Page 88 of Unraveled
“Can you break my spell? I’ve seen you do magic, Ash, and it’s breathtaking. I’ve never met anyone as powerful as you.”
“Now, easy there, Monster. Your feelings for me are showing,” he says, grinning at my glare. He sobers a little, his expression softening. “I can’t. I tried to unravel it while you slept, back in my chambers, with no luck.”
“What if it can’t be undone? I don’t know how I came to have it in the first place...”
“There is always a counterspell. No matter the enchantment.” Ash tilts his head, an intense curiosity shining behind his eyes. “The night we met, I had you paralyzed, but you unraveled that spell. How did you do it?”
I suspect the answer is going to be disappointing, and say with a shrug, “I asked it to release me.”
“You asked the spell to release you... and it listened?” Ash’s eyes round as he stares at me.
“I take it that’s not common? Is it connected to me speaking to artifacts?”
“Possibly... I’ve lived a long time, and I’ve met no one like you.”
My stomach flutters. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“It was intended as such,” he says, rolling one of his sleeves up over his forearm. “Other than asking it, do you feel or see anything else?”
“I guess I see the threads that make a spell, and sometimes that makes it easy to break them. It’s how I could get through the wards protecting the forbidden grimoires back in the library.”
Ash lets out a deep breath and continues his circling. “It’s not uncommon for hybrids to possess peculiar gifts. When did you start wearing your amulet?”
“My father gave it to me five years ago.” I wring my hands, and the bubbling in my stomach begins.
“How do the librarians find who has magic and who doesn’t?”
There’s something fuzzy in my mind, like a veil blocking my access to my memories. When I think back to those days—to the specific afternoon I received the letter with my new assignment—all I can remember is being excited, confused, and afraid.
“After we turn twenty, all young adults go to the governor’s house and are asked to hold a spherical artifact that detects an affinity to wield magic in simple humans. We were told we aren’t true sorcerers, as no magical artifact would bind to us.”
I press my fingers to my temple as a dull headache throbs. “I took my mother’s amulet to my first meeting with the librarians. My father told me to not let them see it... but they must have.”
Ash hums thoughtfully, and I know he’s putting together his own puzzle with the pieces I’m finally sharing. “The artifact they used to detect your magic, did it turn colors when you held it?”
Somehow, that question makes my stomach sour.
“Yes, it turns blue if someone has an affinity for magic, and remains white if they don’t.” I add, “Mine didn’t turn blue the first time I held it. Let me guess, it’s a fae artifact, isn’t it?”
He looks mildly sick as he says, “It’s called the Nagine, and a race of dangerous, snake-like beings called the Naga created it to track magical humans. My father stole it from them, from where they live in Sylas’s kingdom, in order to track hybrids. When I took the throne, I sent someone I trusted to destroy it, but that obviously didn’t happen.”
I’m thinking a person close enough for Ash to trust them with such an artifact could be the same person who betrayed him with the curse. A hybrid who roamed the castle before me.
“The Nagine needs Naga blood to work properly, but pure fae blood also does the trick most of the time. I never expected it tobe used by hybrids, though I guess it could still detect a magical person if they were to hold it in their hands...”
I chew the inside of my cheek. Part of me still wants to defend them—defend myself and my old life built in lies. The sensation in my stomach turns uncomfortable almost immediately.
My hold on my power slips through the flimsy grasp I have on it.
“Do you think the librarians put the block on my power?”
“No, I think had they known what you can do, they’d never have allowed you close to my grimoires.” He resumes his prowling around me, and I feel our brief history lesson is over. “If you can unravel spells, Monster, then you need to search inside yourself for something that feels wrong. Your power should feel familiar. A part of you. The spell blocking it will feel like a strange invasion in your body.”
I close my eyes to focus on the magic I feel simmering within my skin and find it warm.
I search inside myself for something that feels alien. But it all feels familiar, too familiar. Like a hug I received as a child that never let me go. Like the warmth of my father’s voice.
I gasp, but don’t lose focus as I pull at that buzzing energy in my center—myenergy—and find threads of magic tightly woven over it. They feel like my own, but slightly different.
