Chapter 28 #2
“It was like Juno was inside my head,” Mira said.
Her voice was low, almost wondering. She’d been tracing the same pattern on the arm of the sofa for the past five minutes, her fingertip tracing the flowers and vines printed on the worn upholstery.
“Like we were the same person casting the same spell.”
Juno nodded. Her eyes were wide and bright in the firelight.
“I didn’t have to think. I just knew what you needed.
When the alarm went off and that vine ball started dropping, I felt you panic before you made a sound.
And then I was moving, and it was like—” She shook her head. “I don’t have words for it.”
I knew what she meant. I’d been living with the echo of it all afternoon.
The warmth in my chest hadn’t faded. If anything, it had settled deeper, a low, persistent hum that pulsed in time with my heartbeat. Beneath my skin, everywhere, a faint vibration lingered—not unpleasant, just present, like the lingering sound from a bell that had been struck hours ago.
I was exhausted after the day’s exertions, but beneath the dragging fatigue, something bright and singing refused to let me rest.
Mira and Juno apparently felt the same way. Mira’s fingers wouldn’t stop moving. Juno kept flexing her hands, her expression caught between wonder and unease.
“It’s louder,” she said. “My magic. It’s always been there, but now it’s—” She pressed a hand to her sternum. “Awake. Like it was sleeping before.”
I’d been telling myself it was the peculiar pressure of competition, which Mundise had warned us could produce effects that normal spellwork didn’t. But this change felt like something permanent.
None of the textbooks I’d studied described magic working this way. None of the great mages, not even the venerable Mage Sancola, had written about what happened when two people’s magic stopped being separate and started acting with a single purpose.
“I felt the same thing with Elio,” I offered. “When I was panicking and couldn’t hold the Earth spell to keep our tree from tipping over.”
Elio nodded. His amber eyes were steady, intent, and something in his expression made the warmth in my chest flare hot enough to burn.
“His magic suddenly felt like a current flowing through me,” I continued. “It was like we shared… everything.”
Elio’s smile unfurled slowly, the way dawn broke over the eastern hills back home. His gaze held mine, and in them I saw something that made me want to look away in confusion and also never stop looking.
“Shared,” he repeated. The word sat in his mouth like something precious. “Yes. That’s exactly what it was.”
Mira nodded, vigorous and eager. “Yes! That’s the word. Shared. Not yours or mine. Ours.”
Juno was quieter. Her brow had furrowed, the way it did when she was working through a complicated math problem.
“Mama never taught us anything like that,” she said.
“She showed us how to work together. How to support each other’s spells.
But this wasn’t supporting. This was—” She shook her head. “I don’t know what this was.”
“It was like my spells suddenly wanted to work,” Elio said.
He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his gaze fixed on me with an intensity that made it hard to breathe.
“When they were fighting me before. But once you touched my magic, it just—flowed. No resistance. No effort.” He ran a hand through his hair, pushing it back from his forehead.
“How did the three of you do it? What kind of special spell were you using?”
His questions hung between us. I frowned, trying to remember exactly what I’d done.
“I don’t know,” I admitted finally. “I was panicking because the fountain was out of control, the sapling was falling over, and I couldn’t hold the Earth spell.
And then you were holding me, and you told me to breathe, and I—” I spread my hands, helpless.
“I reached for you with my magic. And suddenly, you were just… there.” I spread my palm over my bodice, covering my heart.
“I was there,” he echoed, his voice soft.
“I didn’t plan it. I didn’t know it was possible. I just… needed you, and you gave me your power.”
The silence that followed was thick with everything neither of us was saying. Mira was nodding vigorously in agreement. Juno was studying the floor with the concentrated attention of someone pretending not to hear a conversation that was making her deeply uncomfortable.
Then Elio grinned, and the moment broke.
“Well,” he said, with all the warmth and certainty of someone who believed absolutely in what he was saying, “if you can do it again tomorrow, we’ll be unstoppable. Round Two’s challenges won’t know what hit them.”
Elio’s words should have been reassuring. But they landed in my stomach like a stone.
If I could do it again.
If.
I had no idea how I’d done it the first time. It had been desperation, not skill. Instinct, not knowledge. A flailing grab in a fog of panic that had, miraculously, caught hold of something real.
But what would happen when the next challenge in the Aurelian Trials required me to summon this strange new ability? I still didn’t understand exactly how I’d done it, and apparently, neither did Mira and Juno.
Elio was still talking, sketching out strategies for Round Two with the cheerful optimism of someone who had decided that today’s miracle was simply the first demonstration of a talent we’d always had.
The twins were nodding along, caught in the pull of his confidence.
Mira was already making notes on a scrap of parchment, her pen moving rapidly.
I let their voices wash over me, and tried to ignore the icy knot of worry forming beneath the warmth in my chest.
What if the thing that had happened today had been a fluke—a singular, unrepeatable convergence of panic and need? If I couldn’t repeat the miracle, then we might lose the next round.
The fine. My place at the academy. My sisters’ futures.
It all pressed down on me like a block of stone.
Then I looked at Elio, at the easy confidence in his smile, the absolute faith in his eyes when he looked at me, and I felt the lingering warmth inside me melt my worry.
If we’re still connected, that means I’ll be able to combine our magic again. Right?
I hoped I was right. He believed in me more than I believed in myself. And I wanted, more than anything, to be the person he thought I was.