“She’s poisoning your mind, Cypress,” the woman said, drawing Vesper’s attention back to the argument. Bellamy finally noticed Cypress behind Ves, clinging to her like a lifepreserver.
“Just give me my daughter, you bitch!” Cypress’s mom yelled. Her body was tense and her hand gripped… Bellamy squinted. That looked like the same syringe they’d stuck her with. A blue liquid swirled inside it. Voices filled the air as everyone’s overlapping arguing continued.
“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Cypress yelled. Her hand left Vesper’s shirt and bunched around her ears as she yelled and cried. Dramatic, in Bellamy’s opinion, but she also hadn’t been paying attention to much of their fight.
The woman arguing with them took that as her opportunity to grab Cypress. She started for them, and Cypress screamed. Vesper’s fingers sparked, her magic twisting and moulding into a weapon, sparking more furiously with rage than Bellamy had ever seen before. Cedar struggled in her chair, metal scraping against the concrete as she tried to do anything to help. The air was suffocating with magic, the humid scents colliding viciously as everyone reached for what they had.
Then Vesper staggered. Bellamy hadn’t seen anything touch her as she watched in horror through the haze of yellow and white. The woman was too far away, and the man only had illusion magic creating a thick fog throughout the room. After one unstable step, Ves was down, and now it was Bellamy who was screaming, fighting with her chair. Her magic prickled her fingertips and exploded against the metal, burning hotter than she’d ever allowed it to before.
The metal snapped, and she leapt from her chair, immediately falling to her knees as a thick black liquid rushed over her feet and legs. Her Energy seeped out slowly, pulling itself from her body and leaving her feeling empty, her movements slow and difficult.
“No!”
“Stop her!”
“Someone take her out!”
“Cy, stop! Control it!”
“You useless child!”
“Please!”
Voices overlapped, begging and degrading. Fear laced through all of them. She could barely see Vesper anymore. Darkness fell over them. She’d never experienced an illusion so consuming before, so suffocating.
Then, the lights flickered overhead, dimming, and Bellamy saw it. Sawher, as the darkness poured through like rain, emitting from a wide-eyed and terrified Cypress. It dripped around her, thick and oozing like sludge from her pores. It wasn’t an illusion. It was a fucking storm.
Oh fuck, she’s a…
Bellamy couldn’t finish the thought before she was sucked back under.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
Cypress
Not good. Not good at all.
“No, no, no, no, no,” Cypress whispered. The noise had stopped. All of it. Her ears rang with the silence of the room. Even the energy crackling from the ceiling had quit its incessant, low-level popping. There was nothing but silence.
She’d felt a surge of energy—of heat—coursing through her sweat-drenched body. The room was stifling. Bodies hit the floor before she’d known what was happening. She’d just wanted it all to stop. But not like this. Never like this.
She didn’t want to open her eyes. To look at the destruction she’d caused. The death.
This was why her mom wanted her dead. She knew that, but she hadn’t thought Cedar had known too. She’d heard her—one voice louder in her ears than the rest. Cedar begging her to stop.
How long had she known?
Cypress took several deep breaths, trying to focus on the hard ground beneath her feet, the slickness in the air around her. She’d never learned to control her power. No Dampener ever did. Fear or loss of control took their lives before they made it that far. She was lucky to have been pulled away from her parents when shewas. Lucky that she’d been able to hide it from everyone. Until now.
“It usually doesn’t take this long,” her mother had said years ago. “But with my power, with your father’s power, there’s no way you’re magickless. Just dormant. For now.” Her mother had spit the word “magickless” like it was a stain, tarnished and tainting the world. Cypress had been six at the time, well beyond when magic should have manifested.
She was supposed to be an herbalist. This never would have happened if she had just been what she was supposed to be. She’d tried, in her lessons, to think of the magic growing through her, to feel the soil beneath her bare feet, to imagine the grass growing faster. Cedar had told her it would feel like vines pulsing through her veins. It wouldn’t hurt, she’d said. It would just feel right. Calming.
But her mom’s lessons hurt. When Cedar wasn’t there, it felt like thorns growing under her skin. Like her mom was ripping the magic out of her veins. It never stopped—not even when she’d cry and beg. Not until her mom would get a headache, an unexplainable migraine. Cypress hadn’t understood until much later thatshecaused those. Her power slowly leeched her mom’s magic away, causing physical symptoms.
But this didn’t feel like that had. It didn’t feel like Cedar described. It never had.
Dampening didn’t feel like vines. It felt like an overwhelming power surge coursing through her blood and into the marrow of her bones like molten lava.
