Page 95 of Heir of Shadows

I reached for her hand, grounding myself in the way our magic naturally harmonized. A part of me knew I should let go—but I didn’t.

Cyrus studied us for a long moment, something shifting in his expression. Then, finally, he nodded.

“Together,” he said.

Echo’s scales rippled with amusement as Cyrus spread the papers across my desk. The dynamic between us had shifted. None of us said it aloud, but we felt it. We weren’t just uneasy allies anymore.

I nodded, raising a simple illusion to show the tunnel network beneath Wickem. “Start with what we know.”

Marigold’s voice was unwavering. “We find the Last Witness. We stop Project Cornerstone. And we get Keane back.”

I pulled her closer, letting Echo’s scales reflect what I couldn’t say aloud.

No more masks. No more lies.

Cyrus’s flames burned blue. “For Keane. For all of us.”

Looking at them—fierce, unshaken Marigold in my shirt, determined Cyrus with his clean flames—I knew we had something stronger than the Council’s corruption.

Something real.

48

Keane

Oil. Always oilnow, sliding through my thoughts, making everything distant and wrong. Uncle’s voice echoed in the spaces between spaces, commanding through corrupted wellspring energy.

Show me what she found in the research.

Memory flickered—Marigold’s face crumpling as I took her father’s last warnings. Her hand reaching for me as corrupted portals pulled us apart. My body moving like a puppet while something inside screamed against the wrongness.

Wisp? Where was Wisp?

A flicker of pure blue light in the corner of my vision. My familiar trying to reach me through the corruption. But Uncle’s tainted magic ran too deep, poisoning everything it touched.

That wasn’t what Uncle wanted. Strength above all else. He thought the corruption was a tool to wield, not a sickness eating through the magic at its source.

Good boy. Just like we practiced, with the controlled energy.

But he was wrong. He didn’t understand what was happening to me, what this taint truly was. Or maybe he did—and he didn’t care. Maybe he thought sacrificing me was a fair price to unlock this new power.

Wisp pressed closer, her form barely visible through the taint. Trying to remind me of something. Someone.

Brown eyes filled with tears. Honey-blonde hair catching starlight. Teaching her about natural portal magic in the library. Kissing her beneath falling stars while our magic flowed clean and true.

She makes your magic weak. Natural. Uncontrolled.

“No.” The word came out broken, the first thing I’d said of my own will in… how long? Days? Weeks?

Pain lanced through my temples as Uncle’s corrupted magic tightened. But Wisp surged forward, lending me pure wellspring strength.

More fragments broke through the wrongness. Cyrus’s flames turning that impossible blue where they met Marigold’s necromancy. Elio’s illusions gaining substance as her clean power touched them. The three of them defending Wickem while I… while I…

You belong to the controlled power now. To us.

But other memories fought back. Mother teaching me how magic should flow naturally, like clear water. Father’s gentle corrections when my portals wavered between spaces. Their faces the day before they died, worried and determined.

Had they fought this too? This oily wrongness in their thoughts, this corruption of pure magic?

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