Jade #2
He shakes his head slightly in frustration. “I’ve told you—you’re safe with me, Jade,” he says, and when we reach the Ember Ring, I can feel the difference, even from the outside.
Where the Void Pit was empty and dead, this circle hums with potential. The air in it shimmers slightly, like heat waves rising from summer asphalt, as if every molecule is packed with magic.
My electricity hums stronger the closer we get, like it can’t wait to break free.
“Ready?” Logan asks, but he’s already stepping through the boundary into the Ember Ring, as if he doesn’t care if I’m ready or not.
Which, likely, he doesn’t.
“Absolutely not.” I follow him anyway, and when I cross the threshold, bolts of electricity arc between my hands, crackling through the air with violent intensity. One shoots off without warning, and Logan has to dive sideways to avoid it.
The bolt leaves a black scorch mark on the ancient stone.
“Shit!” I try to pull the electricity back, but power pours out of me in silver streams, lighting up the ring. “Get out! I can’t—”
“Don’t fight it,” he says as another bolt cracks past his shoulder. “Jade, listen to me—”
“I’m trying!” I cut him off, my body feeling like it’s going to explode. Like all the electricity I’ve been suppressing for weeks wants out now. It’s a good thing Logan compelled Kieran to keep me away from the Ember Ring, because it clearly would have been a magical disaster.
Another bolt shoots off, hitting the wall behind Logan and cracking the stone.
“We should go back to the Void Pit,” I gasp, trying again to pull the power back into myself.
It burns, fighting against containment.
“No.” His voice is firm. “You need to face this. Not suppress it. Not hide from it. Face it.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re not the one turning into an electrical storm!”
I try to aim the next bolt at the ground away from him. But it veers left instead, striking dangerously close to his foot.
The absolute madman doesn’t even flinch.
“Face it,” he repeats, his gaze locked on mine.
“I don’t know how,” I admit, feeling incredibly small, despite the intensity of my power.
“Yes, you do.” He steps closer, and I warn him back, but he keeps coming.
“You controlled it during the trials. You controlled it in the dining hall when Callie approached you. You controlled it when we…” His jaw clenches, and my face flushes, because I know exactly what he’s remembering. “You can control it now.”
“That was different.”
“How?”
His question stops me short. Because he’s right. The power is the same. The electricity is the same. The only thing that’s different is…
“I’m scared,” I whisper.
Just like that, the electricity calms. Not completely—it still dances across my skin in silver threads—but the violent bolts stop. Like my power heard my realization and decided to stop its temper tantrum.
Logan’s here in an instant, reaching for me but pulling back at the last second, as if I might shock him.
Which, fair.
“There you go,” he says, his voice soothing me like it did when I was burning my hand in soul fire. “Your power responds to emotion, but not the way you think. Because it’s not about suppressing your feelings, but about understanding the difference between reaction and choice.”
I tilt my head, studying him. “Can you translate that from Cryptic Logan into Normal Person?”
His lips twitch into what almost might be a smile. “Reaction is wild and uncontrolled.” He gestures at the scorch marks around us. “Choice is focused. You feel the emotion, but you decide where the power goes. Or if it goes at all.”
“So, when I’m really emotional—“
“You’re more likely to react instead of choose.”
“And you want me to become an emotionless robot like you?” The words come out sharper than I intended, and he flinches. Actually flinches. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“You’re not wrong.” His voice is quiet. “But that’s not what I’m suggesting for you. It’s not what I want from you, ever, because then you wouldn’t be you.”
We both stare at each other, and as a breeze rolls through the air, I can’t help wondering if he’s regretting what he said last night about it being too risky for us to be together.
So, I wait one beat, then another, hoping he’ll lean forward to close the space between us… and disappointed when he doesn’t.
“How do you know so much about this?” I finally ask.
“I’ve told you—I pay attention to you, Jade. Even when I shouldn’t. Definitely when I shouldn’t.”
The way he says it—like I’ve been the center of his universe all along—makes something flutter in my chest. But I can’t let myself get distracted. Not when electricity is still humming through my veins like a live current.
“ So… acknowledging emotions.” I take a shaky breath, forcing myself to focus. “How does that help me not electrocute my opponent on Thursday in an arena where I’m supposed to have zero access to my magic?”
“Let’s start simple,” he says, as if anything about either of us could ever be simple. “Do you know why they call it the Void Pit?”
“Because it suppresses magic?”
“Because it creates a void where only your truest self remains. No fire to hide behind, no flames to mask intention. Just raw skill and whatever you carry in your bones. That’s why Kieran loves it—it strips away pretense.
” He pauses for a moment, as if he’s seeing something I can’t. “Now, close your eyes.”
“Why?”
“Trust me.”
There it is again. Trust. The thing he keeps asking for while keeping his own secrets locked away deeper than the passages beneath the school.
But the way he says it is final, so I do as asked.
“Now, breathe,” he tells me. “Five seconds in, five seconds out. Feel the electricity, but don’t try to control it. Just observe it.”
I follow his instructions, focusing on my breathing. As I do, the storm remains in my bones, but it’s less violent now. More like a river than a flood.
“Good.” His voice is low and soothing, wrapping around me like smoke. “Now visualize something that can keep it contained. A box, a sphere, whatever works for you.”
I instinctively picture a glass sphere in my chest, silver electricity swirling inside. It pulses with each heartbeat, but the glass holds firm.
“I have it,” I whisper, and something in me clicks, like when you snap the final piece of a puzzle into place.
“Perfect. Now, let’s head up to the Void Pit and try again.”
We reach the edge of the Ember Ring, and the moment we cross the boundary, the pressure of my magic eases.
It’s like someone turned off the fire alarm that’s been screaming in my head, leaving me with sweet, blessed silence.
Well, not actual silence, since my internal monologue never shuts up, but close enough.
By the time we’re back in the Void Pit, my electricity dies out completely.
Logan immediately returns to neutral trainer mode. “We need to make sure your electricity stays dormant in here,” he says. “Even if you’re angry or frustrated or—”
“Scared,” I finish, since I already admitted it back in the Ember Ring.
“Exactly.” He moves closer, but not too close. Not close enough. “We’ll get you angry, frustrated, scared—whatever it takes—and you’ll learn to keep the electricity locked down, no matter what.”
Thunder rumbles overhead, muffled by the walls of the pit, and I swear I feel an echo of it in my body.
“Okay.” I pull out my dagger, the blade glinting in the moonlight, picturing the pretty glass sphere in my chest and the silver electricity contained in it. “Make me angry.”
The smile that spreads across his face is pure wickedness. “With pleasure.”