Page 93 of A Sin So Pure

I can fix this.

Why isn’t it working?

I work backwards; the facts track across my mind in little lines of text, running across the splotchy darkness behind my closed eyes.

My touch kills.

When I touch them, my magic seeps into them and then it deals damage, and they die.

My touch is the vessel of magic between us. It allows my magic to enter them?—

My eyes flick open.

That’s it.

Every time I’ve used my magic, I think of it as an extension of my touch. When I break that physical connection, the magic breaks too, and since my intentionisto kill, every test subject before me has died.

But maybe, if I think of my magic as an extension of my soul and try to leave a piece ofthatin them… it could work.

Plant the seed of death so that it blooms without your presence.

“I’m going to try something different this time,” I say.

The prisoner shifts in his bindings as I approach. Ignoring his struggle, I place my hand on his. My touch is featherlight over his fist as I coax my magic to my fingertips. But instead of it sweeping through his body like a storm, I encourage my magic to mark him. I ask my magic to leave a piece of itself in him, a tattoo on his soul.

I pull my hand back and nothing happens.

But I can feel it thrumming inside him. And yet, he doesn’t die. It wraps around his heart, tucking itself between the veins and arteries. Seconds pass and my excitement builds. The tension grows inside me, a taught wire of magic stretching between me and the prisoner before me.

It’s strange, to be connected like this to another person.

Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen…

Hold fast. Not yet.

The wire snaps, the connection between me and the prisoner breaking, and with it, my magic flows back into me. The fae sputters, heart seizing as my magic wreaks havoc in its departure.

He slumps in his chains.

Letting my frustration get the best of me, I kick the chair holding the dead fae in front of me. The chair tips over, toppling the body onto the ground with a dullthump. An irritated growl tears from my throat.

I couldn’t even make it to thirty seconds.

Half success may be just as bad, if not worse, than complete failure.

Maybe I need to think of it as an infusion, rather than a mark, like how my mo?—

“I don’t know why you’re kicking the man when he’s already down,” Silas chirps from behind me. He snaps his silver pocket watch closed, the metallicclickpiercing the air. “Twenty seconds. That’s excellent.”

I pin him with a glare.

“It’s really not,” I say.

His lips twitch with bewilderment as he takes in my tense shoulders and clenched jaw. And then he laughs.Laughs.

“You are truly something else,” he says. He twists in his chair, stretching. His back cracks with the action.

“Don’t be facetious.”

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