Page 18 of Wings of Frost and Fury
“Before what?”
“Before Zovi chooses someone else.”
“Zovi? The tax assessor’s son?”
“I like him, Thelise. I more than like him—I’m in love with him. He doesn’t have anyone yet, but if I wait too long to do this, he might find a sweetheart, or a wife.”
“Have you approached him as you are?”
“We’re friends,” she replied. “But he doesn’t look at me as a potential wife.”
“That’shisproblem, not yours. You shouldn’t feel like you have to—”
“Don’t tell me how to feel, Thelise,” Katlee said. “You can’t possibly imagine everything I feel on a given day, or how conflicted I’ve been over this. But I’ve made my decision.”
“Based on a boy who doesn’t see you for all that you are. I don’t know, Kat.”
“You are not backing out on me now.” Her voice trembled. “You can’t. Not after everything we’ve done to prepare.”
I didn’t want to back out, not really. I believed I could do it. I wanted to succeed in this task, to change the arms Katlee was born with to a size and shape comparable to her body’s proportions, with the typical number of fingers.
If I could help her, I could help others with similar issues. Not that there was anything wrong with being shaped differently—but if theywantedthe change, I could provide it.That kind of magic seemed worthwhile. Like something I could see myself doing for a lifetime, even if I wasn’t compensated for it.
After lighting the candles, I sat cross-legged in the central section of the casting circle, picked up the thin slab of wood on which I had engraved the spell, and began to recite it.
At first it seemed to be going well. Energy branched outward from me, spreading in crackling lines of purple lightning. The power stayed within the perimeter of the circle, tamed and harnessed by the spell. The crystals lit up like they should, and the lines I had drawn on the ground began to glow.
Veins of purple began to snake along Katlee’s arms, a tracery of light that glowed beautifully against her skin. She smiled, looking at me with delight and hope, but she didn’t speak. I had told her not to say a word, lest it break my focus.
Line by line I recited the spell, moving the stones, herbs, and bones to their places on the casting circle at the correct time. Every word was perfectly enunciated. My timing was precise. And yet the veins of light along Katlee’s arms began to turn black and sizzle against her skin.
Her face changed, apprehension extinguishing the hope.
I didn’t stop reading, thinking perhaps this was an acceptable detour on the way to our desired result. I did warn her that the transformation could be painful.
But the black veins sank deeper, dividing her flesh into pieces, and Katlee began to scream.
I didn’t know whether to stop, to keep going, or to attempt a reversal. Stopping the spell wouldn’t fix the damage that had already been done. The spell shouldn’t have to dismantle her arms in order to transform them. None of my experiments had unfolded like this.
Panicking, I diverged from the written spell, trying to reverse it. Pieces of Katlee’s arms fell away onto the floor, and yet the veins continued to crawl over her shoulders, across herthroat and chest. Great black sores opened in her skin, deepening like rifts while I wept and stammered words that should have undone the spell. And yet the corruption continued ravaging her body, burning and rotting her flesh until nothing was left of my friend but a thick black residue in the vague shape of a human.
I screamed until my voice was gone. No one came. I had sent the servants out for the day.
I tried every spell I could think of, clumsily, ineffectually.
I wept so hard I vomited.
Over and over I rasped the same words. “It should have worked. Why didn’t it work? It should have worked.” I stumbled to the table nearby and tore through every reference book I had used to research and design the spell, ripping out whole pages in the torment of my confusion and grief.
My father returned to a silent house at the end of the day. He searched for me and found me in the casting chamber, sitting motionless among tattered grimoire pages next to the remains of my best friend.
Quietly he surveyed the casting circle, read the lines I’d written, and asked questions about the ingredients I’d used. I did my best to answer him clearly and thoroughly.
“It was beautifully orchestrated,” he said at last. “It should have worked.”
Those words were an echo of my own, a tiny balm to my hemorrhaging heart. But moments after speaking them, my father realized where I’d gone wrong.
I had used crystals from his study—crystals that hadn’t been properly toned since their last use. I knew he always purged and toned them before putting them away, so I assumed he’d done it. I didn’t double-check.
