Kassandra takes a seat on the northern bench that abuts the ivy-covered wall. I stand beside her. Her eyes flick up to the top of the walls that surround us, where Illusion guards with bows across their backs patrol the area. I pull out the novel Kassandra requested and hand it to her. She sets down her umbrella and undoes the leather strap.
“I used to come here as a child,” she whispers, eyes on the page before her. “I figured the best place to hide from Dominik would be right under his nose. Many guards will remember this.”
She doesn’t exaggerate.
Halfway up the ivy-covered wall at our backs is the balcony off Dominik’s bedroom.
My mistress reads for a few minutes, tugging the plane in bits and pieces toward her. She layers its power along the back of her white-gloved hand. I reach for my genius, coaxing it, explain to the thing what will happen, what is needed. It flaps uncontrollably, its blackened wings heavy and thick.
We should’ve practiced with the powder in our veins, but there was no time and not enough powder. I extend my awareness to the plane around me, the lush, vibrating energy. The garden hums with life, with strain, as branches are clipped, seeds planted, weeds removed, trees isolated from their root system in individual mounds of soil, carved for the aesthetic of control. It is bursting with life that screams at its confines, and I can sense the ivy sucking the moisture from the brick behind me.
I extend my genius toward it, wishing to say hello.
The plant recoils, disgusted. The rejection weighs down my heart with oil.
“It’s time,” Kassandra mutters, resting her gloved hand, pulsing with power, on the seat beside her. I lean forward, my fingers brushing hers.
“I’m here,” I say.
She takes a breath, eyes never leaving the open book in her lap. Yet her attention distends, a bubble of Illusion magic snapping around me, strong and bright. The black powder is working to boost her genius. Others will see her attendant standing in the shadows behind her—but I will be above.
“Good luck,” she whispers, then swallows. “And Avery? I—”
I do not give her time to say goodbye.
Instead, I reach forward, my genius barreling down my arm, sparking against the plane, and I grip her hand. With every ounce of strength I have, I clutch her, our geniuses colliding, slipping over each other like blood, like oil, like the pain I carry in my ribs, an anguish that is all my own, that was wedged there by her, from her, a darkness that did not originate with either of us, a knowing that only we share, a furious, desperate, weeping desire to be good, to fail and try again, over and over—a stumbling through time and life, together.
Magic sparks between our palms, tunneling into the plane, a darkened mass of teeth and nails and pulsing murder, and I dig claws into it, heaving it toward me as she shoves.
Suddenly I am afraid.
In the seconds I have left, I brush my free hand against her ribs. A final goodbye.
Kassandra stiffens, but it is too late.
The mutilated magic descends upon me, and chunk by chunk, piece by piece, it tears me apart.
Familiar sensations rush through my hair, my stomach, my legs as they melt away, my existence woven into the plane itself. As Ilace up and up and up, the garden falling away from me, something sticks to my side, something like a chipped diamond wedged into me, a painful pinching when I try to breathe.
So I don’t breathe.
I don’t speak, not as a scream slams against my teeth, cutting my tongue, as the mangled magic ribbons my body back into existence and I collapse, wheezing, in the shadow of the balcony. Panting, I press myself against the wall. I scan the patrolling guards. A foolish decision to do this during the day, but we refused to go another night of breaking.
Birds chirp in the garden below.
Someone turns a page.
I blink and the book is before me, my gloved hands gripping its binding as my genius—like a slinking silver cat—circles my ankles, its tail flicking an Illusion into the air. I blink, and a part of me is crouched by the balcony banister, rolling a silver ball of magic before the glass doors, another wall of Illusion to hide the brunette faerie, strong and muscular, sensitive and soft, and I hate that I admire her. I shake my head, once again pressed to the brick and glass doors, a faint shimmer of Illusion magic blocking me from the view of the guards.
You idiot!Kassandra hisses in my mind.Why did you do that?
My lady?
You took a piece of me with you!
How?
The fuck if I know! But I can’t be in three places at once. My head—
