Suri took her outstretched hand in hers, slipping Nes’s flask back onto her belt where it belonged and tugging her shirt down over it. “You say that, but you look like you were run over by a carriage.”
She huffed. “So no different from normal.”
Suri’s smile was soft. “Hey, how about we find a quiet café and grab a cup of tea? We can talk.”
Talk. As in Suri did all the talking and Nes tried not to let her mind wander too much. “I’d prefer coffee.”
“But how will you sleep at night?”
“I don’t sleep.”
Again, Suri eyed her, curious concern creeping in.
She gripped Suri’s hand tightly, ready to drag the girl out of the square and her thoughts. “Come on. Tea, coffee, and if we’re lucky, there’ll be doughnuts, too.”
“You know I like the sound of that.”
She turned, every part of her keen on taking the escape Suri offered. She swore she could already smell the doughnuts in the air. She took three steps and stopped.
No, those weren’t doughnuts. Slowly, she turned back toward the square.
Magic punched her in the gut, and she gasped.
Some magic—the strongest magic—she didn’t just smell. Sometimes, she could hear it. It spoke to her, whispered its plans as if they were back to back, head to head.
Everyone knew pure magic was dangerous. What most people forgot was magic—pure or diluted—had a sentience to it.
Magic was a leech. If someone held pure magic while their heartwas brimming with happiness, the magic would take that happiness. It could become light stronger than the sun—a light bright enough to blind—or grow into a sea of flowers large enough to drown in. Magic took whatever emotion a person was feeling and amplified it exponentially, usually to the point of detriment.
She tasted this magic’s eagerness on the air, lush and boiling. It had waited so long for a purpose. Some fool had given it one.
She drew in a sharp breath, searching for the truth under the sweetness. It was filled with bursts of heat and ash. She felt the slosh of the contents of her flask in her stomach and she knew. Rage fed this magic.
“Run,” she told Suri.
“What?”
“Run!”
She squeezed Suri’s hand and pushed away from her, dashing for the platform in the center of the square.
The source. She had to find the source of the magic.
She shoved her way through the crowd, looking for someone who wasn’t moving, wasn’t leaving the square like everyone else. But she was too short to see more than a few people ahead of her. As far as she could tell, she was the only person fighting against the tide to get to the platform.
The guards on the platform were standing around, talking casually—as if killing an innocent girl was some menial task. Maybe these men deserved to die. She could slip away with the rest of the crowd, pretend she didn’t know a thing.
But then she remembered the devastation on the face of that lone guard. She didn’t know these men. All she’d seen today were the results of someone else’s orders.
The closer she got, the more she felt like she was breathing in smoke. A short distance from the platform, she felt like she was so near a burning fire, she choked on it. The magic’s rage could contest the sun, singeing her nose and throat.
She pushed on.It’s not real, she reminded herself.Not yet.
The lone guard stood atop the platform with his back to her.
“Run,” she tried to shout to him, but her word was no more than a croak, lost to the sounds of shuffling feet. She could tell herself the taste of fire on her tongue wasn’t real, but that didn’t mean her body listened.
She scrambled up the stairs, her lungs begging her to turn back.
