Page 30 of Petals for Deadly Power

“Not one of the rarest symptoms by any means,” Arabella said. Lenna couldn’t decide if it was better not to be unique in this sense. Ayla’s and Jake’s symptoms seemed equally incapacitating.

“To Take without limit one must Give in the same capacity. Correct?” Arabella paced the empty room, the sound of her high heels breaking the silence.

“Yes. Unless I want the inner magical balance tilting to the point that I can’t continue.”

Arabella looked at her, narrowing her blue eyes. “What if you Took, and could Give at the same time?”

“Simultaneous use of opposite powers? Is that a thing?”

“That ismything.”

“Your thing as in . . . You invented it?” Lenna lifted an eyebrow. Surely Miss Nasty couldn’t be some sort of magic prominence.

The eye roll that followed was completely unnecessary and completely annoying. “Of course not, you fool. Panom magic is so ancient that nothing is new anymore. This simultaneous use of powers is howIuse my magic. My balance threshold is very low, so I cannot allow my inner scale to tilt even one bit. Ever.”

“What would happen if you did?” Could it be truly that bad, or was Arabella exaggerating?

“I would be moured away against my will. Until I mastered how to use two sources of magic at the same time, it happens all the time, every single time. One day I was moured to the cave of some wild beast who wanted to feed me to her offspring. Another day, I appeared in a club between two men stabbing each other. I don’t fancy disappearing from where I am meant to be to appear Cardinals know where.”

“Fair play. How can I do it?”

Arabella smiled in a now-we’re-talking kind of way, and Lenna tilted her chin slightly upwards. Maybe she even gave her the smallest smile. Now, she was interested and intrigued by what Arabella had to teach her.

“When you use two powers at once, each hand leads on one. One hand will Give, and therefore you will open as usual. The other hand will Take, and therefore you will close it at the same time. The opposite side of the brain will focus on pulling the respective petal of your panom mark. For example, if you use the right hand to Give, the left half of your brain will be leading on how the North Petal of your panom mark is used. If you use the left hand to Take, the right side of your brain will ensure that happens.”

Lenna frowned, recapitulating on what she had just heard. “The brain part is confusing, but I think I get it.”

“It is very interesting, that’s what it is. It’s easier to do if what you Give and Take is the same.”

Arabella put her hands in front of her, one open and one closed. She Gave a drop of water into the air and at the same time she Took the drop away, making it visible for less time than it took Lenna to blink. She continued opening and closing her hands, and a drop of water appeared every time before vanishing and reappearing again.

“Taking a drop, Giving a drop. Same amount of magic required. If you Take a drop of water and Give a lake, your inner balance will still tilt. Which for you, is not the end of the world,” Arabella said, and Lenna could have sworn there was a tinge of jealousy and frustration in her voice. “But you could Take a drop of water and Give a pinch of sand, and it would still be even. Different products, same amount of magic.”

Lenna inhaled deeply. Cardinals guide her to the uneven tilt.

This use of magic sounded clever, useful, andveryfucking complicated.

She wasn’t sure she had ever seen two types of panom magic being used by the same wielder simultaneously. She wasn’t even sure she would be able to do it herself, or if it would help her in her ordeal, but she was definitely going to give it a go. Or, most likely, a hundred goes.

Lenna placed her hands in front of her, ready to start the first of surely many attempts to master this synced use of powers. It was then, when her forearm tickled, and the red ink of Hope’s handwriting threw all her plans out of the fucking navia.

Lenna read the ink, and reread it, and re-reread it, unable to process her rapid heartbeat and the whirl of fear overwhelming her.

20

Ayla

Theworldwasdark,smooth, and exhausting. So, so exhausting.

Whatever level of tiredness and mental drainage Ayla had felt in her life before this moment faded in comparison tothis.

The North Cardinal’s ordeal had made her give everything. The strength and physical force she didn’t have, the resistance to stop pursuing the damned crystal feather that awaited her somewhere, the perseverance to not give up.

The world was dark because her eyes had stopped allowing her to see a long time ago. It was probably twilight, but she couldn’t tell. The pain in her eyes was blinding and limiting. A pain she had never experienced before, but then she had never pushed her inner balance so much before. If by some blessed miracle she survived this ordeal, throwing her scale upside down would definitely not be in her future plans. Ever.

She had tried Healing her own pain, but then the horizontal scale between the East and West Petals of her own panom mark had tilted, and the ocular pain increased even more.

She had settled in finishing the ordeal as fast as she could, as alive as she could.

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