Page 36 of The Darkest Night

Mae gasped, the burning sensation in her lungs abating as she finally drew air. The red mist vanished. Ye-Seul and Ryu bounced down on the bed as it thumped onto the floor. The chair Violet had been sitting on clattered to the ground. The rest of the furniture crashed noisily around them.

There was a moment of stunned silence. A yell came from downstairs.

“Everything okay up there?”

It was Yoo-Mi.

Ryu flinched. “Yeah! Sorry, I dropped something!”

“Well, be more careful,” Yoo-Mi grumbled.

Mae pressed a trembling hand to her mouth. “What—what did I just do?!”

Her panicked gaze landed on Violet and Miles.

“You scared the shit out of us is what you did.” Miles dropped shakily to the floor with his cousin. “I almost crapped my pants.”

Sweat beaded Violet’s forehead. “You lost control of your powers.”

“Wow,” Ryu mumbled. “That was something else.”

Violet’s face grew pinched at her awed voice.

“What?” Ryu said defensively. “Okay, it was scary, but you gotta admit, also super cool.”

“It kinda was,” Miles agreed reluctantly, admiration replacing the unease in his eyes.

“That was an expression of your rage.” Ye-Seul lifted a hand to Mae’s cheek, her voice surprisingly serene. “And rightly so. But you must learn to control it, child. Or else it will destroy you and everyone you love.”

Mae shuddered, the pieces of the puzzle finally coming together.

“I’m her, aren’t I? I’m Azazel and Ran Soyun’s daughter.”

A sad light danced in Ye-Seul’s eyes.

“I had a dream, the night before we left South Korea, all those years ago,” Mae’s grandmother confessed. “In it, I saw a beautiful woman who told me to take the stupa from the Hwangs’ family shrine. I woke your grandfather there and then and insisted he take me to the temple that very hour. The priest was waiting for us when we got to the shrine. He had had the same dream. Though we never spoke of it, I just knew in my bones. He handed me the stupa all wrapped up in sacred clothing and sent us on our way.”

She gazed at the stone bowl and the pile of ash that had miraculously survived Mae’s unintentional levitation spell. “On the day your mother went into labor, the stupa started glowing crimson. I was the only one who saw the light it emitted and felt the power of the soul who had inhabited it for thousands of years. Though the only thing that had sustained her existence was the prayers of our ancestors, and the passage of time had weakened her, she remained determined to see her promise through. At the moment of your birth, the soul of that child left her hiding place and entered her reborn body. And all that was left of the stupa was glowing ash. Luckily, the priest and I foresaw this and he gave me a second stupa to replace the original.”

Mae felt an echo of the otherwordly heartbeat from that night once more. She pressed a hand to her chest. Heat scorched her palm.

“Na Ri.” She met the others’ stares. “Her name was…Na Ri.”

Chapter 18

Light flitted warmlyacross Violet’s eyelids. She stirred, rolled over, and blinked. A dark, triangular face with orange eyes filled her vision. Violet yelped and bolted upright, heart pounding and magic at hand.

Brimstone studied her calmly from where he’d been watching her sleep on the inflatable mattress on Mae’s bedroom floor. He ignored the purple disks of power around her wrists, raised his head, and licked her nose.

Violet’s breath shuddered out of her as the fox’s hot tongue rasped her skin. “That kind of wake-up call is freaky. Don’t do it again.” She retracted her magic. “I could have hurt you.”

Brimstone gave her a somewhat condescending look. Violet looked at the rabbit snoozing under the covers by her legs.

“Fat lot of good you are,” she muttered.

Brimstone sniffed the familiar before licking one of her ears. Trixie woke up, froze when she saw the fox, and bolted into Violet’s arms. Brimstone whined, face drooping.

He really is like a kid. Then again, he did just reincarnate.

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