Confusion followed by interest chased through my senses.
"How is that possible? She has zero background with magic," Travis said. "Until now, she's blundered through with dumb luck."
Breandan ignored him, his face coming closer. "You should know we like a challenge. You've just made us even more eager to break your little shell."
"What will emerge from the chrysalis?" Baran asked, his fingers trailing over my cheek. "A beautiful butterfly or a plain insect?"
If he kept touching me, he was going to find out.
A dull sensation registered where he was touching me. I almost dismissed it until I felt the ghostly touch of Breandan's hands, faint, but there nonetheless.
The stone prison was weakening, I realized.
How? What changed?
This time instead of trying to "see" what held me prisoner, I focused on feeling the magic.
Every time before when I'd tried to undo a working, I'd envisioned the magic as threads or a web. Not the case this time. Every time I tried, the mental image slid away. No matter how much I grasped for it, it refused to solidify.
Frustration hummed through me.
Settle,the same odd knowledge from before told me. I was looking for something that wasn't there, inflicting my own perception on reality. With power of this nature, that wouldn't work.
I had to be willing to see what was there, versus what I wanted.
No easy task. Humans constantly evaluated the world through their own lens. It was second nature. Everything we experienced or learned, every emotion, all of it went into shaping the world as we perceived it.
It was why it was impossible for two people to see the world in the exact same way.
There was beauty in that, but it also made my current task that much more difficult.
I centered myself, pushing away the external as I focused on the internal, suspecting that had been my problem before. I'd been looking for magic put on my outside, but it wasn't.
Callie had as good as said as much.
I did this to myself. That meant I could undo it.
Somehow.
It meant going back into that state where I'd found the void, something only slightly more worrisome than staying here and letting the twins continue poking at me.
Their first attempt failed, but eventually they'd find a way through and I'd lose my choices. Any life I had before would be gone.
Unless I somehow managed to kill them. A pair of creatures that were probably older than this country. Yeah, good luck with that.
With a deep breath, I let go of my sense of self, allowing myself to drift. Only this time, I made sure to stay put, ignoring the pull to wander and explore.
I held still.
Slowly, painfully so—it felt like entire universes could have been birthed and died in the time it took me to sink into the power.
It drifted closer, shy, yet eager to please as it danced just out of reach.
Understanding came with it, sluggish as I finally grasped what should have been obvious all along.
No wonder I'd found myself a human statue seconds after gulping the medusa. Power brimmed in my essence. A supernova whose explosiveness had nowhere to go.
As vampires went, I was young. No more than an infant compared to the titans around me.
