Focus, Juneau, I told myself and reached within me, searching for the core of magic that lay within. I pulled the tiniest strand of magic from the bunch and focused on pushing it through our connected lips, praying that I was doing it right.
Rex sucked in a sudden intake of breath and I opened my eyes to see that his own eyes had suddenly taken on a purple hue. Whatever I was doing seemed to be working.
I continued to feed him the thread of magic until I felt his own, unfamiliar magic begin to push against mine. Somehow, I’d succeeded in awakening the magic that had lain dormant in Rex’s body since his birth. I just hoped that I was making the right decision pushing him so far out of his comfort zone.
Our mouths finally broke apart and I could feel Rex’s chest heave as he slid me down the length of his body until my feet touched the floor again.
“Are you all right?” I whispered as he stared off into the distance.
Rex shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut as his expression screwed up in pain. “I can see everything, your magic, mine, the shadows so clearly,” he replied hoarsely and pressed his hands to the sides of his head. “I can even see the magic of the guy in your head.”
Guilt filled my chest as I watched him struggle against the weight of his new abilities. I had been filled with boundless excitement when I realized what I could do, but being bombarded with images of things that terrified him was very different from that.
‘Tell him that he needs to shut off the flow, similar to how he’d mute his emotions from his bond mates,’the voice said.‘It’s a bit like locking a door. If he doesn’t put enough force behind it the magic will seep out at will.’
“Rex,” I slid my hands underneath his and brought his face close to mine. “Rex, look at me.”
I waited for his eyes, still tinged with purple, to open before I continued. “You have to close yourself off from it all, like how you would cut everyone off from your emotions in the bond. Imagine locking it all away in a lead-lined safe. It can only come out when you want it to,” I whispered, and he nodded, his pupils blown as he tried to focus.
“It’ll be okay, I won’t go anywhere until you have it under control, you aren’t alone in this, Rex,” I told him and pressed my forehead to his, waiting as he put himself back together piece-by-piece.
His shuddering breaths eventually started to even out and the purple in his eyes faded until they were their normal color again.
“Better?” I asked hopefully.
He nodded. “Better,” he said, finally standing up straight and looking at the rest of the pack who had been watching us with expressions of awe. “Now let’s take a look into the future. Those fucking Titans have been one step ahead of us for too long and it’s time we returned the favor.”
“So we’re scrying with fire,” I explained to the group as we stood in the backyard. Wren had stayed inside to keep an eye on Bat, but everyone else was standing in a circle around Rex and me.
The voice had hurriedly explained the rest of what we needed to do, his voice growing fainter with each word. It seemed that he’d exhausted his abilities and needed to rest again, so I was on my own now.
“I’ll be your conduit, so what you see, I see. We need to hold hands and the voice said that you need to focus on your intention for the scrying on what you want to see.” I slipped my fingers through Rex’s and stood apart from him, already reaching for my magic.
“Is that it?” Rex asked incredulously. “I feel like magic should be a bit more complicated than that.”
Itwasmore complicated than that, but I had chosen to leave out the fact that fire scrying was exhausting for the conduit. Using my abilities had never made me tired before, but the voice had assured me that this sort of magic was much more consuming than my typical flames. I didn’t say anything about it to the rest of the pack or the BBs because I knew they would have stopped me.
“You just need to open your magic and focus on your intention, I’ll handle the rest,” I assured him and started to form a ball of fire in the air above us. The voice had warned me that it needed to be completely controlled so that it resembled a flat circle that Rex could look into. Any stray flames could ruin the entire thing.
I glared at the ball and felt sweat roll down my back as I forced it into submission, flattening it until it was the shape that I needed.
“All right, you can begin,” I told Rex through gritted teeth as I kept my eyes on the flame above us.
I didn’t have to look at him to know that he had started to use his abilities. I could feel the magic through our joined hands. It stuttered out slowly at first, as if he didn’t quite know how much to release, but it soon turned into a steady stream. I could feel it sliding into my body, cool when put against the heat of my own magic, and out through the top of my head.
The flaming disc began to change.
‘You’re here for a reason,’I heard an unfamiliar voice say.‘Tell me your real name.’
‘Juneau,’my own voice echoed down to me.
The image of ropes around someone’s wrist filled my vision followed by snapshots of other things in rapid fire, broken shards of some kind of glass, the sound of a gunshot, Podcast lying hurt on the ground, men in unfamiliar leather jackets surrounding my pack before a different group accosted them, my scream, fire, and finally the image of my mother smiling at me.
It was all too much. I groaned as our joined magic bubbled above us.
“Juneau, you have to let go,” I heard someone shout, but I only vaguely heard them.
“Juneau!” someone barked and I realized hazily that it was Rex. He was still holding onto my hands but he wasn’t staring up at the disc anymore, he was looking at me with an expression of panic. “Shut it down, princess, we got what we needed,” he yelled over the roar of the rolling ball of flame.
