“Sure, Devine.” His sarcasm is pure ice.
Fuck, he was a prick before our matching, wasn’t he? Even if he didn’t get as in-your-face about it as Salvatore.
This Elodie wouldn’t have ducked her head and scurried on by like I used to feel I had to.
“Fine,” I reply, equally tart. “Then we’ll handle it the other way around. I can manage either part perfectly well.”
Byron scrutinizes me for long enough that my pulse starts to beat double-time as I hold his gaze. “I suppose that’s what you were aiming for all along.”
I resist the urge to throw my hands in the air in exasperation, but do take the opportunity to turn away from him. “I just said I’m good with either way. You wanted to get on with things. Decide which way I’m sabotaging you the least and let’s start already.”
He’s silent for a moment, presumably running some sort of calculus of impressiveness, and gives a brisk nod. “We’ll stick with your original strategy. I’ll lift the device first. Get the blades going as soon as it’s off the grass.”
He tugs up his gloves, a supple beige leather that coordinates with the gold trim on his blazer, and flexes his fingers as he gathers his concentration.
I ready myself too, reaching out to the faint hum of ephemera woven into the grass, the soil beneath it, the saplings, and the buildings on either side of us.
The energy tickles through my nerves, so familiar and shapeable it’s comforting.
This I can do exactly the same way I could back in my own reality. A few things haven’t changed.
The pinwheel’s base rises off the ground without so much as a wobble. Byron was able to nab that number one rank for a reason.
I don’t dawdle about pushing my own intent toward the device. With careful but forceful jabs of my will, I push the metal blades as if with a gust of wind—and then light up the air around them with a ring of flame.
There’s nothing on the metal surfaces to fuel the fire, which I’d imagine is by design. I have to keep feeding the blaze with magical energy as I continue nudging the blades around.
Professor Perez ambles over to observe. “You two have divided up the task neatly.”
“Elodie wanted to stick to the little things,” Byron says in a bored tone before I can adjust my concentration enough to speak.
The little things? After he complained that his part was “grunt work”?
My teeth grit, and the flames crackle hotter, but Perez is already walking on. Has he given Byron all the credit just from that one comment?
I felt a sort of kinship with the Bloom Practicum professor in my world. We were two of the few brown faces in a sea of mostly pale haughtiness. I figured he understood what I had to deal with. He was always patient with me.
But he’d have no reason to be kind to Other Elodie. Radiants only know howshetalked to him.
Not pale but plenty haughty, Byron elevates the contraption to the level of the roof. He has to ease it to the side when Salvatore and Stella’s veers briefly toward us and then glides it across the yard to the ledge.
As I keep the blades turning and flaming, my temper settles down into the calm certainty of magic.
We’re doing a perfect job of it. Every movement is tightly controlled, just like the professor wanted. Byron and I have always collaborated well, with the magic I was willing to perform around him.
Basic ephemera-driven magic comes with limitations. When you’re drawing on external sources, you tire yourself out faster than when you’re simply tapping into the glim inside you.
But our innate power only focuses on one area… and not always one we actually want to pursue. With this ability we lucents all have to bend the world’s energies to our will, I can do almost anything.
No matter who I’m with or what world I’m in, I’m never going to stop reveling in the thrill of it.
I can just imagine what Byron’s face looks like right now too, the trace of awe that softens his expression when he’s working his magic. I don’t think there’sanythingmy Byron ever loved as much as he loves that act. Maybe not even me.
But in my real life, he happily combined his skills with mine…
I drop my hands and flop back on the bed with a growl of frustration. Byron pokes his head around the doorframe, his brown eyes gone even darker than usual with concern.
“It’s the stupid Illusion project,” I grumble before he has to ask. “No matter what I do, the images I conjure keep falling apart.”
