A white burn mark is scorched into my palm in the shape of the shard—it branded me with its jagged edges. I bring my hand closer to my face, my stomach churning as I look at the mark left behind.
“It isn’t healing,” I whisper, half to myself.
I reach for the threads of magic inside of me, giving them a light tug. But when I pull on it, my magic barrels into me as if I used all of my strength to call on it. Smoke fills my eyes as a swell of heat rolls over me like a cresting wave.
The smell of fresh dirt fills my nose next, small pieces of grass tickling my ankles. At nearly the same time, I hear the Andronicus crashing in the distance, an awareness that wasn’t there a few moments ago.
It’s as if my magic—Undine, Woodland, Nocturna, and Aegis—is brimming through my body, shouting for attention, begging to be released.
“Little princess.”A voice like warm honey drips into my mind. A voice that matches the emerald eyes the shard showed me.
I let out a quiet sob, every nerve in my body overwhelmed.
The fire in my veins, so like Graylen’s, goes first.As if the thread of it in my soul was doused with a bucket of water, the piece of me that belongs to the Aegis is gone. I feel it go quiet, a painful, abrupt end like an axe cleaving a log in two.
Next, the sound of the sea goes silent, along with the smell of dirt. I squeeze my eyes closed, tears streaming down my cheeks as shouts begin to ring out around me.
But I don’t really hear them—can’t hear them as I feel my magic being drained from my soul.
“Little princess,”the smooth voice calls out faintly in my mind, and my knees begin to tremble.
Help me.
Help me.
Help me.
A sharp pain pierces my chest, gripping my heart and yanking as if an invisible hand was trying to rip it out. My hands fly up, pressing against my sternum as my pulse races.
“Stop!” I scream into the cool night air, my voice breathless.
But when I blink, the voice stops.
I spin around, calling on my fire—anything that would stop the source of this pain as the stabbing in my chest slashes into me over and over again.
Only…my magic doesn’t answer.
Wide eyes filled with shock and fear stare back at me—the faces of my friends. My sister. They watch me like I’m a caged animal, afraid to move toward me but afraid that I’ll run if they look away. Leda’s mouth is moving, as is Brielle’s—her face ashen—but my shallow breaths are the only sound that reaches my ears.
Just when the sharp ache begins to dull, a scream fills my head. A cry of agony so raw that it sends me to my knees. A choking sob works its way into my throat because it isn’t my scream. Isn’t a cry that belongs to anyone surrounding me.
But I know that voice; I canfeelthe thread that binds me to Graylen springing to life, if only to make me feel his anguish, his torment.
When I feel the swell of my shadows in my chest, I know what’s going to happen next. It starts to trickle out of me, disappearing into an invisible vapor as my Nocturna magic begins to drain, too.
With every ounce of strength in my body, I clamp down on it, slamming the door to my soul shut. If the well of my Essence was the size of a lake before, now it’s a shallow puddle, nothing more than a few drops of magic left.
My arms tremble as I brace myself on the ground. “Graylen?—”
The scream abruptly halts. It’s more than I’ve felt from him while awake. I scramble to reach for the connection between us, only to find it silent once more.
Whatever is happening to him, it was enough to reach through the barrier keeping him from me. He was in enough pain that it broke through the plane of the Vale and reached me here.
My nostrils flare, and I push myself off of the ground. Despite the ache lingering in my chest, my pulse begins to even out. The tremors in my arms recede, and my breath grows steady.
“Take her to the healer’s cottage,” Leda barks. “We aren’t leaving tonight.”
Voices rise around me, and the cry of a wyvern fills the air above us.
