Page 37 of The Witch They Fear

Maybe Aamon isn't what I decided he was. The power hungry, ready to use the dog-collar monster I’d imagined. Or maybe he's exactly what I decided he was, just with better hands.

Either way, the coin is in the air.

I look down at the stone in my hand. Dark and rough and warm, the copper veins catching the afternoon light. I squeeze it against my palm—feel the weight, the hum, the residual connection from the grounding exercise still thrumming faintly through the rock.

Then… my fingertips spark again.

Bright little arcs of light crackling across my knuckles, dancing over the surface of the stone, and I stop dead in the middle of the path and stare at my own hand like it's betrayed me.

Again? Seriously?

I curl my fingers into a fist around the stone. The sparks die. My pulse is doing something stupid.

This is going to be a problem.

Chapter 7

I couldn't sleep.

My body won't stop buzzing. Something restless and alive is humming behind my sternum at a frequency that makes lying still feel like holding my breath—my magic pressing outward, testing the walls I've been building around it, looking for cracks.

For the first time in twelve years, insomnia feels like too much energy instead of too little.

So I'm sitting on a blanket in the grass behind the cottage at five-thirty in the morning, watching the sky crack open over the flower fields, with the resonance stone in my lap and dew soaking through the fabric of my pajama pants.

The air is thick and cool—the particular Louisiana pre-dawn that happens before the heat remembers it owns the place. The apothecary garden is a dark shape to my left, its herbs and flowers still folded in on themselves. The training fields stretch further ahead, flat and grey, dissolving into mist at the tree line. Somewhere in the oaks, a mockingbird is running through its repertoire.

Early riser. We have that in common.

Corvin is ten feet behind me, leaning against the cottage wall with a thermos of coffee and the expression of a man who did not sign up for a pre-dawn grass-sitting detail. I can feel his irritation radiating off him like body heat. Tough shit. I didn't sign up for a chaperone, and yet here we are.

I pick up the stone. Wrap both hands around it. Close my eyes.

This is so different from the facility that it almost hurts to think about. For twelve years, my mornings were a white room and a medication tray and the slow chemical drag of dampeners pulling me under before I was even fully awake. My body wasn't mine. My time wasn't mine. The closest I got to outside was a window with wire mesh that let in a grid of light I could map but never touch.

Now I'm sitting in wet grass with my bare feet in the dirt just past the blanket, the sky barely turning pink and gold above me and a stone humming in my hands. Nobody is telling me to lie back down.

Thank you. Not to the council. Not to the academy. Not to anyone specific. Just—to this. To the grass and the sky and the bird and the simple, stupid miracle of being outside before sunrise with no one's permission but my own.

I reach for my magic. Down, not out. Into the stone. The way Aamon showed me.

The warmth flows. Controlled. A thread, not a flood. The stone's hum deepens. The copper veins glow faintly in the pre-dawn grey.

I hold it. Breathe. Let the stone take the weight.

Ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty. The flow stays even. The stone doesn't whine. Nothing shatters.

I let go, breathe out. The edges of my lips twitch and then I focus. Reset. Try again.

Second time: the thread is thinner. More controlled. I can feel the difference—my magic responding to the channel, finding the shape of it, learning the riverbed. The stone glows brighter.

Holds steady.

Fuck yes.

Third time: I push a little more. The thread thickens. The stone hums louder. The copper veins blaze. But it holds. Everything holds. No cracks, no whine, no pressure spike.

I blink and snap the connection as if I’m a pro. The sky has gone from a gentle pink to gold. The mist is lifting off the training fields. The mockingbird has switched to a different song—something more complex, showing off for the sunrise.