The boy narrowed his gaze. “Youhave black scales.”
I grinned. “We are both unique.”
“Do you hurt all the time too?”
My chest squeezed. “No, darling. I don’t hurt. Not in the same way as you.”
His father made room so I could sit on the bed by his son’s head.
I placed a hand on the boy’s head and winced at the chill. “What is your name?”
“Owu,” rasped the little demon.
“Nice to meet you, Owu. Do you know that I am not just a demon?”
His eyes widened. “What else are you? Vissimo?”
I could only imagine how that would go. The bloodthirsty quality of a demon combined with a Vissimo’s need to drink blood—and the fangs to do so.
“A magus,” I replied. “And that means that my magic might sting. Because magus and demon powers don’t like one another.”
“Does that mean you don’t like yourself?” he asked.
His father and the yellow gasped, but I grinned again. “That’s too confronting to answer at our first meeting. Perhaps I’ll tell you another time. Your job is to lie still. Can you do that?”
“That’sallI do.”
I released my magus power through my palm and over his head. The boy blinked once from the sting that had made grown demons wince and physically pull away. Owu knew too much of pain.
My voice floated through the room. “The boy’s mother is needed.”
“She’s working,” said the red.
“If she is not here, this will fail.”
He deliberated. “Okay, I’ll go.”
“Not you.” I glanced at the yellow. “Get her. She is sewing in the factory across the lane.”
The red gripped his son’s hand. “Please be discreet. She’ll lose her job if they find her gone.”
If this worked, she wouldn’t need that job anymore. “There are worse things to lose.”
Owu’s father nodded.
My favorite yellow left, and I entered more deeply into my divination magic. I’d use my demon power for the healing, I assumed, but magus powerwasa healing force… and also ahealing force that sought greater understanding. Right now, my magus power wished to understand the mess that was Owu’s smoke and scales.
Why two colors? Why had the powers of his mother and father never merged in this boy? Half yellow, half red, and one half of him was too weak to withstand the rest.
He needed to either become one of the colors, or merge into a different color completely. But how to achieve that?
“The answer is here,” I said.
If there was a reply from Owu’s father, then I did not hear from so deep in the abyss. My sister would understand this tangle in minutes. Tangles had always been the specialty of her peculiar magical outlet.
Then again, my magic was just different to hers. I was a divination affinity, so Ifeltthe disharmony in this body and soul. I sensed through my connection to life and death that the levels of him: soul, destiny, heart, and smoke were out of sync. He had the heart of a yellow. The soul of a red. My demon power told me that his smoke was neither yellow nor red. And his destiny… I sucked in a breath.
Owu’s destiny was to begreat.Treasured. Loyal. Unbreakable.
