by Sadie Moss
My eyebrows shot up. Akio had to have used his incubus charm to get her to make a concession that large. Or… did Jae possess some mind-control powers? I glanced at the mage, who stood to the left of the table, hands clasped.
A blood-oath was binding and could prove deadly to the person foolish enough to break it. But still, the fact that Christine was offering me an out was staggering. If I joined the ranks of the Resistance, I could do it knowing I was free and clear, that I was there of my own will, without a threat held over my head.
Fenris gave a light push on the small of my back, and I stepped forward. I tried to match her tone and bearing, feeling like I was standing in a court facing down a queen. I’d never been great at formalities, but this moment felt like it called for them.
“Thank you, Christine. That’s very generous of you. But Fenris has convinced me that I owe it to myself to do what I know is right. I’d be honored to become a member of the Resistance and help in any way I can.”
Christine nodded thoughtfully as she sat back down, leaning all the way back to kick her booted feet up onto the table. So much for formalities.
“I’m thrilled to hear it.” Before I could breathe a sigh of relief, she added, “But I will need proof that you’re as powerfully Gifted as you claim. What can you do?”
My stomach dropped. “I—I don’t know.”
The lantern light flickered off her eyes, making them glitter like jewels. “A mage who can’t do magic is little help to us. Akio and Jae convinced me to spare you based on the merit of your talents. But what are they?”
This fucking bitch.
The temperature in the small, dingy office seemed to rise several degrees, but it was probably just my blood approaching the boiling point. Christine obviously didn’t like being contradicted. Fenris was right; she was smart. Smart enough to listen to the advice given to her by men she clearly trusted, but also petty enough to make sure everyone in the room knew who was still in charge here.
I was tempted to storm out again and keep going this time, but Fenris’s words had resonated within me. Not the “fuck Christine” part—well, okay, that too—but the part about turning the unsettling revelation that I had magic into a positive by using it for something good.
Gritting my teeth against the irritation building in my nerves, I felt around inside myself for that little spark of light—the magic that somehow lived within me. I could feel it, but I didn’t have any idea what to do with it. How did I make it… go?
I tried leaning into my emotions, letting the tumultuous flurry of feelings rush through me. Jae had said my magic was agitated and reactive to my emotional state. Maybe I could force it out that way. And if it knocked Christine out in the process—hey, side bonus, right?
My heart rate sped up, my jaw clenched, and tears of anger and frustration pricked at my eyes.
But whatever magic existed inside me stayed dormant.
I could feel everyone in the room watching me, but I blocked them out, pulling and tugging on the flame inside me, trying to make it do something. The first time it had burst out of me, it happened entirely without my control. I hadn’t even known it was magic.
The power burned steadily in my belly but refused to obey any of my commands. It was like a new limb I could feel but couldn’t control. I wasn’t even sure what muscles to flex. My body shook with effort, and sweat trickled down the small of my back.
Come on, you stupid fucking magic. Flare!
It stayed still and quiet, glowing softly in my mind’s eye.
Gasping for breath, I bent over, heaving in big gulps of air.
“I… can’t.”
Christine’s voice was grim. “Then we have no use for you.”
My shoulders slumped. I blinked rapidly as my hands curled into fists. I wanted to scream at the Resistance leader; it was incredibly unfair that although they had dozens, maybe even hundreds of Blighted members, I’d only be allowed to join their ranks if I could prove I was Gifted.
Smooth fingers pried open my clenched hand on the right side, and I glanced over, startled. Jae gave me a reassuring smile as he laced our fingers together, palms touching. Another hand reached for my left. Fenris gripped it tightly, his rough, calloused palm contrasting starkly with Jae’s smooth one. I didn’t know what they were doing, but I didn’t try to pull away. Instead, I allowed the contact to anchor me, steadying my breath and my heartbeat.
A heavy hand fell on my shoulder, a figure appearing in my periphery. Corin.
I was trying to process my feelings about his wordless show of support, when Akio stepped up on my other side, his hand resting gently, hesitantly, on that shoulder.
Like a circuit being closed, power blazed through my body. The pilot flame burning inside me met with gasoline, and my whole body lit up. Now I could feel the magic filling my limbs, could feel it radiating from my body in winding tendrils. I focused it outward, directing it to latch onto the objects in the room.
Slowly, the boxes in the corner, the shelves, the table, and even Christine herself in her chair, began to rise off the ground.
Chapter 10
Christine scrambled to sit up straight, her legs slipping off the table. It was the same distance from the chair as it had been before, except now each piece of furniture floated about five inches off the ground, rising incrementally higher with every passing moment. Corin let out a murmured curse behind me, his grip on my shoulder tightening so much it hurt.
The Resistance leader was a tough old broad; I’d give her that. If someone levitated a chair I was sitting in, I’d have been out of that thing so fast there’d be nothing but a smoke trail left behind. But she just gripped the armrests and held on, her back rigid as a pole.
“All right.” When that didn’t get the response she wanted, Christine repeated the words more firmly. “All. Right.”
I’d like to say I was just fucking with her at that point, but the honest truth was, I didn’t know how to reverse what I’d done. The furniture still floated gently upward, almost a foot and a half off the floor now and continuing to rise.
“Jae…,” I whispered out of the side of my mouth.
He gave my hand a gentle squeeze. “You can do it. Pull your magic back in—gently!” he added, as the table and chairs plummeted six inches, making Christine’s knuckles go white.
Gritting my teeth, I tried to picture the tendrils of my power, imagining them wrapped around the furniture. Then I visualized drawing them back into myself, weakening and finally breaking the hold they had on the objects in the room.
It went… okay.
I actually felt a bit bad for Christine as her chair bounced and jostled, lowering slowly and unevenly back to the floor. When the legs finally hit solid ground, she remained seated, drawing in one long breath before addressing Jae.
“She’s powerful, all right. But you’d better make sure she learns how to use her magic, or she’ll be worse than useless; she’ll be a danger to everyone here.” She examined the group of us with a shrewd gaze. The four men hadn’t relinquished their holds on me, and I still felt magic flowing through my veins like sap. “Since you four were so eager to bring her into the fold, I’m putting you personally in charge of training her—both magically and practically. Her successes and failures will be yours as well, so don’t let me down.”
She flipped open a box on the table and withdrew a half-smoked cigar. Clamping it in her mouth, she struck a match and gave a long pull. The tangy, sweet aroma lingering in the room intensified as she leaned back, putting her feet up again.
Two Blighted men walked in behind us, the taller one knocking on the frame of the open door as they entered. Their booted feet froze in place as they took me in.
“Holy mother…,” the shorter one, a young guy with bright red hair and a smattering of freckles across his face, whispered.
“Marcus, Dean.” Christine waved them inside. Apparently, that was our cue to leave, because Jae gave my hand a gentle tug and the five of us turned
toward the door. The two men stepped up to Christine’s desk, rattling off a report about the movement of Gifted officials around the city. As we slipped out, she called after us, “I expect frequent progress reports. Take her to Akio’s place until she’s trained. And put a concealment spell on his house! I don’t want any other assassination attempts.”
I led the way down the rusty metal stairs. The high windows weren’t boarded up, so the factory floor was much brighter than Christine’s office had been.
“So, what now?” I slowed my pace when I realized I had no idea where I was going.
“We should take her to Asprix. He’ll be able to get a read on her abilities,” Fenris said from behind me.
“I agree,” Jae murmured.
“Did you see Christine’s face? It was fucking priceless. I can’t wait to see what else you can do, killer!”
Fenris’s confidence in my abilities made my chest puff up, and I turned around to grin at him, but stopped short when I saw the expressions on Akio and Corin’s faces. Not everyone was as thrilled by my demonstration as Fenris was. Corin appeared unnerved and suspicious, and Akio’s face was pinched in the same annoyed expression he’d worn almost nonstop since the moment I’d met him.
Jae stepped forward to lead us through the Resistance compound, and I fell into the center of the pack, my emotions vacillating between pride and self-disgust. I’d hated the Gifted my whole life, and now I was celebrating being one of them? I hadn’t known what the magic inside me would do and hadn’t meant to embarrass Christine by picking up her chair with her in it. But I couldn’t deny I’d taken petty satisfaction in seeing her brought down a notch or two by my magic. Was this the slippery slope that came with being Gifted? How many steps were there between casually humiliating someone and using your power to oppress them?
My skin crawled, and for a moment, I wished I could dig the magic out of myself, open up a vein and let it pour out onto the dirty cement floor.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Look at Jae. Being Gifted doesn’t have to dictate the kind of person I am.
The thought was only somewhat comforting, and I suddenly wished I were a better person to begin with. My lying, thieving, and bounty hunting hadn’t seemed so bad when I thought of myself as just another tiny cog in the machine—someone whose actions couldn’t have far reaching consequences. I’d felt so helpless that I leapt at any chance I could to take some of my power back, regardless of who it hurt.
“You okay?” Fenris nudged my shoulder as we walked, his brows scrunched.
“Yeah,” I muttered. “Just… processing. What does this Asprix guy do?”
I had sudden visions of being strapped to a table, poked, and prodded while a wizened old man examined my magic.
“You’ll find out soon enough. We’re here.”
We entered another large warehouse area. Except instead of cots laid out around the room, tables and chairs were gathered in clusters here. Around the perimeter, small kiosks were set up, with people cooking on small gas stoves or, in some cases, open flames. A few doors led to smaller side rooms, and the one we stopped in front of had a torn blue curtain draped across it.
Jae pulled aside the curtain, calling into the small room. “Asprix?”
“Oh, come in,” a weathered, wispy voice responded.
We trooped inside, the four big men filling up the cramped space with their imposing presence. Little balls of light bobbed and floated across the ceiling, bumping into each other gently from time to time and changing course. They cast a cool glow over the room, highlighting the deep wrinkles in Asprix’s face. He had white hair, which looked almost blue in the light, and a long beard that tapered to a dull point.
The space was small, with a cot and a crooked little table against one wall. The only other furniture in the place was the chair the old man sat in. When he saw who entered, his face split into a craggy grin, and he waved a bony hand. “Corin, my boy! How are you?”
Corin stepped forward, squatting down next to Asprix’s chair to look him in the eye. “I’m good, Asprix. How are you? You’ve been taking that tincture I had Val whip up for you, right? It should help your back.”
Asprix patted Corin’s cheek, shaking his head. “Sweet boy. Of course I have, though it tastes like an elephant’s ass.”
“That’s how you know it’s the good stuff. I’ll bring you some more soon.”
My heart clenched as I watched the two of them. The Corin kneeling down next to this old man, going out of his way to befriend him and take care of him—that was the Corin I knew. And when he talked to Asprix, the unfamiliar hardness in his face faded.
The old man looked up, taking in the rest of us, his eyes finally settling on me. “Ah. And who do we have here?”
“Lana Crow.” I stepped forward and offered my hand, which he grasped gently in both of his trembling ones.
“Lovely name for a lovely girl.”
I smiled at him, as Corin said, “Asprix, we need you to do a reading on Lana if you can. She… she didn’t think she had magic, and now she’s not sure where it’s coming from.”
“Oh my.” The man’s craggy face slackened as he looked at me again, more intently this time. “Ah. I see. Well, let me see what I can find out. May I have your hands, dear?”
He held out both of his, and I placed mine into them. As I did, I noticed that all of my fingers were bare.
My ring was missing.
I blinked. With the constant barrage of revelations and surprises since I woke up, I hadn’t even registered its absence before now. Where could it be? Had it fallen off in my struggle with Akio? Had one of the men taken it while I was asleep? My eyes darted suspiciously around the group, but I kept my lips pressed shut. I didn’t want to start an argument in front of this sweet old man.
Asprix’s eyes clouded over, the light blue irises transforming to milky white as his eyelids fluttered like butterfly wings.
My palms grew warm, and a soft orange light filled the space between our hands.
“Oh my.” Asprix’s voice was faint, distracted. “So much power. It’s a miracle it didn’t kill you.” His eyes shifted back to blue, and he looked at me sharply. “You just discovered your gifts?”
I nodded, deciding not to dispute his definition of the word “gifts.”
“Well, they’re not new. You’ve had magic all your life—powerful magic. But it’s been repressed. Something was holding it back, and when that restraint broke, it was like a dam bursting.”
Remembering the flash of blinding light that had erupted from me as I fought Akio, I shivered. A dam bursting sounds about right.
I hesitated, then admitted, “I used to have a ring. I had it as long as I can remember, and I wore it on the middle finger of my right hand. It’s gone now. Could that have been the thing holding my magic in check?”
“Without being able to see it, I can’t say for certain. But it’s certainly possible. It would have to have been a powerful magic suppressant, but even that would lose strength over time.” The old Gifted man’s eyes went out of focus again, and the crease between his brows deepened. “Strange. Your magic is contained within you, but also held outside of you. It connects to…” He looked up, tilting his head to gaze up to the men who watched him as intently as I did. “To you.”
“Who?” I bit my lip, both dreading and anticipating his answer.
“Them.” Asprix’s eyes cleared, excitement flushing his cheeks. “All of them.”
“What?”
The word was on the tip of my tongue, but Akio was the one who voiced it.
“Her magic was suppressed for so long that when it finally burst to the surface, it was too powerful for a mortal vessel. So it reached out for anything it could find to stabilize it. You all absorbed a small piece of it, and she, in turn, absorbed some of your powers.” Asprix looked at me with something like awe. “You, my dear, have powers linked to each of the men you’ve bonded to. Mage, shifter, and demon magic. All inside you.”
“She didn’t get anything from me,” Corin said stiffly, still crouched beside us. I couldn’t tell if he was disappointed or relieved by that fact.
Asprix let my hands drop and turned to pat Corin’s head. “My sweet boy, she got the most important thing from you. Your humanity. Without you to ground her in the nonmagical, her powers would run rampant inside her, gnawing through her life-force like a hungry dog until nothing remained.”
“I…” I wiped my sweaty palms on my pants, my thumb reaching over to twist the ring that was no longer there. “I don’t understand.”
Asprix beamed at me.
“It’s quite simple, my dear. The five of you are magically bonded. Your essence entwined with theirs, and theirs with yours.”
Chapter 11
The room went quiet as Asprix smiled up at all of us.
He was the only one who seemed happy about his pronouncement. Corin’s face had drained of color; in the blue-white light, he looked like a ghost. Akio was muttering to himself in a language I couldn’t understand. But I didn’t need to know the words to get the gist of what he was saying, and it wasn’t anything good. When I glanced behind me, Jae’s face was thoughtful. And Fenris—
The wolf shifter picked me up and spun me around, making me squeak in a way that was neither dignified nor tough.
“I knew it!” he crowed. “I fucking knew it. This explains so much!” He set me down but kept his arms wrapped around me. I was too shocked to either struggle out of his grip or deck him in the face. He leaned back, his full lips stretching into a delighted smile. “I was going out of my mind wondering how I could’ve been mated to a Bligh—uh, not a wolf shifter. Ever since we woke up in Akio’s kitchen after your magic surge knocked us all out, I haven’t been able to get you out of my head.”
“Of course you haven’t,” Akio growled. “Because every minute since she woke up has been consumed by dealing with her.”
“Not like that!” Fenris insisted. “It’s a… a pull.” He shook his head. “Shit. I saw so many of my pack mates go through this when I was a little kid, but I didn’t know it would feel like this.” He swiveled his head, gawking at the others. “You guys don’t feel that?”