Page 4 of Anchor

“Give me your feather, Seth,” said Radock, throwing him a look that made Seth immediately reach for the raven feather he sometimes kept over his ear like an accessory.

Radock put the feather in my hand and closed my fingers around it. “Go ahead.”

They all stepped back.

I looked at my fist, the edges of the feather visible on either side. It was a big one, and it was ready to be used by Blackfire magic—to compress it, channel it, guide it. Magic was under my skin and it was reaching out for the anchor as it normally did, but something about it was…off. Different.

Not the intensity, but the feel of it. I couldn’t quite put my finger on the difference, but it was there.

“Just do a levitating spell—here,” said Kaid, putting a pen in my other hand. Just a pen. “Repeat the spell after me, can you do that?”

I looked up at him—he was no longer pissed off or smiling—they were all just curious now. Curious and impatient.

“Tenta oris levio ten,” he whispered the Iridian words of the spell to remind me of them—which wasn’t the issue at all. I remembered the spell just fine.

I whispered the words slowly, trying to tighten my fingers around that feather as much as I could. I had little to no energy inside me. I was…almost completely spent.

Yet the magic was there.

It slithered under my skin, answered my call, rushing for the feather as it should, but again—it was different. The speed of it was the same as always. The intensity, too, except the imprint, the trail of energy it left behind as it traveled down my shoulder—thatwas different. Like two of the same cars leaving tire tracks behind them that were only slightly different from one another. Only slightly.

Then came the pain.

It wasn’t much, but it wasn’t supposed to be there, that pain. It wasn’t supposed to feel like it wastearingitself off me before it released from my skin. I didn’t react, though—I was too surprised still. Too weak.

The pen rose in the air.

My brothers sighed in relief, but my eyes were stuck on the black flames coming out of my skin, paler than usual. More…brownthan they were black.

Then they were gone, and only a little bit of the pain remained while the pen hovered in the air by magic.Mymagic.

My Blackfire magic that was still there.

Fuck, I wasn’t Mud at all. The Drainage in the game hadn’t been real—which made no sense. It hadfeltso real, all of it. My bonding with that eagle—how could that be fake? His absence had left a hole in my chest that I felt even now. So fucking powerful.

That dragon, all those deaths of elves and orcs werenotfake. Every ounce of energy those bones in the Drainage had stripped me of had felt so real. My magic had shifted, had lost power before I started to see inside Rosabel’s mind, all those memories.

I’d felt myself get drained, and nowthismagic felt different, too—or maybe I was just too exhausted, too spent? Because that pen was still hovering over my palm.

“Fuck, you could have so easily been Mud,” Radock said, eyes closed, thumb and index fingers over them, his other hand around his hip. He looked terrified and relieved and sad at the same time.

Kaid and Seth, too.

“So, it wasn’t real,” Seth finally said.

The pen slowly touched my hand again, the last of my energy spent.

“Where…where is she?” I asked, and when I did, the fact thatshe wasn’tthere with me made me panic. My heart skipped beats and my thoughts became blurrier still, my eyelids heavier.

“They took her,” Radock said, shaking his head, as if he wrestled disappointment now, too.

They took her. She was alive.

“Is she…is…”

Is she still Mud?I wanted to say, but my jaws were locked and my tongue suddenly refused to move and I found my eyes were already closed. I tried to use that panic as energy, as fuel to stay awake, to focus on Radock’s voice as he spoke, to try to understand him.

I couldn’t.

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