Page 26 of Anchor

Madeline didn’t let me say a word. As soon as we stepped out into the hallway, her magic, blood-red, invaded my senses again, slipped into my mouth and eyes and shut down my mind completely.

The last thing I remembered before passing out was that my legs gave up, but I didn’t hit the ground because the guard grabbed me and carried me in his arms. I could have sworn that for that tiny second, he lookedsorryfor me.

Then I was in a car.

The vibrations of the wheels and the engine spread into my head from where my temple rested on the glass of the window. It felt like I was being shaken awake by the car itself—wake up, Rora! Wake up!

My eyes opened and I sat upright. My heart was pounding, my breathing heavy as the memory of Madeline’s magic came back, so fresh I thought it was there still. I thought it was crawling inside my mouth and nose and eyes to get to my brain and shut it down—but it already had.

Wherever the Council chambers were, we weren’t there anymore. Now, we were in Baltimore, in Madeline’s SUV, and she was sitting in the back with me, looking out the window on her side.

All my thoughts wanted to spring to the front of my mind at first. Scenes from the Iris Roe, Taland’s face, all that fear and the questions, the magic that had left my hand just now, the magic thatworked.I’d called for light, and it had given me light. Foreign magic that was somehow mine had come out of me at my command, painfully, right through my anchor.

I looked down at my hand to find my father’s ring was still around my finger, the gold cold against my skin just like always. It was there, the ring, and I wanted to sit and cry about how much I’d missed it. How I’d thought I would never see it again. How I’d lost my connection to the memory of my father without it, and now it was all back.

But I couldn’t cry right now. Madeline was with me, and the guard who’d most likely carried me in here was riding shotgun, the driver the same guy who’d taken me to the City of Games that night.

Now, he was taking us to Madeline’s mansion through the city, which meant the Council chambers were somewhere on the other side.

“It’s red,” I said because Madeline didn’t like to waste time with chit-chat, and saying something like,how long have I been outwould be consideredwasted time.That’s why I got straight to the point—so that I never gave her the chance to remind me how annoying she found me.

Pretty sure it had become a self-defense mechanism a long time ago.

“Yes, I saw it,” Madeline said, throwing me a quick look. “Well done, Rosabel.”

Well, fuck, I’m still dreaming.

Madeline was telling mewell donefor the second time now—this night couldn’t possibly be real.

But then she continued.

“I never actually thought you’d come out of the Iris Roe alive, let alone win and drain the Rainbow.Verywell done.”

Third time.

She looked at me again and I was having trouble trusting my senses because they insisted that Madeline didn’t hate me right now. She looked at me and she wasn’t disgusted or full of hate, like usual. She looked at me and she seemed…impressed.

What the fuck-what the fuck-what the fuck am I supposed to do now?

I seriously panicked, and that’s why I chose to pretend she hadn’t said any of those things, just so I could continue to function.

“But…but my magic is red. It’s…different.” And didn’t the Council say that different wasbad?

“It’s as it should have always been,” Madeline said.

“Grandmother, my magic was orange—you know that.” She’d made a point of talking about it in the three occasions that she’d witnessed me using magic.

“Yes—because it was weak. Now that you’ve drained the Rainbow, it isn’t weak anymore—it’s strong,” she insisted.

But it wasn’t,I wanted to say.My magic was never weak—on the contrary.And strength has nothing to do with the color the magic manifests in.

“They saiddifferentwas wrong,” I said instead because if there was a chance that something had happened, somethingbadhad happened to me, I wanted to know before it became a problem.

To my surprise, Madeline laughed.

She actually laughed, and her laughter was never pleasant. Like it wasnew, like she never got the hang of how she should sound because she laughed so rarely.

“Oh, trust me, Rosabel, this is not thedifferentthey were talking about. You are a Redfire again—that is all that matters. Whether your magic appears orange or pink or red isn’t a problem—it’s still Redfire.”

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