He didn’t realize he was crying until Lottie pulled back and wiped her thumb over his cheek.
The writhing of his magic calmed, and the pressure in his chest eased, just a little.
“I don’t understand,” August said.
“Could it be the tear?” she asked, glancing up at the darkness again.
He frowned and shook his head. It couldn’t be the tear itself. The woman in the castle had touched him, and there was no opening in the veil. There was onlyhim. Only the prickling in his fingers and the magic coursing through him.
A violent wave of whispers crashed over August. He stumbled back, heart hammering.
“No,” he pleaded, but they bore down on him, unrelenting. His knees buckled, and he dropped onto the hard-packed dirt road, his hands clasped over his ears.
“Stop!”
Memories tore through his mind in a vicious flash, none of them his own. The world was coming down on top of him.
Panic. Fear. Pain.
Their screams rang inside his head. The agony of a dozen deaths all at once. White hot fire ripped through his chest. Blinding agony cracked through his skull. Pressure closed around his throat.
He died again and again and again.
Felix’s voice pressed through the chaos, but he couldn’t grasp the words.
“Please,” August sobbed through the pain. “Leave me alone!”
He wished one of the deaths would finally stick, that his heart would just stop.
Hands dragged him upright, and when the world finally swam back into focus, he was flanked by Felix and Marlow, his arms over their shoulders. They led him toward a small barn on the outskirts of the city walls.
When they poured in through the large door, August shoved away from them, stumbling and collapsing to his knees.
“Auggie,” Felix started, a heaviness in his voice.
“Don’t,” August snapped. He folded forward, hands flat on the dirty barn floor.
Felix was only helping him because he needed his power. August didn’t want his sympathy.
He rolled onto his side, curling in on himself.
Lottie was on her side next to him a moment later. “It’s not real, Auggie,” she said. “Those aretheirdeaths, not yours.”
But it felt real. It feltsoreal. And it was worse than any of the times it had happened before.
“You’re stronger than the anchored. You can make them stop.”
He pulled in a trembling breath and shook his head as the agony and the whispers continued. She was wrong. He wasn’t stronger.
“Try,” she urged. “Find a way to lock them out.”
He closed his eyes and imagined a wall around himself, tall like the ones around Fallowmoor.
Stop, he commanded silently. The buzzing of his magic faded, and then, so did the anchored in his head.
When he looked at Lottie again, her edges were soft. Translucent. And when she tried to brush the hair out of his face, her hand went straight through. She gave him a sad smile, then sat up.
“What just happened?” Felix asked. He hovered in the barn’s massive doorway, silhouetted by the fading daylight.
