Page 24 of Bright Soul

“Try one thing for me. Cast Lux with my staff,” she said, gesturing to it.

“Isn’t it super dangerous to use one affinity’s magic with another’s tool?” I asked.

“Just humor me,” she urged.

I looked up at the tip of the staff and shrugged to myself. The rays of the golden sun came to a point, which I used to form the midair X of the Lux spell by manipulating the staff with both hands.

The weapon erupted with light. I turned my face away, shutting my eyes tight. It felt like I’d cast a level-three spell, Luminare, which set off a wave of light like a ground-level firework. Slowly, I peeled one eyelid up to peek at it in my periphery, seeing that the staff still pulsed with light. I’d lit the centerpiece brightest of all, and its golden halo formed a circle on the ceiling.

The remaining librarian magic stored within me rapidly depleted. I’d never felt it suction out of me quite this fast before, but the fatigue that came with being completely emptied of a powercore’s magic had me squeezing the staff, fumbling with it to get it to stop glowing. The painful lurch of running dry happened first, the light fading as I struggled for my next breath past a spasm in my chest.

Wren steadied me with a hand on my shoulder, taking back the weight of the weapon while I recovered. “I think that proves it. You’re not just a librarian witch… You’re somehow two affinities in one. The light of a celestial affinity pushing out the shadows of your librarian affinity.”

“That’s not possible,” Leona said.

I pointed at my handbook, which flapped down into my waiting palm from where it was circling the ceiling. “All ofmy Darkmore hereditary power was stored in this,” I croaked, shaking the spine of the handbook. Its pages rattled with the motion.

“Hey!” it protested. “Careful. I’m sensitive.”

“We made the handbook into an artifact, separating the celestial magic of her family line from the librarian magic stored within her. Although, Cress has always had a soul unusually suffused with light,”Braza supplied.

“Bright soul, beacon in the night.”Though I felt that Phaeron was still connected by a silken thread, his responses were distracted whispers once night fell.

The handbook took flight from my palm once I released my hold on it. “It’s possible I’m leaking,” it said slowly.

It seemed all of us asked at the same time, “Leaking?”

It flew loop-de-loops over our heads, seemingly carefree. “Hehe! You didn’t think little ol’ me could hold the might of an entire storied witch line, plus all the secrets of the great Morgana Voidbinder herself?”

“Uh, yeah?” I said, incredulous.

“You have entirely too much faith in me, Cressie-poo! I’m flattered!”

My cheeks tinted when Leona raised an unimpressed brow. She had a normal, obedient copy ofThe Librarian Witch’s Handbookflapping behind her, unlike my malfunctioning one.

Braza hurried to pitch in,“Perhaps it is not the worst thing that her affinities are mixing. Cress was able to cast a spell stored on Evening Guidance, if the memories she shared were correct.”

“Not just any spell,” Wren muttered. “She cast Sun Surge without any preparation. Just picked up the staff, aimed, and fired.”

“I had help. My…an ancestor, showing me what to do and say.” I wished my ghostly mother would make a reappearancefor this conversation. She’d been the one to lay her hands over mine and tell me how to unleash the power waiting to be used on the staff. That beam of concentrated light had been the miracle we’d needed at the time to turn the tide of battle.

Wren offered the sun staff back to me. “Imagine if you could do it on command, with your own knowledge and prep work. How much do you even know about celestial magic?” she asked.

“You all can make portals?” I ventured.

Her nostrils flared with a delicate snort. “That’s fair. It’s the most complicated and ritual-driven affinity. We have what are considered sub-affinities that we call alignments. At the beginning of each moon cycle, a trio of celestial witches link hands and align to the moon, the stars, or the sun. For the next month, they complete their rituals under the light of the celestial body they’re aligned to to draw its energies. Most celestial witches inherit an alignment to one of the three options, and sometimes, like in your case, it’s really obvious which one it is. Make sense so far?”

I nodded slowly, wondering where she was going with this.

“Sun Surge is the biggest, showiest spell someone with a sun alignment can cast. It’s a variable power level spell, depending on stored power. The freaking laser you cast a few days ago was probably power level five or six. Judging by how your magic seems to work…you’re clearly meant to be sun alignment. Maybe your mother was, too?”

Eris whispered out, “I was sun aligned, yes.” Her translucent form appeared from the shadows of the room, as perfect as ever in the dark evening gown she’d been wearing when she’d died, her brown hair styled in a fancy up do. When her gaze caught on me holding Wren’s sun staff, a wide, approving grin stretched her face.

“She was,” I confirmed. No one else in this room except Braza could see or hear Eris’s ghost, which could be awkward if I got into a seemingly one-sided conversation.

“And Ben’s mother?” Wren prompted.

I barely needed Eris to tell me she was star aligned. Her job had been reading star charts for infants before Eris’s murder, after all. I shared this information and then asked, “What’s your alignment?”

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