Page 49 of The Witch They Fear

"Again. Sixty seconds."

I close my eyes. Find the warmth. Push it down into the stone.

The flow starts. Uneven, shaky, but there. Ten seconds. Fifteen. The stone hums. Twenty. Twenty-five. I'm holding it together with my fingernails and my stubbornness and the very last thread of my concentration—

My wrist throbs again.

The phantom grip.

Kage's fingers, cool and hard, closing around the bone.

The memory is so vivid my body reacts before my brain can intercept—a spike of adrenaline, a flash of heat, and my magic lurches sideways.

The stone screams. The copper veins blaze white-hot. The herbs on the table start shaking—stalks rattling against the wood—and the sconces flare so bright the room goes orange.

"Calypso—" Aamon is out of his chair. Around the table in two strides, his hand reaching for mine—

"Don't touch me."

I wrench away from him. My shoulder hits the armrest of the couch. The stone tumbles from my hands and hits the floor with a crack that echoes through the room like a gunshot.

He reaches for me again.

“Don’t!”

He stops. Hand still extended. Hazel eyes locked on mine. I watch him decide—press or retreat, help or let go. His fingers flex once. Then he pulls his hand back.

"Okay," he says. Quiet. "Okay. Breathe. Find another—"

But there is no other anchor. The stone is on the floor. My magic is still spiking—building in my chest with nowhere to go, no channel, no riverbed, just a flood ripping through me with no direction and no exit and I can't do this again, I can't break another room, I can't kill again, I can’t—

The sparks increase, my palms are burning hot, the room is closing in.

I grab my own forearms.

Both hands. Fingers wrapping around skin, gripping hard, and I squeeze. Force the magic down, into my arms, through my palms, into the only surface I can reach.

My own body.

The magic obeys. It floods through my palms and into my forearms and—

“Calypso, NO!”

I scream.

The pain is immediate. White-hot and blinding and everywhere—my magic burning through my own skin, searing into muscle, and I can feel it, I can smell it, the sick-sweet char of burning flesh, and I'm screaming and I can't stop and my hands won't let go because if I let go the magic goes back to looking for something else to destroy—

The pain is blinding and it’s all I can focus on until finally, finally…

It dims. Flickers.

Goes out.

Like blowing out a candle. One second the inferno is roaring through my forearms and the next it's gone—just gone—leaving behind a silence so total it has weight.

I let go.

My hands fall away from my arms. I look down.