Chapter 1
Quinn
Iwasn’twaitingforDoctor Oz anymore, or blaming Miss Q. This was my reality now… maybe a second chance. And I wanted to experience every bit of it.
The Architect wouldn’t decide my fate.
Tentatively, I reached forward and plucked a single coin out of the pile now sitting on my desk. Before I could talk myself out of it, I let my Majekah rush forward. The coin dissolved into chunks of gold, bits of metal, and some gray powder. A small black shape zoomed out of the pile and buzzed around my head twice before I lost track of it.
I sighed.
This was getting ridiculous.
I turned a page in Rowan’s magic book. The final colors of sunset faded into the night, leaving my room too dark to read. Fortunately, books made of scrawl glowed on their own, and each gray page blurred with the speed of my search. Counting money must be too basic to include. I leaned back in my chair and wrinkled my nose.
Nothing worked like it used to. I couldn’t even turn the lights on. Electricity, energy as I knew it, was now magic, raw power I couldn’t figure out how to channel.
I bit my lower lip. The past few months, real or Miss Q’s delusion, had changed me. Instead of living in fear of being different, I’d done whatever I wanted, no matter what anyone thought.
Honestly, it hadn’t always worked out, but did it really matter?
Not just because I might wake up any minute, but because the consequences weren’t catastrophic.
I opened my pocket-void and pulled out a small bag to put the remains of the coins into.
My first few days were a masterclass in bad manners. Accidental lap-sitting, too much eye contact, and telling the dangerously good-looking commander at the gym to take off his shirt. Rowan, the mountain of an elemental mage who’d made me lose control on horseback, and I had something.
Something we shouldn’t. He wasunder contract.
I sighed, struggling to regret our moment, stupid, horny virgin that I was. I scrubbed a hand over my face.
Cayden was the opposite. He didn’t make my pulse spike or my brain short-circuit. He was calm, grounded. He listened. I’d toyed with Cayden and somehow gained a best friend.
But being nice to Brody got me a stalker. People were weird.
My dad told me over and over that I couldn’t control others. He taught me to change myself to keep the peace. He’d been right. I can’t control other people. But he’d also been wrong: I didn’t need to change myself.
I was out! A he-turned-she.
Some people treated me differently. I got a lot more waves, but none of the people who encouraged me to hide my gender said a thing.
I scrubbed my face again, only to feel grit on my fingers from the destroyed coin.
If I were being honest with myself, I wanted my gender reveal to change how three specific people thought of me.
But Rowan was with Angela. Cayden dodged my kiss. And I’d have to stop avoiding Ezra to figure out what was going on there.
There’s nothing like getting turned down by my own subconscious, right, Miss Q?
I took a deep breath.
I was doing it again. When things didn’t go my way, I just assumed all of this was a delusion and I was still on the operating table. But when things did go my way, I found myself happier here than I’d ever been in my old life.
I couldn’t just exist until I woke up anymore. I needed to know what was real and what wasn’t, and that started with getting enough freedom to at least figure out my magic and not spend hours carting books around and oiling tack.
Which brought me back to the stupid bag of gold I couldn’t figure out how to count.
What was I supposed to do with it? I couldn’t exactly take it to a bank. Maybe I could hire someone to count it. Did this world have accountants?
