Page 24 of Anchor

It is not the same magic!

“By Iris, I really didn’t think it possible,” said the Mud who was in front of me now. “Congratulations, my dear girl. You won the Iris Roe, and you got your magic back. Nobody has ever done that before.Nobody.”

So many thoughts in my head. So many words at the tip of my bleeding tongue.

“Thank you,” were the ones that I allowed to come out. Notsomething’s wrong.Notthis isn’t my magic.Notit looks and feels and weighs different—it’s not my magic!

Justthank you.

“Tell me, how does it feel?” the man asked, his brown eyes lighter than they’d seemed from a distance. Warmer.

Different-different-different.“The same.”

“Did you have trouble calling for it? Why did you scream?”

Because it was different. Because it hurt.“No trouble. I screamed because I was surprised. I didn’t expect it to come out of me at all.”

My, my, Rora…a voice in my head whispered, a voice that sounded an awful lot like an impressed Madeline.

My grandmother, who was standing there beside me with her hands folded in front of her and her eyes on me. No expression on her face. She didn’t look like she hated or loved me or felt anything at all to find that my magic had returned to me. That I wouldn’t have to die, after all.

“Why, that’s good news,” said the Mud.

“Secretnews,” said the Redfire from where she stood in front of her chair.

“I believe it goes without saying that whatever happens in this room, stays in this room,” the Whitefire said, coming closer to the Mud, looking at me with a new light in her eyes. “We will prepare a story for you, Rosabel. You will confirm it when it is released to the public.”

What story?

“She will,” said Madeline.

The Whitefire gave a pleased nod. “You were lucky to have survived the game and to have your magic restored. We haven’t witnessed it being done before. In different circumstances, we wouldn’t have given you the chance to prove yourself, but you are who you are, so I suppose luck was on your side.”

Luck,she said.

“I can’t quite believe it, to be honest.”

The Blackfire guy had simplyappearedbehind the Whitefire and the Mud, when I could have sworn that he was behind the table up there on the platform a second ago.

Now he was there, analyzing me with an arched brow, his dark eyes brimming with suspicion.

“I almost want to see it again, your magic,” he said, moving around the Mud to get closer.

“We already did,” the man said. “It was right there, on her hand. Flames as red as blood.” And he was happy about it.

That’s just it—that’s notmymagic,was what I thought but didn’t say.

“Exactly as they used to be.” This from Madeline.

I turned to her so fast my neck could have snapped.

“Those flames run in the family.” She raised her own hand, and red flames ignited on her skin as she whispered a couple of words—just for show.

Red flames, almost identical to the ones I’d called a minute ago.

The ones thatweren’t mine, and she knew it. Mine had always been orange and she’d always told me how she hated that since the day she first saw them on my eighteenth birthday. She knew my magic was orange.

Yet now she insisted that it had always been red.

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