I’m still humming with his magic, and it’s been hours since he pulled his hand away. He’s thrown spells at me before, but this was different. This was like being struck by benevolent lightning. I felt scorched clean. Bottomless…
No, that’s not right, not bottomless.Centreless.Like I was bigger on the inside. Like I could cast any spell—back up any promise.
At first it was as if Snow was giving magic to me. Sending it to me. But then the magic was justthere.It was mine, in that moment, everything that was his.
All right. I have to stop thinking about it like this. Like it was a gift. Snow would never have opened himself up to me if there hadn’t been a dragon overhead…
I wonder if I couldtakethe magic from him if I tried, but the thought turns my stomach.
I change in the bathroom and brush my teeth, and when I come out, I see that Snow is sitting up in his bed.
“Baz?”
“What.” I sit on my own bed, on top of the covers.
“I… can you come here?”
“No.”
“I can come over there, then.”
I cross my legs and arms. “You may not.”
Snow huffs, exasperated.Good,I think.
“Just. Come here,” he says. “Okay? I have to try something.”
“Can you even hear how ridiculous you sound?”
He gets up. It’s dark in our room, but the moon is out, and I can always see him better than he sees me. He’s wearing grey flannel pyjama bottoms, school-issued, and his gold cross. His skin is as grey as mine in this light, and shining like a pearl.
“You can’t sit on my bed,” I say as he sits on my bed. “And neither can Bunce. My bed reeks of intensity and brownies.”
“Here,” he says, holding out his hand.
“What do youwantfrom me, Snow?”
“Nothing,” he says. And he means it, the actual bastard. “We have to try again.”
“Why?”
“So that we know that it wasn’t a fluke,” he says.
“Itwasa fluke. You were fighting a dragon, and I was helping you—it was a fluke squared.”
“Merlin, Baz, don’t you want to know?”
“Whether I can tap into you like a generator?”
“It wasn’t like that,” he says. “I let you do it.”
“Are you going to let me do it again?”
“No.”
“Then it doesn’t matter if it was a fluke!”
Snow’s still sitting on my bed. “All right,” he says. “Maybe.”
