Page 86 of The Witch They Fear

"It's coming—"

"Yeah, I see that, hold it, hold it—"

"I can't—"

"You can. You did it last week with me, you can do it now. Down. Down, witch, into the—"

"Kage, get back, I don't want to—"

His hand is in my hair.

Not gentle. He fists a handful at the back of my skull, tilts my face up so I have to look at him, and his eyes are very close and very blue and very pissed off.

"Listen to me." His voice is low and rough and absolutely level. "I am not leaving you on this floor. Try to push me back and I am going to stand here and take it. Understand?"

The white sparking of my magic is at my elbow, slowly taking over all of me.

"Kage—"

"You are not bringing this building down. Not today. Not over that piece of shit waste of space."

I am crying. My face is wet and my mouth tastes like blood and the white is at my shoulder.

"I don't know how to—"

"I know."

His other hand comes up. I see him make a fist. I have time to flinch. I have time to throw whatever's left of my magic at him to push him back. I have time to do any of a hundred things.

I don't.

I look up at him through the blood in my eye and I see his face—the fury in it, the apology underneath the fury, the fact that this is the only thing he has—and I decide not to fight him.

"Sorry Hex," Kage says.

His fist meets my temple and the world goes—

∞∞∞

White.

For one bad second my whole body locks. No. The fail-safe. They did it, they kept it on, they're going to keep me under until they figure out what to do with me, until they ship me back—

The white resolves. A ceiling. A ceiling I don't know.

It's older than the cottage ceiling. Higher. The plaster is split along one edge in a hairline that runs out toward a brass light fixture. The fixture is on. The light is warm. The room smells like antiseptic and lavender and something herbal underneath that kind of reminds me of Odette's shop. Not the facility. The facility smelled like industrial cleaner and chemical air. This smells like a place where people are taken care of.

The infirmary. It has to be.

My brain finds the word and lets out a sound that is almost, not quite, a laugh.

I try to move my right arm. The world fluoresces white again—different white this time, the embodied kind, structural—and my breath stops. My shoulder. The sound it made.

Fuck. I grunt a very unlady-like sound.

"She's awake."

Zeva. Somewhere to my left. Her voice is the flattest I have ever heard it.