Chapter 20 #2
Huffing, Imani drew her wand again and forced herself to focus only on the ward around the room.
The strange pressure in the corridor, the possibility of Tanyl waiting somewhere ahead, and the unexpected brush of Meira’s intrusion had already strained her too much.
Sweat dripped down her brow, but she swiped it away and kept going with a deep, calming breath.
One door. One ward. Nothing else.
Darkness slipped from the Drasil and gathered against the wood.
A whoosh sounded as the wards fell away, and the door groaned before a resounding click sounded.
The door creaked.
Imani stepped forward and pushed it fully open, then stepped over the threshold.
The room beyond was bare, with only a narrow bed and a single tall, dirty window. Through the grime, it let in just enough light to define a person standing by the bed, holding onto the post.
Imani’s heart stuttered against her ribs.
Meira looked thinner than she remembered, her features sharper, her silver hair loose around her shoulders in a way that felt less styled and more neglected.
Her magic had not diminished, though. Not with the Crown of Life resting against her head. It sat on Meira as if it had always belonged, and Imani felt a sick nausea churning in her stomach.
The Crown of Life looked exactly like the one glamoured on Imani’s head.
It caught the light even in that dim space, pale-gold leaves threaded with magic.
The design grew from Meira’s head, too, rooted at her skull, its delicate stems and budding blooms shifting faintly as if responding to something unseen.
It wasn’t ornamental or glamoured either.
This was alive, and its lethal presence made it clear that taking it would lead to consequences.
She couldn’t stop staring at the Crown of Life—its leaves, its branches, the way it belonged where it shouldn’t have existed in two places at once.
There was only one. She knew that because she had one growing from her own head.
Yet Meira stood there with her own version of the Crown of Life.
A tingling sensation spread through Imani’s limbs. The same thread she had felt in flashes when the bond between them surfaced through Divination magic.
Only now it wasn’t a thread… it was all-consuming.
Imani gritted her teeth and braced herself against the wall, trying to remain upright against the onslaught of magic.
Meira gasped. Peeking through her lids, Imani saw her sister leaning more heavily against the bedpost, having clearly felt their connection, too.
With such a strong signature, Imani could tell Meira’s crown was real.
She had never seen Tanyl’s false crown up close, but she didn’t need to.
The one growing from her own skull was alive in a way no glamour could reproduce.
Its roots pressed into flesh, magic moving continuously through her.
Whatever Tanyl wore had to be an imitation because the true crown already existed… but twice?
Meira’s should have been impossible. Yet the moment Imani looked at it, the Divination bond between them pulled tight.
The sensation was horribly familiar. For nearly a year, memories, emotions, and fragments of perception had crossed between the sisters without permission.
The connection had already proven that whatever touched one of them could reach the other in ways neither fully understood.
What she had taken from Meira nearly a year ago, her Divination brand, had created a powerful, unprecedented link.
Now that same bond seemed to run directly through the Crown of Life. The same living magic had somehow expressed itself through two bodies, making Meira’s as real as the roots embedded in Imani’s own skull.
Imani couldn’t tell whether Meira had hidden it beneath a glamour or whether the magic simply revealed itself differently to her. She only knew that the crown in front of her carried the same living presence as her own. The bond gave her access to truths beyond what Meira had shown everyone else.
Tanyl would not have that advantage. His magic encountered Meira from the outside, while Imani’s had been entangled with hers for almost a year.
Indeed, the flesh magic Divination spell she’d performed created a connection between them neither could have expected.
They shared memories, present perceptions, and…
And now it appeared they shared this magic as well.
She had thought she’d stolen Meira’s power, but in reality, she’d stitched it to her own, and the stitching had gone both ways.
The spell had fused the magic, running a continuous Divination connection between them.
Perception bled across the bond without warning.
Memory surfaced in the wrong mind. Whatever moved through one of them moved, in some measure, through the other.
Meira’s hand went to her mouth for a moment, then fell away as she blinked in disbelief.
“Imani?” The name broke from her in disbelief, relief flooding through her as she took a step forward, still clinging to the bedpost.
Imani held her palm up to stop Meira from coming closer, but then lowered it. “Yes, I’m here.”