Page 21 of Anchor

My heart skipped a beat. My father’s ring with the colorful obsidian in the middle was right in the middle of her palm. My anchor.

That was my anchor.

As if possessed by someone else, I reached out a shaking hand to grab it before anyone said that I could. My father’s ring, which I’d made into my anchor with my own magic the day I turned eighteen. Which I was going to keep as my anchor forever.

I thought I’d lost it in that catfairie forest. I thought it fell off me because it was too big for my fingers, and I thought the IDD never found it—that’s why they didn’t return it to me.

But I should have known that they would and that Madeline would have it. I should have known she’d save it—of course she would.

“First, she must know what will happen, don’t you think? It’s only fair,” said the Blackfire, still grinning from his chair, looking at his colleagues now.

“Not really,” said the Greenfire, but the Whitefire nodded, intertwining her fingers together over the tabletop.

“She should, she should. There is a reason why we do not allow the Mud to be exposed to charges of magic, girl,” she told me—something I knew well. They’d refused to even do a healing spell on me when I needed it the most.

“A very good reason, which is that your magic, your whole person, could become sick,” the Bluefire guy said.

“Your magic, your whole person could become…” the Redfire continued, a grey brow raised as she looked down at me, and I could have sworn that she was trying to fight off a smile. “Different.”

I don’t know why that one word made my ears ring and made the view in front of me swim.Different,she said—but the tone of voice, the look in those strange eyes, that smile she wanted me to see that she was fighting…

“Different how?” I asked, surprised to find that I still had a voice to speak with, considering how I felt inside.

“Your magic could become very dangerous,” said the Mud. “Uncontrollable. Unpredictable.” He didn’t blink at all for a beat. “Quite deadly, I’m afraid.”

“Not only toyou,girl, but to those around you. It could have fatal consequences, that magic,” said the Redfire.

“I don’t…I don’t understand.” Wasn’t a Mud supposed to havenomagic to use? Whatever I’d been left with that week I was Mud, it couldn’t be accessed. It wasn’t dangerous or fatal in the least because Icouldn’tuse it at all, hardly even felt it.

“All you need to know is that you received a lot more than what we considerbasic charges of magicwhen you drained the Rainbow. That is why we will be testing what it has done to you and your magic with a simple spell,” said the Whitefire.

She stood up. The rest remained seated.

“Put on your anchor,” she ordered as she continued to walk to her left, all around the large table. My eyes refused to look away from her, and I finally saw the icy white dress she had on underneath her black robe, just the edges of it.

“Do as you’re told, Rosabel,” said Madeline in a whisper, and my hands moved on their own. I put my father’s ring on the middle finger of my left hand, just like always.

And suddenly I felt complete. Like, until now, a part of me had been missing and I hadn’t even known what, but now I did. Now that I felt the cool metal of the ring around my finger, I felt whole.

And the magic under my skin reacted.

I still couldn’t tell if it was exactly the same as it had been, partly because it felt like I’d gone years without it, and partly because I didn’t think I ever paid attention to how magicfeltbefore. It was always there, just a part of me—like a limb—and I never cared much to analyze how it felt to the rest of me, and now I was trying too hard to pick it apart.

So, I had no idea if whatever test they were going to give me now would work. I had no idea if this magic that was inside me, rushing with the blood in my veins, recognizing the anchor as itsgate, so to speak, would do what these people wanted it to do.

All that effort. All that pain and that suffering. All that fear and that panic in the Iris Roe, only to win, and then to stand here in front of these people…must be a dream.

Then the Whitefire council memberfloatedin the air, right off the edge of the platform where their table was and onto the marble floor barely seven feet away from me.

Yes, yes, definitely a dream.

People didn’t float, did they? Was there even such magic to make you float? Because this woman just did, and she moved her lips as she chanted, which meant—ifthis wasn’t a dream—that there really was a spell for it, and she’d executed it without breaking a sweat.

“A simple spell,” she continued and moved both hands behind her—I thought to fold them like Madeline sometimes did.

Except she then brought them in front of her again, and in her right one was a sword. An actual sword, the shiny blade as long as my arm, and the handle made out of bones. Pieces of bones glued together, no doubt by magic.

“That’s all we require. Perform a simple spell, girl.”

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