Page 88 of Anchor

Could it be?

“What about your magic?”

“Ever since the Iris Roe, the Drainage, it…it’s a bit painfulwhen I use it.”

He could have slapped me right now and I would have been less panicked. My eyes closed and my mind spun and every single time I’d had to use magic since I came out of the Iris Roe came back to me fast, viciously, all at once.

“Baby, I’m okay, I swear it. It’s just pain,” he said.

“It’s not that.”

“It’s not?”

I shook my head without opening my eyes.

“So, you don’t care that I’m in pain?” he teased.

“Not even a little bit,” I muttered, focusing on the air going down my lungs.

“Sweetness, what’s wrong?” he said because he knew something was.

But how in the world could I tell him when it sounded so absurd?

I’d believe you if you said the sky was green, the sea red.

Goddess, I never knew how badly I’d needed to hear those words. Those exact words.

“That’s…it’s painful for me, too,” I finally said, and Taland’s smile dropped immediately—because he believed me.

“What do you mean?” he asked, pulling me to sit up straighter.

“It justhurts. When I use magic, it hurts me. It feels like it’s cutting me wide open, and it’s red, Taland. You never saw my magic, but it used to be orange, not red, and now…”

I raised my hand and whispered the spell, that same harmless spell that gathered light into a ball over my palm. Red flames sprung to existence, and the pain followed like it was slicing my flesh. I held back from even flinching, of course—I didn’t want him to worry.

But he saw.

“It never looked like this before. The color, it’s…it’s wrong.” The feel of it, too.

Taland grabbed my hand and brought it up, closer to his face to inspect it, even though the flames were already gone.

“It works,” he whispered in awe. “It’s back, sweetness. It’s really back.”

I nodded—yeah,thatwas the most important thing, the reason why my grandmother had put me in the Iris Roe in the first place.

“It is thanks to you.” With my eyes closed, I rested my forehead on his temple. “You saved me—I can’t even count how many times now. You also gave me my magic back.”

“Hmm,” Taland said. “Defective, though.”

I fisted my hand and the light disappeared. “It actually works fine. It’s just the pain…”

My voice trailed off. I swear, it was like another slap right across my face when I rememberedwhyI’d gone to the Vault last night, when I remembered what was still inside the pocket of my jacket—the jacket that was hanging over the armrest of that armchair near the window.

Holy fuck, the bracelet.

“I’ve been trying to find an explanation for it. For the whole thing—why I would be in pain all of a sudden, and why I could see into your mind. Why my magic is more powerful than before.”

I looked at him again. “It is?”

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