My magic started to surge in strange ways. To twist into something that didn’t light the forest with its usual warm glow. Something that instead pulled at the darkness itself, absorbingstray shadows and ultimately leaving me surrounded by an odd twilight haze.
I slowed for a heartbeat, circling among this strange haze, trying to get my bearings.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw an Order member lunging at Nova from behind. He caught her off-guard, swiping her arm with a small, jagged knife. As she grabbed her bleeding skin, he pressed his advantage and lunged for her throat.
I intercepted him, my blade striking him through the chest.
His blood splattered across both Nova and me, warm and copper-scented. She wiped the bulk of it from her face with the back of her hand, grimacing. Shadows lashed out from her body in automatic defense, the greatest concentration pouring out from around the slash wound on her arm.
I tried to guide my own Light magic into the wound. To heal her the way I’d done a dozen times or more.
But something went horribly wrong.
Instead of soothing her, my magic ended up latching onto her shadows like hooks, pulling them toward me. I felt her power flowing into mine, being absorbed, consumed. My vision briefly flared with a sickening violet hue. The moment was intoxicating and nauseating in equal measure.
I jerked back, severing our connection, but the damage was already done.
“…What was that?” Nova took a shaky step back, a flash of fear crossing her face. The look in her eyes was like a dagger to my chest.
There was no time to explain, no time to apologize. Movement caught the corner of my eye—another attacker closing in.
We went back to the battle at hand, fighting side by side despite the tension and uncertainty crackling between us.
After several minutes of brutal combat, the Order members began to retreat, melting back into the shadows as suddenly as they’d appeared.
“Retreating already?” Zayn called out, breathing hard. “Maybe they aren’t as confident as they?—”
“They aren’t retreating.” Orin’s voice cut through the clearing. He’d appeared at some point during the fight, moving with surprising stealth for a relatively fragile old man. “This is a trap.”
His hand shot out, pointing at Thalia.
His eyes went wide.
At first, I didn’t know what he was looking at. Then I noticed the ground where Thalia was standing—the strange symbols glowing faintly in the dirt, arranged in a perfect circle around her.
“Run!” Orin’s voice cracked with panic. “RUN!”
But she couldn’t move fast enough. Something seemed to be holding her feet in place. Maybe the same something that made the symbols in the dirt flare bright and violent a moment later.
“THALIA!”
Orin made his choice in the space between heartbeats.
He ran toward his daughter at full speed, throwing himself forward, shoving her out of the circle’s perimeter. He grabbed something from the ground—whatever was anchoring the magic—and attempted to fling it into the trees.
He was too slow.
The spell detonated with a flash of blinding power that sent shockwaves through the trees. His body was thrown no less than fifteen feet through the air before he struck a massive oak tree and tumbled down to the base of it.
He let out a painful groan and then went limp, his chest barely rising and falling.
“NO!” Thalia’s scream tore through the night.
Two Order members materialized from nowhere, blocking her path to her father. Nova raced toward her and cut one down immediately, but more were already appearing.
They were calm.
Organized.
