The shift happens suddenly, violent enough to snap the air between us. The blue-eyed scout’s hand flies to his head at the exact moment a sharp, ringing crack detonates inside my skull. The sound isn’t real, not in the world around me. It’s buried deep within, a piercing, bone-deep strike that feels as though someone reached straight into my mind and hit something vital. The force of it is so brutal I nearly vomit.
My knees buckle, slamming into the dirt as my palms claw at the ground, trying to anchor myself against the spinning world. Everything tilts, sways, collapses inward, as if the square itself is folding in on me. The pain ricochets through my skull in relentless waves, white-hot and blinding, stealing breath and thought all at once.
But even through that agony, I see him.
I see the way his features twist, his body curling inward just as mine does. I see him stumble, his balance shattering in perfect tandem with mine. It’s not just shared timing, it’s mirrored suffering, synchronized down to the heartbeat.
He isn’t just reacting to something.
He’s reactingwithme.
As though whatever invisible vice is crushing my mind has its grip around his too… tightening at the same exact moment.
The remaining scout hurries back, seizing his arm and dragging him backward, forcing a retreat. The tall one stumbles, clutching his head as though the sound is tearing himapart from the inside. His hood slips enough to reveal more of his face, shadows and sharp angles and those startling eyes that won’t look away.
He fights the pull for half a heartbeat.
Looks at me again, trulylooks, as though something inside him is being dragged toward me even as he retreats.
Then he’s gone, swallowed by the gray haze of the woods.
The ringing inside my skull bleeds into a dull roar, and I sink lower, breath shuddering as the last remnants of unrestrained magic ebb painfully from my limbs. The dirt beneath my palms is damp and cold. My vision swims. Every scar along my spine throbs as if lit from within.
Two scouts dead at my feet.
Two fled into the trees.
And the blue-eyed one, who should have ready to lunge in an instant, hesitated in ways that could get him killed.
The question is why?
The ringing finally begins to ebb, bleeding into a low shudder at the base of my skull. The ground is cool beneath my palms, but my skin feels fever-hot, as if the magic hadn’t fully settled, as if some part of it is still clawing beneath my ribs looking for a way out. My breath stumbles, uneven and sharp, and the world sways as I try to center myself again.
Liam drops to his knees beside me first, hands hovering without touching, worried, but cautious. Theo kneels on my other side, fingers grazing lightly along my sleeve to find where my arm is before anchoring there gently. Sebastian lingers only a breath behind them, chest heaving as he assesses what’s left of the square, his jaw tight enough to crack.
They’re all talking at once, my name from three different mouths, questions I can’t quite piece together, a tangle of panic building around me, but the only sound that reachesme clearly is the fading echo of that internal crack. It crawls through my mind like a shadow sinking down the spine.
I drag in a breath and force my head up.
The bodies.
The scorch marks.
The villagers staring at me like I’m the newest nightmare Shadeborne has sent.
And the blue-eyed scout’s face, that flash of something I can’t explain, still burned into the front of my thoughts.
A shiver coils through my spine.
Liam touches my shoulder, gentle but urgent. “Harper, just breathe, alright?”
I swallow hard, but the nausea of what I’ve done, what I’ve shown, rises fast.
“He knew,” I whisper, tasting iron on my tongue. “Hefeltit.”
Theo stiffens beside me. “Who? Which one?”
I force my eyes open fully, though every movement makes my skull throb. “The tall one. The one with the blue eyes. He...he reacted. When I did. As if-”
