Page 45 of Bonds of Magic
“No, buthow.” I wanted to know what she actually meant. “How do you feel it? You specifically. What does feeling magic feel like to you?”
“It feels like magic.” She threw up her hands. “I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Try.”
She gave me a long look, then began to pace back and forth across the alcove. It wasn’t that big a space, and she could only take five steps before she had to turn back in the other direction.
“It’s like… It’s like this feeling in the air—”
“Don’t start with the air again.”
“Do you want me to actually explain it, or do you just want to complain?” she asked, stopping mid-stride.
I sighed and crossed my arms. “Fine. Sorry. Explain, please.”
She began walking again. “What I wasgoingto say was that, it’s like how when you step outside in the morning, you can feel if it’s warm or cool based on how the air touches your skin. Or how when you take a really hot shower and you breathe in, you can tell the air is humid. Magicisn’tthe air, but it’s like it’s a part of it, it’s another quality that you can sense.”
That was actually kind of clear, even though it didn’t help me at all.
“But you keep saying I need to feel it inside me. How do you do that?”
“You just…do.” She shrugged. “You know how in chemistry, you learn that at the tiniest level, everything is made up of atoms? And even those atoms have smaller constituent parts? And they vibrate or hop around or do whatever they do, but there’s space between them? So even though a table or the floor or your skinfeelssolid, it’s actually not? It’s actually full of tiny holes?”
I nodded. Chemistry hadn’t been my favorite subject in high school, but I got the gist of what she meant.
“To me, magic feels like it fills the spaces between the atoms. It’s everywhere, so it’s inside you too. So when you can sense it in the air, and then connect that sense to what you feel inside yourself… That’s when you realize suddenly that you can work with this thing, this energy. You can shape it, because it’s part of you.”
That sounded suspiciously like how Noah had described connecting to the dream world. Butthatactually made sense to me, because Icouldfeel it. Magic, on the other hand…
“It’s the easiest thing in the world, once you can do it,” Rekha said. “I mean, it’s really tiring. And more complicated spells take a lot of study and manipulation. You have to build up your strength, and some people will never be very strong. But connecting to it? It’s natural. It feels right in your body, andyoufeel right in your body because of it.”
That sentence hit like a kick to the chest.
I’dneverfelt comfortable in my body. Most of the time, I preferred not to be aware of it at all. Even the times when my body felt good—I flushed, thinking of kissing Noah three days ago in his cabin—I still felt shame later. It was easier to ignore my body whenever I could.
God, that had been a stupid move. Kissing Noah. How dumb could I be? I could only blame it on the disorientation of seeing him leaning over me on the couch. The surprise of him touching my cheek. And the way he’d said my name. Like heneededme.
And it had felt so good. I wasn’t sure I was doing it right—the kissing part—and he’d been so still at first it was like kissing astatue. But when I’d started to pull away, he drew me back in and it was just…wild. Perfect. Intoxicating. Suddenly I got what people meant when they talked about feeling butterflies in their stomach.
He’d kissed me back. He’dwantedme. And I’d been crazy enough, been bold enough, to run my hands over his body, not even thinking about what I was doing, desperate to touch every inch of him. And I could have sworn that when I’d reached his waist, I’d felt his erection before he shoved me away.
But I must have been wrong. Or maybe I’d felt it, but it was an automatic reaction. From what he’d said, it was clear he didn’t actually wantme.
That was what I got for feeling connected to my body. Ever since that night, I’d gone back to trying my best to disconnect from it entirely.
“Are there any other ways to get that kind of feeling?” I asked. “Of being aware of your body? Or connected to it?”
Ways that don’t involve throwing yourself at your combat professor and getting shot down so brusquely you come away bruised?
Rekha cocked her head to the side. “What do you mean?”
“I think maybe I’m not very good at that part. At feeling my body at all. But maybe if I could work on that, it might help?”
It might give me something else to concentrate on, at least, other than ruminating about my stupidity like I’d been doing for the last three days.
“I don’t know. Take some deep breaths. Take a yoga class. Lie down on the grass or something.” She shook her head. “But dothatlater, because now, we have work to do. Close your eyes, and we’ll take it from the top.”
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