“How would you know?” I asked. “You don’t exactly have a lot of experience with magic.” He claimed that while he was phaanon, he wasn’t immortal like me. Not a high phaan. Did he have access to magic or something else?
Ace frowned. He started to reach out but stopped himself. Instead of touching me, he let his hand drop back to his side.
“I’ve seen things,” he said.
“Sounds rather ominous. You were gone for a few years, not a lifetime.”
He looked away. “Sometimes it feels like it was a lifetime.”
We sat in silence for a moment. Ace lost in his thoughts while I got lost in staring at the floor trying not to let the feelings of hopelessness overwhelm me.
“Do you really think I can control it?” I asked. “I mean for something other than shooting arrows.”
Ace shrugged, still looking away. “Worth a try. It’s not like either of us are going anywhere.”
He had a point.
I reached forward and gripped the metal bars.
Nothing happened.
Of course, nothing happened. I had to actively use my magic, which I’d never knowingly done before. Shooting arrows came naturally, without any effort on my part.
My heart pounded as I fought to breathe through the panic already rising within me. We needed to escape this cage. Now.
But I needed to remain calm. Focused.
My fingers tingled where I pressed them to the cold metal bars. Something hummed under my skin, making the iron feel alive.
When I shot an arrow, I felt connected to my power. I needed to focus on that.
Closing my eyes again, I imagined drawing an arrow, the brush of fletching along my cheek, the stretch of the bowstring, the polished wood in my grip. A familiar feeling of magic flowed over me. I focused on that feeling. I focused so hard, I could taste it. The bars grew slick under my palms, as though the metal itself was breathing. A sliver of ice ran up my spine. I kept my eyes squeezed shut and blocked out the chaotic panic in my mind. I continued to grasp at the magic, but like water, it kept slipping through my fingers. Again, and again, and again. I mentally snatched at empty air.
Focus. Just focus.
“It looks like you need to use the toilet.” Ace’s gravelly voice punctured the moment. “That’s going to make things awkward as far as my last night alive goes.”
I hissed as the metallic magic slipped away. “You’re not helping.”
“Sorry.”
I inhaled sharply, and that’s when I felt it. Thick, molten metal-like magic slowly slithered from my chest. It crawled under my skin, sluggish and viscous at first, as if it didn’t want to move. This was nothing like shooting an arrow. Instead of connecting to the power as I took aim, I was pulling the magic out, forcing it to bend to my will, and it didn’t want to obey.
My breath hitched as magic pooled in my hands, the sensation of it flowing like a river of melted iron, cold yet burning with unnatural intensity. My fingertips tingled and ached as if they were melding with the metal.
Heat flushed my body and sweat dripped down my face.
“Mouse,” Ace said.
I strained under the cold, heavy flow of magic threatening to drown me. I reached for more, letting it crawl over my skin, down my arms to my fingertips. It was like trying to change the direction of a river with a fork. And like water flowing past the prongs, the magic evaded my command.
My stomach twisted as the cold crawled farther, and a pulse of unbearable pressure built in my chest. The magic was on the precipice of ripping free and spilling out of me.
Come on.
“Mouse, you need to stop.”
I couldn’t even hold my magic, let alone command it.
