Page 62 of Unbound Magic (Academy of the Elites 4)

“Making shadow puppets?” I asked.

She nodded.

I shrugged and waved my hand in front of the light, casting a huge shadow on the wall. Then I closed my fingers to my thumb as if making a mouth, opening and closing my hand.

I felt ridiculous.

“You’re not calling your magic at all,” Professor Flora said. “You’re just making shadow puppets.”

“I have no idea what I should be doing,” I said.

“How do you use your other magic?” she asked. “When you control time, you’re tapping into that fae magic. What does that feel like and how do you call it?”

I thought back to the few times I’d used time magic. I’d only fully had control of it once or twice. But there was a moment when I’d called it. I made the decision to use it and I had even reset everything once. The ability to tap into it was there.

Until that moment, though, I hadn’t considered how different the time magic felt from the other magic I used in classes. My regular spells and simple incantations didn’t feel the same as the time magic.

I spread my fingers wide and the shadow of my hand showed on the wall in front of me. There had to be a way to isolate that shadow. A way to make it do what I wanted.

In a way, it wasn’t all that different from time magic. I was isolating a moment by taking the shadow and controlling its actions. I could make it move on its own or rewind it to where it had been if I could get it to be free of the attachment to my hand.

Focusing on what I wanted it to do, I reached for the magic I held deep within. It responded, a low humming vibration. Little sparks shot down my arms and I directed the magic toward the shadow.

A flicker of something I hadn’t felt before rose within me and instead of snuffing it out, I embraced it, coaxing it along. The feeling grew and then I felt a popping sensation in my hand.

It startled me and I pulled my hand away, shaking it. Only, when I moved my hand, the shadow stayed where it was.

“Holy shit,” I said.

“See if you can get it to do anything,” Professor Flora said.

I lifted my hand and used my fingers to attempt to guide the shadow the way I might guide a flame I’d conjured. To my surprise, the shadow responded, moving in the direction I indicated.

Shocked, I dropped my hand to my lap and released the magic. The shadow vanished in a tendril much the same way the shadow fae had.

If I could get better at this, there had to be some way I could use it to address my shadow fae problem. But how?

The bell rang.

“That was good,” Professor Flora said. “See you tomorrow.”

I was a little stunned as I walked out of the classroom but for the first time since the shadow fae cornered me in the locker room, I was starting to think that I had a shot at putting an end to this whole mess.

Between the weekend in the library and my newfound shadow magic, an idea formed. And I was no longer just thinking about how to hide the book. Now, I was thinking about how to capture and stop the shadow fae. There was a little more to do, but things were finally coming together.

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