And oh God, it was worse than before, much worse. It felt like anarchy. Fire licking her skin. Blood drying in her veins.
She screamed—and just like that, it was over. He’d let go. The pain stopped as completely as if he’d flipped it off with a switch.
“See?” He shoved his hands in his coat pockets. “You’ve got anti-magic on your skin, probably seeping from your pores. And that hellish agony is what happens when it reacts with the magic on me.”
Her wrists looked undamaged, but her heartbeat in her ears sounded like an endless loop ofno no no. That couldn’t be what magic felt like, that terrible, wrong-on-every-level sensation. Not magic, which embracedhimand cooperated withhimand madehimone with the universe.
How could this be happening? She’d spent years dreaming about magic, researching it, longing for it—could she honestly be the only person in the world incapable of doing it?
She looked up, still grasping for a reason it was all a trick. The sympathy on Hartgrave’s face stopped her cold.
“I’m so sorry, Daggett,” he murmured. “I truly am.”
She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling lightheaded as the truth of his unwanted message squeezed her like a vice. No magic. No magicever.
She seemed to be running out of air. Strange patterns like black fireworks flashed before her eyes. She turned, wanting to get out, and the room spun.
He caught her from behind. This time, his skin didn’t touch hers. She felt only the press of his arms, the warmth of his chest and the thud of his rapidly beating heart.
“Sit,” he said, voice wavering. He lowered her to the floor and let go with a speed that suggested she was radioactive. Which, in a sense, she was.
She put her head between her knees and swallowed a sob. What were her years as an impoverished student, followed by her months as an impoverished lecturer, if not an attempt at fantasy fulfillment? To find that magic was real—real—and to have it snatched away, to be told she was literallydestroyingit ...
Once the dizziness passed, she lifted her head to look at him. “What’s wrong with me? Why am I anti-magic? Is it like being born anemic?”
Before he could answer any of these questions, she whispered, “Can you fix me?”
He crouched in front of her. More gently than she would have thought possible, he said, “You are not a cup, Daggett.”
“Please! I’ll do anything—”
“Don’teverpromise that, not to anyone,” he snapped, a one-eighty in one second flat. His eyes blazed.
She let her head droop between her knees again.
“Daggett.”
Her throat was too clogged for a response.
“Daggett,” Hartgrave repeated, a helpless edge creeping in. “Listen to me: You’re not broken. You’re just ... different.”
Her snort was desolation itself. A tear leaked from the corner of one eye.
“You haven’t really lost anything,” he said. “You never had it. Nothing has changed.”
Everything had changed.
“Look at it this way,” he said. “You’re extraordinary.”
“Extraordinarily useless, extraordinarily powerless—”
His rueful laugh bespoke experience to the contrary. “No. Anyone who discounts the power to destroy is a fool.”
“I don’t want to destroy!” More tears followed the track forged by the pioneer. She sat up and dashed them away. “That’s a horrible curse.”
“Yes, well—I’m the one who has to fix your computer.”
A sudden recollection: Hartgrave, standing in her office for the first time, disgust all over his face. Or … was it dismay?
