Page 67 of The Witch They Crave

The pull starts behind my sternum. Low, dragging up from the deepest hottest part of me, like a struck match scraped along the inside of my spine. I try to close it. I can't. It's already climbing, already reaching, already filling my hands the way it did that day in the hallway when I was thirteen—

"No," I say. "No, not them, please—"

Now, Calypso, the voice says, warm, patient, close to my ear. Let it go. Give them to me.

"I can't—I won't—"

You always do.

And the power leaves my hands, and Nellie's mouth opens, and the gold room goes white—

I wake up screaming.

The sound tears out of me before my eyes are open, before I know where I am, and the magic tears out right behind it—

I scramble backward until my spine hits the headboard. Knees up, hands up, like I can hold the magic in with my arms—but it's already out, already everywhere, pouring off my skin in a flood I can't dam. My heart slams so hard it hurts. The power fills the room and keeps coming, and I can't find the edges of my own body, can't tell where I stop and the air starts.

They were smiling. They were right there and they were smiling and I—

"No." Out loud, to the empty room, to no one. "No, no, no—"

I can't breathe right. The air's too thick, too hot, and every time I try to pull the power back in it slips through my hands like something greased and my hands are shaking, my whole body is shaking, and the only thought that will hold still is get out, get away from them, before it happens again, before you do it again—

The door to my room bursts inward.

Aamon. Shirt half-buttoned, hair wild, bare feet. Wrong—he's never wrong, never rumpled, never anything but pressed and still—and for one lurching second I don't know if he's real or if the dream followed me out.

He takes one step in and stops. His eyes move—fast, cataloguing—and I follow them without wanting to.

The water on my nightstand is at a rolling boil. The air shimmers with heat I can see. And the plants—Leopold's mansion is full of them, and every single one has turned toward the bed, stems bent past where stems are supposed to bend, leaves spread and straining.

The whole room leaning toward me like a congregation.

I hadn't even seen it. I was too busy trying not to come apart.

"Calypso." His voice cuts through. Low, even, certain. "Look at me. Not the room. Me."

"I-I can't stop it—" It comes out wrecked. "Aamon, I can't stop it, it won't go back—"

"You can." He crosses to me, no hesitation now. "You've done it before. Where are my hands?"

"What?"

"My hands. Where are they? Tell me."

"Up—" I gasp it. "Where I can see them—"

"Good." He drops to his knees on the edge of the bed, bringing us level, hands open and slow, the way you approach something that might go off. "Give me your hand."

I can't. If I touch him. If it's still pouring out of me and I touch him—

"I'll hurt you," I whisper.

"You won't. Give me your hand."

I put my hand out. He takes it and presses it flat against his bare chest, over the sternum, the way he taught me weeks ago—find something that isn't on fire and hold onto it. His heart isn't beating. It never is. The stillness of him under my palm is its own kind of anchor, cold and certain, a stone in a flood.

"Breathe with me," he says. "In. Slow. You know how this goes."