one is going to kill us because we have the prince—the king’s—blood. I’m not sure if you are aware, but I happen to have a pretty good relationship with him.” Even if he’s currently falling apart.
Leaning forward, I close one eye and peer down the scope of the magnifier. What I don’t tell Starla is that if we are going to get in trouble foranything,it’s going to be the fact that I’m experimenting with blood so I can find how it interacts with magic. This small test is the first step in determining where to go next, if I can get Nox to cooperate with me.
It takes another two dials clicked into place before I can see the cells of the blood drops.
“Are you ready to take notes?” I call, my mouth quirking when she lets out another signature sigh.
“Of course.”
“Red blood cells look healthy. Round in shape with a small dark blue nucleus. Indicative of mage blood. The same asthey looked before merging.” Adding another glass disc to the magnification, I adjust the knobs at the side to enhance the enlarged image. “Magnification up to three discs.” The sound of Starla’s scribbling fills the otherwise quiet atmosphere of my workshop.
Walking in this morning had partially untangled the knot of stress wound tightly in my chest. Between prepping Cass, Daje, and Elora’s mission to the Fae Kingdom and the absolute havoc caused by the council for my family, this is the first time in weeks I’ve been able to come here, as Starla berated me for when I stopped by the orphanage on the way over.
Blinking, I lean back from the scope of the magnifier and slide the next disc into place. This had been the setting when I looked at the shifter blood samples. When I saw somethinglight upin Kai’s.
“At final magnification,” I tell Starla, stretching my neck before leaning back in. It takes a moment for me to clarify the image, and when I do, a small gasp parts my lips.
“What?” Starla asks, footsteps sounding as she moves closer.
“There islightin their blood,” I say quietly, my hands planted on the tabletop to keep them from shaking. “Just like the shifter king’s, but there ismoreof it.”
“Light? In blood?” Her incredulous voice mimics my own surprise. What I had seen in Kai’s blood had been no larger than the point of a pin. A barely there flash of light winking in and out. But now, looking at the sample of Nox and Cass’s blood, there aren’t just flashing dots of light butstreaksof them. Brilliant white flares, passing not just between the blood cells butthroughthem. Not something foreign but a part of the viscous liquid on a molecular level. The sheer amount of sparkling lights is nearly comparable to the number of blood cells present.
My mind sorts through different theories, but there is really only one answer I keep coming back to. This is magic. Magicpresent in the blood, a physical manifestation of the power roiling through Nox and Cass’s veins. It explains why I’ve never seen such a thing in my own blood, why my own didn’t affect the plants I tested on. But why was it present in Kai’s? Why had there been none in Tua’s? In Jahlee’s? While Kai’s sister didn’t have the power to shift, was that the cause for the absence of light in her blood? Or was it merely coincidence?Would I ever again get the chance to talk with her about it?
Groaning, I sit back in my chair and rub my eyes.
“What is it?” Starla asks, coming to stand at my side.
“I think the light is magic present in our blood.” Dropping my hands to my lap, I amend, “In mage blood.” Blood and magic experimentation is forbidden because of the warnings ancient mages had written in long since locked away tomes—ones I hope to find on my next trip to the archives. But by finding proof of magic in the blood, then there is no denying that, as mages, we arebornwith it. It may not manifest until around the age of eight, but the capability for that power has always been there.
Just as it has always beenabsentfor me.
Starla’s brows furrow as she taps her pen against her chin. “So if our magic is in our blood, is this why the plants we tested on before grew?”
“Yes,” I nod, staring absentmindedly at the magnifier. “And it explains why my previous experiments with using expelled magic didn’t work in the same way. When using magic to, let’s say, make a plant grow, there is intention behind it. A mage isn’t so muchgrowinga new flower by using magic to make it bigger or altering it in any way when spelling it to stay bloomed in perpetuity. But when blood is involved, the magic becomes something that the plant cellsfeedoff of. Consuming the magic differently.”
I quickly stand and walk towards the desk, ignoring the pang of sadness-laced rage that guts me when I spy some of Haylee’spapers. Pushing them out of the way, I grab my personal journal and flip to the page where I described what I had seen in the leaves that I later realized included Haylee’s blood.
My finger drags beneath the neatly written text, and Starla, once more at my side, begins to read it out loud. “The cell walls are plump and bright green, the healthy chloroplasts moving within. Some decaying cells found among them. Attached to the healthy cells are red org— organ—”
“Organelle,” I supply.
“—organelles, of which the origin is unknown.”
I tap my finger on the page. The originisknown now. It had been the blood cells feeding the cells of the plant not with blood but with the magic that was woven within it. Leaning a hip against the desk, I fold my arms over my chest and ruminate on how this information might help Nox. His blood is compatible with Cass’s at least, neither of their cells reacting negatively to the other. Could I infuse his blood with Nox’s via a cut? Similarly to how Kai had done with the toucan back in the Shifter Kingdom? I pinch my lips together as I think of that moment in the forest, the elated andproudlook on Kai’s face when my suggestion had worked. Then there was the disappointment that followed closely after when the same experiment—this time on a shifter woman stuck in her animal form—hadn’t worked. But the magic in Cass and Nox’s blood far exceeds what I had seen in Kai’s. If these flaring lights are supposed to be markers of the raw, wild magic of mages, then what thehellis it doing in the blood of a shifter? Except, hadn’t Tua said that Kai’s father tested fate with magic and blood? Icy awareness travels down my spine as I glance back at my notes. How thefuckhad Noa known about a blood and magic connection? And how hadheused it to alter Kai?
“It’s weird,” Starla says into the silence that’s lingered while I’ve been lost in my thoughts, and I jerk my head in surprise towards her, thinking I’ve spoken one of them out loud.
“What is?”
She looks down at the notes that she’s taken from today, the journal brand new. “The color of the magic in the blood. You would think it would be the same color as the magic they wield. Like King Nox’s magic is dark purple and black. Why isn’t the magic in the blood that same color?”
